Section 4: Overview

Values

We will read Chapters 11–16 of Friday Night Lights and examine what values student athletes learn as part of their participation in sports. To further explore the topic, we will read and analyze two supporting texts, “Baseball for Life” and “The Case against High-School Sports,” and consider the following question: How do the values student athletes learn about impact their perspective of American society?

• Lesson 1:

  We will begin our analysis of the final concept to be studied in our unit: values. This lesson will focus on Chapter 11 in Friday Night Lights and how Bissinger describes the values of the citizens of Odessa and Midland during the oil boom and bust of the 1980s. We will analyze how Bissinger presents this information, and we will gather evidence about how Bissinger supports these claims.

• Lesson 2:

  We will continue to analyze how Bissinger uses language and literary devices to illustrate how values are modeled to the players of Permian High School. We will read Chapter 12 of Friday Night Lights to continue our analysis of the concept of values in sports. In small groups, we will make claims based on Bissinger’s writing by completing the Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool.

• Lesson 3:

  We will focus on an author’s use of rhetoric, specifically identifying the use of ethos, pathos, and logos in writing. We will read the article “The Case against High-School Sports” by Amanda Ripley and identify the author’s claims about the values in high school sports. We will then analyze the author’s use of rhetoric in the text to support her claim. We will use the Organizing Evidence Tool to identify the claims made by the author, identify the evidence she uses to support her claims, and identify how she uses this evidence.

• Lesson 4:

  We will summarize our understanding of ethos, logos, and pathos and how it applies to Friday Night Lights. We will return to reading Friday Night Lights and analyze Bissinger’s use of rhetoric, specifically ethos, logos, and pathos, to express his perspective on how the football players of Permian learned about values. We will compare the claims made by Ripley with the ideas expressed by Bissinger.

• Lesson 5:

  We will analyze an article about youth sports, “Baseball for Life,” by Sara Corbett and form claims. As we read this article, we will annotate the text to answer a guiding question. We will also work to develop supporting claims and use evidence from the text to support these claims. We will utilize the Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool to help organize our ideas for this activity.

• Lesson 6:

  We will analyze “Baseball for Life” and form claims. We will also develop supporting claims and use evidence from the text to support these claims. In our evidence, we will practice the use of rhetorical devices (i.e., ethos, logos, and pathos) to help support our claims. We will utilize the Organizing Evidence Tool to help organize our ideas for this activity.

• Lesson 7:

  We will discuss Chapter 15 in Friday Night Lights as a class, as this chapter highlights the concept value of sports and emphasizes how the citizens of Odessa and other communities see athletics. We will analyze how Bissinger portrays this viewpoint on the values expressed and how they impact the athletes of these schools. We will answer text-dependent questions that help us unpack Bissinger’s purpose in this chapter. Through a classroom discussion, we will synthesize the value of athletics with our analysis from previous readings.

• Lesson 8:

  We will engage in a formal academic discussion on Friday Night Lights for the Section Diagnostic.

• Lesson 9:

  We will review the teacher’s feedback on our Section Diagnostic and will use the feedback to make revisions to our work.

• Lesson 10:

  We will share the analyses we have made about our independent reading texts and make connections to the unit. We will plan a final product to share our experiences from reading independently and the knowledge we have gained.