Franklin R. Chang-Diaz is an immigrant from Costa Rica who began thinking about space at age seven when the Soviet Union launched the first satellite into space.  He read science fiction as a child and dreamed of becoming a “space explorer” as astronauts did not exist yet.  After going through many obstacles he was accepted to NASA and became “the first Hispanic to be in the space program for the long run." (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Medallion, 2010)

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.