For Grades K-4 , week of June 22, 2020

1. Call Those Plays!

Have you ever dreamed of calling plays for a professional sports team? The Cleveland Browns of the National Football League are giving fans a chance to win the honor — while raising money for coronavirus and food relief efforts at the same time. As part of the All-In Challenge organized by pro sports teams, the Browns are offering two fans the chance to help head coach Kevin Stefanski choose the first 15 plays of a pre-season game when the NFL gets back in action. One winner will be determined in an auction in which people bid against each other and the other in a raffle in which a winner will be drawn from tickets sold to raise money for Meals on Wheels, No Kid Hungry, America’s Food Fund, Feeding America and World Central Kitchen, the Washington Post newspaper reported. The winners will join Stefanski and offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt in the game planning, get to attend a team dinner and team meeting the night before the game, and run onto the field with the players on game day. Teams in the NFL, National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and National Hockey League are all getting ready to play again after halting activity due to the coronavirus emergency. In the newspaper or online, find and closely read a story about a favorite team getting ready to play. Think like a coach and choose three plays you would like to see the team run, and with which players. Share choices with family and friends and discuss.

Common Core State Standards: Reading closely what written and visual texts say and to making logical inferences from them; responding thoughtfully to diverse perspectives, summarizing points of agreement and disagreement.

2. Artful Celebration

The year 2020 marks 100 years since women gained the right to vote in America, and First Lady Melania Trump wants students to use their creativity to celebrate. The First Lady has launched a children’s art project asking kids in Grades 3 to 12 to send in drawings and artworks connected to women getting the right to vote and the gains they have made as a result. The artworks will be collected for an exhibit at the White House in Washington, DC “For decades, women leaders lobbied, marched and protested for equality and their right to vote in the United States,” Trump said when announcing the project. “… It is my hope that this project will both support and expand the important conversations taking place on equality … while encouraging children to engage in … history.” The White house exhibit will include artworks by students from each of the 50 states and U.S. territories. Since getting the right to vote women have made gains in politics, government and other career fields. In the newspaper or online, find and closely read a story about a woman doing something new or noteworthy in her career field. Use your creativity and draw a picture of this woman doing something that has made her successful. Write a paragraph explaining what skills and qualities she needed to succeed.

Common Core State Standards: Using drawings or visual displays when appropriate to enhance the development of main ideas or points; producing clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization and style are appropriate to the task.

3. High Priced Mystery

It doesn’t seem like something someone would easily forget. Yet authorities in the European nation of Switzerland are looking for a person who left a bag full of gold bars on a train. The gold is worth more than $190,000, and no one has come forward to claim it since it was discovered last October. So Swiss authorities this month turned to the public to see if they could help identify the person who left the valuable package on a train heading to the city of Luzerne. Authorities said the owner has five years to make a claim on the gold, CNN News reported. From medicine to law enforcement, people are often called on to solve mysteries involving human behavior, science or the natural world. With family or friends, use the newspaper or Internet to find and closely read a story about a mystery people are trying to solve. Divide a sheet of paper into three columns. Use what you have read to write out What People Know about the mystery, What They Want to Know, and How They Might Learn More. Discuss what information might be the hardest to learn and explain why.

Common Core State Standards: Conducting short research projects that build knowledge about a topic; organizing data using concrete objects, pictures, tallies, tables, charts, diagrams and graphs; applying knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts.

4. Summertime, Summertime

Summer is officially here. It arrived at 5:43 p.m. on Saturday, June 20 in the Earth’s Northern Hemisphere and will continue until autumn arrives on September 22. The first day of summer is officially called the Summer Solstice, and it is the day that the Earth gets its most daylight hours north of the equator. The Northern Hemisphere gets maximum daylight at this time of the year because the tilt of the Earth’s axis puts the northern part of the planet closest to the sun. In the Southern Hemisphere, the first day of summer falls on December 20 because that is when that area is closest to the sun. People behave differently in the summer months. They wear different clothes, visit different places, and try different activities than the things they do at other times of the year. In the newspaper or online, find photos, stories, listings or ads that show summer activities or behavior. Use what you find to write a personal opinion column telling things you like to do in summer, and why.

Common Core State Standards: Writing opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and information; citing specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions.

5. What a High Note

There’s an old saying that “hitting a high note” indicates someone has done something really well for herself or others. Singer Colette Hawley did both recently when she entertained senior citizens at a nursing home in Chicago, Illinois. And she got pretty high up to do it. Because she couldn’t visit the residents in person due to the coronavirus, Hawley rented a cherry picker machine that lifted her to perform outside the third and fourth floor windows of the Chicago Methodist Senior Services facility. With residents clapping, waving and dancing along, she performed a high-rise concert that included some of the seniors’ old favorites, plus “America the Beautiful.” Her performance attracted nationwide attention on social media as well as from several TV shows. “Everybody was smiling and laughing,” one nursing home staffer said. People often do unusual things to help others. In the newspaper or online, find and closely read a story about someone helping others in an unusual way. Use what you read to write a letter to the editor calling attention to this effort, and why people will remember or appreciate it more because it was out of the ordinary.

Common Core State Standards: Producing clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization and style are appropriate to the task; citing specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions.