I am rethinking my K-2 curriculum to focus more on Terry Waltz’s SUPER SEVEN. One of the verbs I wanted to include was “PUEDE” I used this story in 1st and 2nd grade as a part of our SPORTS unit.

I broke the story down into 2 parts.

PART ONE: There is a boy who likes baseball. He wants to play baseball. He goes to a baseball expert. He throws the ball and the expert catches the ball. The expert throws the ball but the boy does not catch it. The boy can’t catch. He is sad.

PART TWO: The boy can’t catch. The expert tells him to practice. The expert and the boy practice a lot. But the boy cannot catch. The expert has an idea. The expert tells him to use his mouth. The expert throws the ball. The boy catches ball with his mouth. The boy can catch with his mouth.  Now the boy plays professional baseball for the Atlanta Braves.

This is a basic script that I had in mind but the details were up to the class. What is the boy’s name? How many times did he throw? Who is the expert? (Usually the baseball fanatic in the class) And of course, (the most fun) what body part he catches with?

Here is a drawing one of my 1st graders did after the story.

**My 1st graders loved this story! They were engaged and invested in the story. We acted it out with an invisible ball and the class got to participate too. I used Karen Rowen’s “All the World’s a Stage” so that all the students got to pretend to miss the catch and then pretend to catch the ball with their mouth. When the boy finally caught the ball everyone cheered and was so excited.