Hastings 4th Graders Learn About Jackie Robinson and Negro League Baseball

To celebrate the life of Jackie Robinson and the forgotten players of the Negro Baseball Leagues, the fourth graders in Mr. Banaszewski's and Mrs. Penney's class created a digital story using the iMovie program on the computer. After researching books, videos, web sites and reading the book Jackie and Me by Dan Gutman students wrote reports on Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, Josh Gibson, and wrote letters to video companies encouraging them to include more Negro Baseball League players in their video games (see below). Currently, there is only one video game that includes players like Robinson and Paige. Students also wrote to Dan Gutman to tell him what they liked about his book and who they hoped he would write about next.

As a class, students wrote a script for an iMovie to share what they learned about the life of Jackie Robinson and the Negro Baseball League. We discussed what worked best for images, video clips, audio, and most importantly what was said in the story. All of the students contributed either script, art work, editing suggestions or assisted in presenting the finished project.

Here are some of the students' letters to video game companies and some of the responses they have received:

• Rachel's letter to Nintento and Nintendo's response
• Gabriela's letter to Sony and Sony's response
• Alex's letter to EA Sports
• David's letter to Nintendo and Nintendo's response

Last update: 3-5-02/mgl