The unit was perfect, our students were able learn a lot of new vocabulary as well as the basic rules of the great American sport, baseball, and they loved getting to be the experts and teaching their teachers about cricket. Of course it didn't hurt that I earned a lot of "so cool" comments when they discovered I already knew the basics of cricket from my time in Australia. We covered vocabulary, geography (place the team mascot in the correct state), statistics & graphing, compare & contrast writing, listening comprehension (place the players from Abbott & Costello's Who's On Frist routine in their correct positions on the field), reading comprehension (rules and basic stories), and even speaking skills! We ended the week by turning the back parking lot into our own baseball / cricket field and playing several rounds of both games (ok, we used a wiffle and tennis ball instead of the real baseball and cricket balls but we live in the city and really didn't want to break any windows). The kids had a blast and so did we.
Over the years I've taken the vocabulary and other parts of that unit and used it in my classroom with smaller groups. This year I combined the vocabulary portion with our book study of Play Ball, Ameila Bedelia. The kids were already familiar with the concept of baseball from when we practiced the verb be (Am, Is, Are Triple Play) earlier this year, but still did not know the rules or a lot of the vocabulary. After learning the basics of baseball we were able to read the book and expand our idiom knowledge, laughing all the while at Amelia's silly mistakes. The kids particularly enjoyed the book because, "she know little we do" about baseball.
This week I'm holding a give away promotion for my baseball vocabulary activity on Teacher's Notebook (link below). Three people will receive this activity free. There is no charge to enter (just a site membership, which is free and the weekly e-mail includes 12 free resources) but the promotion ends at midnight on June 6, so be sure to get your entry in before then.