LA/Literature: Friday, April 5, 2019 Handouts: * The Southpaw: Activity Sheet Homework: * Read AR book 20 - 30 minutes daily & record progress * In-class assignment—The Southpaw: Activity Sheet Students who are absent—make this up and hand it in. Assignments Due: * None

Today’s Goal: Learn to identify character traits as you read “The Southpaw” (PDF online). Outcomes: Define the term “character trait.” Predict what you think will happen at various points throughout today’s story. Identify the character traits of the main characters in today’s story. Define the term “jargon” and explain how today’s story relies on jargon. Infer deeper levels of meaning by noting context clues in dialogue.

Starter #1 : How many of you regularly participate in any type of sport? How many of you have ever played on a co-ed team? When I was in 6th grade (about 100 years ago)  boys and girls played sports together during recess. . . . I brought a softball mitt to school with me every day. And I still love to play ball! (A Legends’ Game catch)

Let’s see how the characters in today’s story handle their conflict. Starter #2: But for some reason, when I was your age, none of the organized Parks and Recreation teams would let boys and girls play together competitively.   Would you say that’s changing nowadays? Are boys and girls permitted to play together competitively in organized league play? Today’s we’re going to read a story about two friends who both love baseball, but they have a major conflict about . . . baseball. That raises a very good question: What do you do when you have a major disagreement with a friend? Let’s see how the characters in today’s story handle their conflict.

Do we have any southpaws in this class? Starter #3: Open up your Chromebook. Go to our website. Using either the Assignments page (LA for Friday, April 5) or the Resources page, find, “The Southpaw.” What does the term “southpaw” mean?   “Southpaw” is baseball jargon. (“Jargon” is a way of speaking that’s understood only by the people familiar with a certain activity, in this case, baseball lingo/language). “Southpaw” means you are a left-handed pitcher. Do we have any southpaws in this class? Let’s check out our pre-read sheet before reading this story, and after we finish reading, work on your in-class activity sheet. [Those of you who love to write (and have aspirations of growing up to become a writer), read about author, Judith Viorst, on p. 194 of today’s online PDF.]