Tag Archives: games/sports

The Miracle on Ice

When I taught in Springfield, Massachusetts, (which hosts a minor league hockey team), a number of students in my literacy intervention class wanted to read about hockey. So I worked up this reading on the Miracle on Ice and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet for their consumption. If you’re not old enough to remember it, or are not a hockey or Olympics fan, the Miracle on Ice is the United States Olympic Hockey Team’s upset victory over the Russian team at the 1980 Olympics at Lake Placid, New York.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Dale Earnhardt

Depending on where you are and whom your teaching, this reading on Dale Earnhardt may well be high-interest material. It certainly was in Vermont. Less popular perhaps, but still necessary, is the vocabulary-building and comprehension sheet, but there it is anyway.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

H.L. Mencken on College Football

“College football would be more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students—there would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks.”

H.L. Mencken

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

Rocky Marciano

This reading on Rocky Marciano and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet were of high interest to number of my students over the years.

Do you have students who are interested in the sweet science?

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

George Will on Football

“Football combines the two worst features of American life: violence and committee meetings.”

George Will

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

Ted Williams

OK, baseball fans, I know it isn’t much, but perhaps you can take some comfort from this reading on Ted Williams and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Jackie Robinson as Precursor to Colin Kaepernick

“Today as I look back on that opening game of my first world series, I must tell you that it was Mr. [Branch] Rickey’s drama and that I was only a principal actor. As I write this twenty years later, I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.”

Jackie Robinson

I Never Had It Made introduction (1972)

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige on Dietary Prudence

“Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.”

Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige

“How to Keep Young,” Colliers, 13 June 1953

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Jacques Barzun on Baseball

“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game–and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.”

Jacques Barzun

God’s Country and Mine ch. 8 (1954)

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Joe DiMaggio

While Major League Baseball remains on hiatus and debates with itself on how to proceed in these extraordinary circumstances, perhaps this reading on Joe DiMaggio and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet will go a short distance toward engaging young minds in the national pastime, or at least its history.

It isn’t much, I concede, but I suppose it’s better than nothing. I’m definitely ready to watch some baseball.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.