This lesson includes scaffolded analytical writing tasks that provide examples for teaching Common Core writing.

For as long as she could remember, Jackie Mitchell’s father told Jackie she could be good at whatever she wanted, as long as she worked hard at it, including baseball. On April 2, 1931, the famous New York Yankees stopped in Tennessee for an exhibition game against the unknown Chattanooga Lookout baseball team, and Jackie Mitchell, a seventeen-year-old girl, made baseball history by striking out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.  (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt StoryTown, 2008)

This lesson was created as part of the Basal Alignment Project, during which teachers created CCSS-aligned lessons for existing literary and information texts in basal readers. All page numbers and unit/week designations found in this lesson relate to the edition of the basal reader named above. If you are using a trade book or different edition of this title, the page/unit/week references in this lesson will not match. Consult the content referenced in the body of the lesson to determine appropriate page numbers for your text.