Friday, October 26, 2012

Baseball: A Game for Every Subject

I read an article today by Matt Davis that prompted me to update my Baseball Unit.  It's baseball for every subject in this unit...even English class! 

Here are the details of the Out of Bounds Baseball Unit, if you don't want the PDF:


Back Story
Integrating GIS into core content is easy if you take advantage of preexisting content.  This unit was born out of a baseball theme in English Language Arts (ELA) class.  As the four core teachers talked about what we were doing in ELA class, they wanted to get on board.   Over time, we incorporated all four classes at the same time to create a powerful experience for our middle school students.  This is an outline of what each class did as their part of the baseball unit.  The GIS activities were incorporated in ELA, Science and Social Studies classes.  Perhaps you can play out of bounds and integrate!

English Language Arts / Reading
  • “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” song by Jack Norworth
  • “Strong Men Weep” short story by Benedict Cosgrove
  • Excerpts from Wait Till Next Year a novel by Doris Kerns Goodwin
  • “Who’s on First?” play by Abbott and Costello (videos available at YouTube)
  • “Casey at the Bat” poem by Ernest Thayer (videos available at YouTube)
  • “Baseball in April” short story by Gary Soto
  • Shakespeare Bats Cleanup by Ron Koertge
Science
·         Ball analysis (measurement, physics, experiment procedures)
Math
·         Baseball statistics and spreadsheet formulas
Social Studies
·         Games and sports in cultures around the world
Projects
·         Build a baseball Museum
·         Research baseball topics
GIS
·         Play Ball! Spatial Analysis of Baseball (http://edcommunity.esri.com/arclessons/lesson.cfm?id=334)
·         Baseball Radio Station Analysis (http://edcommunity.esri.com/arclessons/lesson.cfm?id=390)
·         Where should you put the next MLB team?
·         Demographic patterns related to baseball
Resources

2 comments:

Adena said...

One more resource Caitlin posted today: http://gislounge.com/baseball-maps-and-gis/

Unknown said...

Thanks!