Teamwork

It's good to be important, but it's more important to be nice.  ~Anthony’s Grandmother

Teamwork

Your team surrounds you. It’s

the day of the big game and it feels good

to

be

geared up and ready to play. It’s important

to remember that you have to play as a team, but

if you get the chance to make a big play, it’s

nothing that makes you more

important

than any of the other players. No matter what, you have to

always be

humble and just plain nice.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2018

Congratulations to our school's dodgeball team, the elementary champions for the second year in a row!

(Almost) In Time for the Olympics

One of the sections of my classroom library that is perpetually lacking is the sports books -- both nonfiction and fiction. I struggle with nonfiction because there are so many sports students are interested in and the famous players change with every season, it seems. I struggle with fiction because for every 10 readers who are sporty, 5 like to do sports AND read stories about sports, but 5 like to do sports AND NOT read stories about sports.

So, when students are interested in sports I either send them to the school library or bring them a stack of books from the public library. Another great option is found in the Epic app. Epic is free for educators.

Since the Olympics are on, there's bound to be an upswing in requests for sports books. In addition to the offerings on the Epic app, these two newer National Geographic titles are sure to be popular:

Weird but True! Sports

Kids love to browse the National Geographic Weird but True! books. Where else can you learn tidbits of information about the Pig Olympics, Skijoring, and Bo-Taoshi?

Everything Sports

This thin volume is packed with sports information and nonfiction minilessons (table of contents, diagram, pictures and captions, compare/contrast, main ideas and details, headings, and an interactive glossary (multiple choice quiz with the answers at the bottom of the page).

Baseball: Then to Wow!

I always love to find a new nonfiction sports book to add to our sports basket, so I bought this one when I saw it.  Sports Illustrated for Kids seems to publish stuff that is really interesting for kids. I figured (just by the cover) that kids would like Baseball: Then to Wow! but when I opened it I realized how packed it was with single-page spreads that I could use for mini lessons and small group instruction too.

The visuals in this book are BRILLIANT.  Every page focuses on a different topic and then shows how things have changed over the years.  Some pages, show a timeline--for example the page on Catcher's Masks starts in the 1870s and goes decade by decade showing what they looked like and some facts about them over the years.  Another page, The Five-Tool Player compares two players in a Then and Now table. Mickey Mantle and Mike Trout.

I don't know a lot about baseball but this book is engaging as a reader because of the amount of information and the way it is displayed.  There is a lot for kids in this book. First of all, I think they will just enjoy it for the book that it is. It is a great read packed with fascinating info. As readers, they can learn a lot about how to read visuals--there is such a variety of visual information that I can see using several pages in lessons as we learn to navigate nonfiction. I also think as writers, they'll want to try some things out.  I have lots of kids who write about sports and start out in pretty traditional ways. This gives them new ways to think about how they might best share information with readers.

This book is packed with information as well as real photos, artifacts, maps and more.  It is definitely going to be one of my go-to nonfiction texts next year.  (If you go to the book on Amazon, you can "Look Inside" and see some of the visuals.)

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED Kids BIG BOOK OF WHY

I received a copy Sports Illustrated Kids Big Book of Why Sports Edition of from the publisher and am so happy to have this one to add to my classroom this year. I know already that it will definitely be a popular one.

The book is filled with interesting facts about sports. (The cover states that there are 500+ Sports Facts in the book!)  The facts cover lots of sports and lots of topics.  At first I thought I'd pull out lots of math facts--statistics, measurements, etc. to keep handy for math work. But as I read through the book, although I found some number facts (Why is a standard marathon 26.2 miles?), I found far more interesting facts about words:



Why is football called soccer in America?
Why is it called a turkey when you get three straight strikes in bowling?
Why do baseball players sometimes "choke up" on the bat?
Why is the middle of an archery target called a bulls eye?
Why are some dunks called alley-oops?
Why is the home of the Boston Red Sox names Fenway Park?

I learned so many interesting things in this book and can see pulling it out for word study minilessons all year. If I can get my hands on it, that is.  I think kids are going to love this book. I sometimes worry about books with random facts spread all over the page, because so often, kids merely skim and scan and never really get to the reading part.  But this one seems very accessible for kids.  There are 2-3 facts per page with a paragraph or two about each fact. It seems like the pieces are the perfect length for kids to read and the font and layout is not intimidating at all.  Very inviting and filled with great stuff!