The Crossover by Kwame Alexander Book Club Packet: Teacher/Parent Guide + Student Pages with Plans, Novels in Verse Lesson, Answer Keys & Reader's Theatre
Twin brothers, a basketball court, and a whole story told in poems that move like a fast break.
BONUS INCLUDED: two ready-to-play Blooket review games! An 18-question game for the early chapters and a 35-question cumulative game, with an answer key. In Blooket, choose Create, then Import from Spreadsheet, and you have a game night in minutes.
Sit back and enjoy this Newbery Medal winner with your students as you use my No Prep The Crossover Book Club Packet. It is ONE download with everything the teacher or parent needs and every page the students print.
Kwame Alexander's The Crossover follows twelve-year-old Josh Bell and his twin brother Jordan, two brothers who live and breathe basketball. It is heartfelt and funny, it is written in verse so it reads fast, and it also carries serious themes about brotherhood, family, grief, jealousy and growing up. Your readers will talk about this one.
This is my The Crossover BOOK CLUB edition, built for a classroom group, a homeschool co-op, or a club at your kitchen table. It comes in TWO parts inside one file: PART 1 is the Teacher/Parent Guide with the plans, discussion questions and every answer key, and PART 2 is the Student Pages you print for your readers. Because the book is a novel in verse, the packet adds a Novels in Verse lesson and a Write Your Own Poem project about the student's own hobby, and the question sets follow the book's own game: the Warm-Up, four Quarters and Overtime.
Plan it your way. The guide has a 4-week plan, a 3-session plan and a 2-session plan for 55-minute meetings. Start each meeting with the discussion questions, play Name That Character, and finish with a printable Book Club certificate.
Leave the hard work to me! Print, read, talk, write a poem, and watch your kiddos fall in love with this book.
Covers the following Reading skills:
- Recalling key details and facts from the story
- Finding text evidence to support an answer
- Character traits, character sketch and a character analysis essay outline
- Putting story events in order
- Identifying literary devices and explaining what they mean
- Reading and writing poetry: a novels-in-verse lesson and a hobby poem
- Making a prediction
- Speaking and listening through discussion and Reader's Theatre
Content note: The Crossover is a Newbery Medal-winning novel in verse for grades 5-8. Please preview: Dad has a heart attack and later dies, with a funeral scene; a ball thrown in anger breaks a sibling's nose (described briefly); there are first-crush and girlfriend storylines and some trash talk. Common Sense Media rates the book 9 and up.
Created by Kim Baust, "The Literature Lady," founder of YSA Homeroom by The Young Scholar Academy (online).
A story kids cannot put down is half the job. The other half is getting them to think about it. Section by section questions send students back into the text, and the talking that follows is where understanding grows. The What Works Clearinghouse practice guide for upper elementary and up recommends exactly that mix: extended discussion of what a text means, plus direct teaching of comprehension strategies. You bring the book and the conversation. Leave the planning to me.
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Hi, I’m Kim! I’m an educator with a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Elementary Education and more than 30 years of classroom experience.
I started The Literature Lady because I wanted to make reading come alive for students—and make lesson planning a lot easier for teachers. I create resources that were way too time-consuming to create while teaching full-time, so that now you don’t have to! My passion is creating engaging, low-prep resources, such as novel studies, Word Noodle vocabulary games, and reader’s theatre scripts, that help kids fall in love with books while building real skills.
When I’m not writing or designing new lessons, you’ll find me teaching right here on the TeacherStore.io community platform! The Young Scholar Academy is an online small group learning community that teaches homeschool students in grades 1-8. We teach core classes, electives, one-on-one tutoring, and so much more! As Tiffany would say, "Come for the classes, stay for the community!"
I am also a fun of reading, baking, traveling, or hanging out with my husband, our two college-aged sons, and our dogs, Maisie and Sophie.












