Dr. Daniel Hale Williams must make the decision to perform a heart operation that could save a patient’s life but could also condemn him in the eyes of the medical community. Although heart surgery was not accepted at the time, he confidently performed the surgery and saved the patient’s life. (McGraw-Hill Open Court, 2002)

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.