Graph It!

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based on Sports Illustrated for Kids: 2005 Year in Sports

About the Book
What pro baseball player holds the record for the most consecutive games played? This sports almanac can answer that question and many more questions kids want to know about their favorite athlete or sport. Almost every sport imaginable is included in this reference book: basketball, baseball, football, hockey, golf, tennis, cycling, auto racing, BMX, snowboarding, in-line skating, and Olympic sports such as gymnastics, skiing, and track and field.

Young fans will spend hours referencing facts on their favorite teams including championship game recaps, records held, all-time statistics, and fun trivia. This almanac also includes mini biographies of great athletes and color photos of this years greatest sports moments.

Set the Stage

• Explain to students that this is a sports almanac that can be used to reference information on sports teams and players. Ask them what other types of almanacs have they seen and what subjects do they cover?
• Point out how information is organized in the book by sport and ask the question: Why did the publisher put grey tabs on the page edges?
• Model how you would find a fact on a particular sport by stating the fact and them showing how you would locate that fact using the tabs and then by reading the grid titles within the section.
• Have students find their favorite sports team and share one fact or stat they found in the almanac. Have other students try to find the page number that fact or stat is found on.

Review
Begin a discussion with these questions:

• What sources do you think the writers of this book used to create it? What makes you think that?
• Look at the table of contents. Why do you think the writers organized the book in this way?
• Find the Sports Directory at the back of the book. What do you think this reference could be used for?

Student Activity
This reproducible will give students practice in researching and graphing information.

Related Activities
Extend the lesson with some of these activities:

• Fan Letter: Have students find their favorite team in the Sports Directory starting on page 314. Then have them write a fan letter, in standard letter format, to the team cheering them on to another victory.
• Who Is It?: Students select an athlete from the 2005 Year in Sports Almanac to write a biography on. Have them use the biography sections in the almanac for reference material. Students can read their biographies to the class leaving off the athletes name and see if the class can guess who it is.
• Find that Stat: Have students divide into teams. State a stat from the Almanac and ask them to use the book to find what page the stat is listed on. The teams who has the page first wins. Winners get to pick the next stat to find. You could start with: What teams played in the 2003 Womens World Cup Final? (Bonus) What was the final score?
• Internet Scavenger Hunt: Go to www.sikids.com. Identify and list three things that students can learn about on the web site. Have students search the web site to find where the three items are located and write down one sentence for each item that describes what they learned.

Reproducibles:

• Graph It! Student Activity Sheet

  (PDF)

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