The Crossover

Use these activities to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity. 

ACTIVITY: “Rules for Basketball, Rules for life”

The Crossover uses basketball as a structuring force in the novel, but it also gets explicit, with ten poems that posit the “rules” of basketball and how they inform Josh and JB’s goals in life. Take a sport, activity, or other interest of yours and come up with ten “rules” for that activity that can be applied to a person’s life. For each rule, write a 1-3 sentence explanation of how that rule can be applied more broadly.

Your chosen activity should be one that’s personal to you and need not be something connected to academic or athletic excellence. Examples might include rules for competitive videogames (“Rule: If you’re not moving, you’re a target”), playing an instrument (“Rule: it’s all about timing”), drawing (“Rule: Art happens when your plan doesn’t”), or any other topic that interests you.

Teaching Suggestion: Much like Josh and JB in The Crossover, most students have an interest that they see as a key part of their identity. This activity is designed to get students thinking about the things they are passionate about and how they consciously or subconsciously use them to define and organize their lives and goals.