Our Nation's Beginning

Essential Questions:

  • What can the product of a culture teach us about the culture's values?
  • How does a speaker influence his/her audience through specific choices in language?

Student Outcomes:

  • I can read to draw conclusions and support arguments with evidence.
  • I can solve complex problems with no obvious answers.
  • I can read complex texts.

Standards:

  • RI.11-12.1 - Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
  • RI.11-12.2 - Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.
  • RI.11-12.3 - Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text.
  • RI.11-12.9 - Analyze seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century foundational U.S. documents of historical and literary significance (including The Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address) for their themes, purposes, and rhetorical features.
  • W.11-12.3 - Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.
    • c. Use a variety of techniques to sequence events so that they build on one another to create a coherent whole and build toward a particular tone and outcome (e.g., a sense of mystery, suspense, growth, or resolution).
    • d. Use precise words and phrases, telling details, and sensory language to convey a vivid picture of the experiences, events, setting, and/or characters.

Core Texts:

  • A Man to Send Rain Clouds - Leslie Marmon Silko
  • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
  • Pocahontas Film
  • The Declaration of Independence

Assessments:

      • "Where I'm From" Poems
      • "Pocahontas" Film Analysis
      • Dec. of Independence Break-up Letters