9th Unit 2 Module 4
Key Themes & Topics:
Perspective
Diversity
Representation
Essential Questions
How do other perspectives help to impact a community?
Key Reading Standards
Present information, findings, and supporting evidence clearly, concisely, and logically such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, substance, and style are appropriate to purpose, audience, and task. (CCSS: SL.9-10.4)
Use Key Ideas and Details to:
Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. (CCSS: RI.9-10.1)
Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text. (CCSS. RI.9-10.2)
Analyze how the author unfolds an analysis or series of ideas or events, including the order in which the points are made, how they are introduced and developed, and the connections that are drawn between them. (CCSS: RI.9-10.3)
Use Craft and Structure to:
Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose. (CCSS: RI.9-10.6)
Use Integration of Knowledge and Ideas to:
Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediums (for example: a person’s life story in both print and multimedia), determining which details are emphasized in each account. (CCSS: RI.9-10.7)
Acquire and use accurately general academic and domain-specific words and phrases, sufficient for reading, writing, speaking, and listening at the college and career readiness level; demonstrate independence in gathering vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression. (CCSS: L.9-10.6)
Key Writing Standards:
a. Present information, findings, and supporting evidence clearly, concisely, and logically such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, substance, and style are appropriate to purpose, audience, and task. (CCSS: SL.9-10.4)
b. Make strategic use of digital media (for example: textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest. (CCSS: SL.9-10.5)
c. Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate. (CCSS: SL.9-10.6)
d. Use feedback to evaluate and revise the presentation.
a. Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence. (CCSS: W.9-10.1)
i. Introduce precise claim(s), distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and create an organization that establishes clear relationships among claim(s), counterclaims, reasons, and evidence. (CCSS: W.9-10.1a)
ii. Develop claim(s) and counterclaims fairly, supplying evidence for each while pointing out the strengths and limitations of both in a manner that anticipates the audience's knowledge level and concerns. (CCSS: W.9-10.1b)
iii. Use words, phrases, and clauses to link the major sections of the text, create cohesion, and clarify the relationships between claim(s) and reasons, between reasons and evidence, and between claim(s) and counterclaims. (CCSS: W.9-10.1c)
iv. Determine purpose for writing and use rhetorical appeals (i.e., ethos, pathos, logos) to address audience expectations and needs.
v. Establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone while attending to the norms and conventions of the discipline in which they are writing. (CCSS: W.9-10.1d)
vi. Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the argument presented. (CCSS: W.9-10.1e)
Summative Assessment Task
Phase I ends with an outline of the unit’s summative assessment outlining how students will show their progress of mastery of key standards and showcase their answers to the unit’s essential questions. This provides a goal toward which all weekly and daily learning activities can be designed. Transfer tasks explicitly outline other possible applications of student learning as a result of this unit. In short, these tasks offer an answer to the question, “Why do we have to learn this?”
Transfer Tasks
Civic engagement
Participation in public discourse
Running a campaign
Recommended Texts & Tasks for Unit
Choose the selection of texts and writing tasks below that will work for the unit. If you would like to provide feedback on this list or recommend a different task or text, please click here.
Extended Texts
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (DMS & Overdrive)
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (DMS & Overdrive)
Factfulness by Hans Rosling
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare (Overdrive)
Originals by Adam Grant (DMS)
Othello by William Shakespeare (DMS & Overdrive)
The Rent Collector by Cameron Wright (Overdrive)
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (DMS)
Short Literary Texts
“Burning a Book” by William Stafford (CommonLit) (Pair w/ “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College”) (Pair w/"I Am Very Real")
“Cultural Common Ground Gets Harder to Come By” by Elizabeth Blair (CommonLit)
“The Declaration of Independence” by Thomas Jefferson (CommonLit)
“The Man in the Well” by Ira Sher (CommonLit) *Must log in to CommonLit to view text.
“Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College” by Thomas Gray (CommonLit) (Pair w/"Burning a Book")
“Why are We Obsessed with Super Heroes?” by ABC News (CommonLit)
Short Informational Texts
“Eli Wiesel’s ‘The Perils of Indifference’ Speech” by Elie Wiesel (CommonLit)
“Gerrymandering: How drawing jagged lines can impact an election” by Christina Greer (TEDEd)
“I Am Very Real” by Kurt Vonnegut (CommonLit) (Pair w/ “Burning a Book”) *Must log in to CommonLit to view text.
“Introduction to the Holocaust” by The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (CommonLit)
“The Kitty Genovese Murder: What Really Happened?” by Jessica McBirney (CommonLit)
Oversight Jonestown (podcast)
“Why do people join cults?” by Janja Lalich (TEDEd)
“Why Do People Follow the Crowd?” by ABC News (CommonLit)
“The World Needs All Kinds of Minds” by Temple Grandin (TEDEd)
Analytical Writing Tasks
SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT - Argument Presentation: How do other perspectives help to impact a community? Make the case for why we are helping to make our school better through our participation in the school community. Your task is to prepare an Argumentative Essay and present it to the class. (doc) (Writable)
Comparing/Contrasting Essay: In order to answer this question, students will compare and contrast different characters' perspectives in an extended text we’ve read in class, either as an entire class, or in book clubs. (doc) (Writable)
Analysis: School Activity Eliminated. Imagine our school eliminated one subject, discipline, extra curricular, or department. Explain the net cultural loss of that elimination. (doc) (Writable)
Analysis/Letter: Civic Organization Membership. What’s a civic agency, board or commission you would like to join? Why? What can you bring to such a group, and what might they teach you? Write a letter to the leader of this organization to apply for a position within this organization. (doc) (Writable)
Analysis: Declaration of Independence Analytical Writing. Read the Declaration of Independence. Identify a group not included in the drafting of that document. How might it have been different had that group been represented and included? (doc) (Writable)
Narrative Writing Tasks
Narrative: Two Perspective Story. After reflecting on the question, “How do other perspectives help to impact a community?” and the readings from this unit, create a fiction or nonfiction short story that tells of a single event from two different perspectives. (doc) (Writable)
Personal Narrative: Experience Report. For this assignment, you will choose from a list of events, businesses, services, experiences to attend, then you will write about your experience and how it impacts your community and your perspective. (doc) (Writable)
Phase III: Planning
Each unit’s Phase III tasks will be a general week-by-week outline of the flow of learning tasks for students. Realizing the cultures and schedules at each site will vary and place unique demands on class time, these outlines are to be seen as generally flexible. Also in recognition of school and classroom cultures, expectations, and practices, unit plans will offer templates for tasks, but will not list daily lessons. This is to allow enough certainty of district alignment while allowing for features such as co-teaching, integrated ELA and social studies, and other unique programmatic designs.
Unit 2 Module 4 Reflection & Feedback
Please leave your feedback, reflections and assignment requests below.
The curriculum design team will meet quarterly to review and respond to your feedback. Please direct immediate questions or concerns to seiler_jenny@svvsd.org.