Crossing Over into the World of a Writer

This week I had the pleasure of reading The Crossover, written by Kwame Alexander. In this verse style novel you will read about two twin brothers, Josh and Jordan, and their passion for basketball. Their father is a basketball legend and they were very much so following in his footsteps. When the two played together they were unstoppable. Throughout this book you see the narrator, Josh aka Filthy McNasty, deal with internal struggles, maintaining relationships, jealousy, and other life challenges, each verse providing you with another piece of the puzzle to complete the story. Once I picked this book up I could not put it down, leading me to finish it in one sitting. Each verse was so intriguing I just had to know what was going to happen next, but I won't spoil the story for you. I would highly recommend this gripping novel to you, the awards on the cover are more than justified.

Awards:

John Newbery Medal- This medal is awarded once a year to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.

Coretta Scott King Award - This award is given to outstanding African American authors and illustrators of books for children and young adults that demonstrate an appreciation of African American culture and universal human values.

One benefit of introducing students to verse novels is the increased readability for striving readers. A student's age is not one of the classifying factors to be deemed a striving reader, so although you are teaching high school students you may still find yourself instructing a striving reader. Typically we provide beginning readers with simple texts discussing common children's interests, like superheroes or animals, most of which are not topics that a striving reader in high school would find interesting. That is where verse novels can come in handy. By providing students with a novel in a different format that is more appropriate for them, you are showing them a whole new side of reading, one where the text is manageable but also relatable for them.

Another affordance of using verse novels is that they can be incredibly engaging, and through implementing different poetic formats (free verse, rhyming, vocabulary poems, etc.) Alexander was able to create a book that could interest a wide variety of readers, ranging in age from upper elementary to high school. Since there is more mature, intense content present in some parts of this text, I would recommend withholding it from students in lower grade levels. With that being said, I think this would be an incredibly relatable, engaging text to introduce your older students to because of the anecdotal plot and catchy poetic verses. Not only can verse novels be more engaging for students to read, but they can also be a major source of inspiration for their writing. As I progressed through the book I found myself taking note of several different writing styles I wanted to try myself (stay tuned to see what I ended up creating). Introducing students to different writing strategies through implementing mentor texts is a highly beneficial strategy to use in the classroom and this text would be a great way to inspire students to write in a new, creative way.

This is one of the poems I was inspired to try from the book. I loved how playing around with the different fonts could further enhance your poem and this was not a strategy I had tried before. I chose to attempt this strategy through writing a poem about one of my favorite things, a warm summer day. I will include an image of the poem I created so you can see how I manipulated the font to correspond with the words I chose to incorporate. I am also including a video where I read the poem aloud. In this video I incorporated images as another way to support the words I was using in my poem. You could challenge your students to attempt doing something similar using this book as a source of inspiration for their writing. This is a great way to engage your students in writing through allowing them to interact with multiple modalities.

This is another strategy that I thought students could easily implement into their own writing, and could even serve as a brainstorming activity for future writing. Students could create their own five reasons poems based on their own interests, using this poem by Alexander as a reference.

I also attempted this strategy but tried to make it more relatable to The Crossover by sharing some of my own experiences related to sports, specifically my sport of passion which is softball. You could ask students to write a similar poem like this one that relates to what is discussed in the book, or allow them to choose any topic.

Here is a book trailer, created by the author, discussing The Crossover. This trailer is incredibly engaging because of Alexander's humorous dialogue and creative video editing. Through hearing other peoples' experiences and reactions to the book, ranging from first grade to adulthood, a sense of community was built before we even open the book. This creates a welcoming environment for all of your students and can be the stepping stool your hesitant readers need to develop an interest in reading. I think that using this video to introduce a lesson centered around the text would be beneficial because it would hook the students, making them want to learn more about the book.

The following trailer, similar to the previous one, is very engaging for its viewers. As soon as it begins, the upbeat music and bold graphics grab your attention, making it hard to take your eyes away. The difference between these two trailers is that the first one is for the verse novel and this one is for the graphic novel version of the text. The graphic novel, illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile, could be another way to further engage striving readers. Introducing students to graphic novels like this, or other popular ones such as Dog Man, The Bad Guys, and When Stars Are Scattered, can give them the confidence they need to pursue texts in other formats. This is because there is often less text on each page and there are illustrations, helpful for both keeping attention and providing support during reading, making them more manageable and enjoyable to read. You could potentially have a student begin with reading the graphic novel version of the text, then moving to the verse version once they are familiar with the story line and feel more prepared. Building off of this you could add additional books to this sequence to create a book ladder for a student who is interested in basketball. Other books that could be incorporated are Cam Jansen: The Basketball Mystery, The Million Dollar Shot, different informational texts about famous basketball players and even other books written by Kwame Alexander. Using book ladders is one great way to introduce students to a wider variety of texts, varying in format and difficulty. I will include additional resources that could be implemented to enhance your students' reading experience with the book further down in this post, but what I have described so far and the remaining videos are also resources that could be beneficial to use.

In this interview with Kwame Alexander, conducted by PBS, the viewer is provided with more information regarding the creation of the book. Alexander shared that he wanted to create a book that would be interesting to a male audience to combat the common belief that boys don't read. In order to create a text that was engaging, he focused on basketball as an interest and incorporated different story lines centered around family, love, friendship, brotherhood, and jealously, all of which are things the intended audience could easily relate to. The author also shared that he incorporated different types of poetry such as haikus, vocabulary poems, rhyming, free verse, and list poems so that the reader could find a style they related to and could potentially implement into their own writing. I appreciated the insight this video provided me with so I wanted to share it!

To help you put a voice to the story, here is a video of Kwame Alexander reading an excerpt from his book.

Although it may seem like I shared an excessive number of videos, they each allowed me to further develop my understanding of and appreciation for this book. Incorporating videos like this, or other resources such as songs, can further engage students with the text you are discussing by allowing them to interact with the text in multiple modalities. Some students may become interested in a text after only seeing the cover but other students may need additional support, and using videos in your instruction can provide them with that.

Now that I have shared about a dozen videos with you, I will now list some additional resources your could use during your instruction centered around this book!

For students who are interested in learning more about specific professional players, these books or those alike could be brought into the classroom.

This resource provides you with a lesson centered around developing a students' analyzation and inferencing skills through interacting with materials about Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry. There are passages, opportunities to interact with the selected reading skill, and writing prompts provided.

Here is a TedTalk given by a fifth grade student, Carson Byblow, discussing the mindset of a champion through sharing the differences between a fixed and a growth mindset, using professional figures such as Michael Jordan for supporting evidence. Through beginning the talk by sharing quotes and stories related to an admirable figure, Byblow grabs the attention of the viewer, increasing the odds that they will remain engaged throughout the remainder of the talk. Although this is only partially related to basketball, I think it is beneficial to teach students about the different mindsets and that the theme of "Mindset of a Chamption" pairs well with this book.

Another video you could share with students to inspire them and to grab their attention at the start of a lesson is this one, titled 'Winners Don't Quit.' I would also argue that this video tremendously relates to the mindset of the two basketball stars in the book and would work well as a multimodal resource. Due to some of the content in the video (unrelatable struggles and explicit language), I would recommend only playing the first minute for students.

More about Kwame Alexander:

YouTube Channel

Website

Instagram

Twitter