Teachable Texts

111. Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates by Jonah Winter

October 17, 2009 at 9:00 pm Leave a comment

Retell: This is the rags-to-riches story of Roberto Clemente.  Not only was he an all-star player for the Pittsburgh Pirates, he was also a humanitarian who donated a great deal of his earnings to charity.

Topics: baseball, Puerto Rico, racism, poetry

Units of Study: Nonfiction, Social Issues, Content-Area

Tribes: personal best, mutual respect

Habits of Mind: persisting, thinking flexibly, striving for accuracy

Reading Skills: inference, interpretation, envisionment

Writing Skills: including similes, using commas in lists

My Thoughts: I like sports stories that emphasize the athlete’s character rather than just his/her athletic ability.  This is a good book for showing persistence even in the face of adversity.  The book describes how Clemente grew up playing baseball with a glove made out of a coffee-bean sack and baseballs made from old soup cans.  Written in free verse but organized into two line stanzas, this is a great book to read as a model for students writing nonfiction poetry during the Content-Area unit.

Entry filed under: Male authors, nonfiction, Picture Books, poetry. Tags: baseball, commas, content-area, envisionment, inference, interpretation, mutual respect, nonfiction, nonfiction poetry, persisting, personal best, Puerto Rico, racism, similes, social issues, striving for accuracy, thinking flexibly.