Today is the home opener for my beloved Boston Red Sox. Hope springs eternal for a great season. So until at least the first pitch is thrown I’ll set aside the pessimistic New Englander in me and get excited because this is the year! On that note, here are some baseball-themed lesson ideas and resources.
Just this week I finished reading Odd Man Out. It’s a great story about a Yale graduate who spent a year pitching in the minor leagues before going to medical school. It’s a book I’d recommend to any adult interested in baseball and to any high school student who has aspirations of playing professional baseball.
One of my favorite instances of Wikipedia being wrong was when the entry for former Red Sox pitcher Derek Lowe stated that he maintains a science blog. It provided a good lesson in using context clues and fact checking.
The Baseball Hall of Fame (which I enjoyed visiting last summer) offers free lesson plans that are aligned with the Common Core Standards for Math and English Language Arts. There are lessons for math, social studies, science, the arts, and character education.
Exploratorium’s the Science of Baseball has some nice resources that can help students understand how a bit of science and mathematics is involved in every baseball game. The Science of Baseball includes video and audio clips of baseball players and scientists explaining how the weather affects the flight of the ball, the physics of various pitches, and reaction times to thrown and batted baseballs.
