11th Grade - Gateway 1

The materials reviewed for Grade 11 meet the criteria for Indicator 1a.

The central texts for this grade level are high quality, worthy of careful reading, and include a variety of text genres, formats, and topics to meet a range of student interests within an appropriate level of complexity and rigor for the grade level. The texts include renowned classic and contemporary works by critically-acclaimed authors, high interest technical articles that are relatable and help students to build specialized knowledge, a variety of multi visual texts, and strong links between topics that support vertical alignment throughout the grade. The materials offer additional optional texts for students to continue to build knowledge and for extension purposes. Core texts in Grade 11 include, but are not limited to, poetry, novels, documentaries, essays, articles, speeches, and films.

Anchor texts are of high-quality, worthy of careful reading, and consider a range of student interests. Some examples include:

• Anchor texts in the majority of chapters/units and across the year-long curriculum are of high quality.

  • In the Foundation Unit, What Does It Mean to Be an American?, Section 1, Lesson 3, students read texts worth careful reading such as “The Declaration of Independence,” “The Preamble to the Constitution,” and “The 14th Amendment.” These texts are high-quality texts because of their importance and complex language.

  • In the Development Unit, The Great Gatsby, Section 2, Lesson 5, students examine the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and explore points of connection to “Why the Americans Are So Restless in the Midst of Their Prosperity,” an excerpt from Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. Both texts are of appropriate complexity and worthy of instructional time and attention as students develop grade-level proficiency.

• Anchor texts consider a range of student interests.

  • In the Development Unit, Friday Night Lights, Section 1, Lesson 1, students begin reading the narrative nonfiction text Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger. Students in this grade level will engage in the text because of the relatable topic.

  • In the Development Unit, The Warmth of Other Suns, Section 2, Lesson 4, students read a variety of text types, including the poems “One-Way Ticket” and “The South” from “The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes” by Langston Hughes. Students read other texts throughout the unit, including, but not limited to, narrative nonfiction, The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, and two articles published by The Chicago Defender, “Where We Are Lacking” and “Some Don’ts.”

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories with Film, Section 3, Lesson 1, students watch “How Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Was Animated” and discuss the film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Both of the materials are engaging, and the video “How Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Was Animated” gives students the opportunity to expand their knowledge of the techniques used to construct the animated film.

  • In the Application Unit, What Do I Want to Research?, in the Text Overview tab of the Unit Overview, the materials state, “We will use inquiry questions to find sources that help us answer our Central Research Question. These sources can range from print texts to web-based texts, multimedia, interviews, and texts from units explored earlier in the year.” This indicates that students choose their text based on their interests.

• Anchor texts are well-crafted and content rich, engaging students at their grade level.

  • In the Foundation Unit, What Does It Mean to Be an American?, Section 1, Lesson 3, students engage in contemporary commentary on the historical documents “The Declaration of Independence,” “The Preamble to the Constitution,” and “The 14th Amendment” by reading and/or listening to “The 14th Amendment and the History of Birthright Citizenship in the U.S” by Ari Shapiro and Martha Jones.

  • In the Development Unit, Friday Night Lights, Sections 1–4, students read Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger and a collection of tandem texts throughout the section’s lessons. In Section 2, Lesson 2, students read “Unchecked, Unchallenged and Unabashed: Is Racism in High School Sports Being Tolerated?” by Ivey DeJesus and in Section 3, Lesson 2, “Who Says Girls Can’t Play Football? Certainly Not 13-Year-Old Auburn Roberson” by Melissa Isaacson. These texts offer students a variety of interests such as race, gender, and other cultural perspectives on high school, community, and sports.

  • In the Development Unit, The Warmth of Other Suns, Section 1, Lesson 1, students engage in a careful study of the text The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. The text includes rich language and is appropriate for the grade level.

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories with Film, Section 2, Lesson 6, students read the article “Flick Chicks: A Guide to Women in the Movies” by Mindy Kaling. This text is a humorous first-person narrative that outlines the complexities of women in film. The humorous and engaging topic is appropriate for the interest of students at this grade level.

  • In the Development Unit, The American Dream of Homeownership, Section 1, Lesson 2, students examine “Why Owning a Home Is the American Dream” by Anthony Depalma and an excerpt from “Detached Houses: The Dream of Home Ownership,” a chapter in The American Dream: A Short Story of an Idea that Shaped a Nation by Jim Cullen. Students begin an examination of homeownership and the American Dream.

  • In the Application Unit, What Do I Want to Research?, Section 2, Lesson 2, students use inquiry questions to find their own sources to answer a Central Research Question: “These sources can range from print texts to web-based texts, multimedia, interviews, and texts from units explored earlier in the year.” An example of a core text students analyze when exploring the concept of credibility and how to assess it is “The False Promise of Homeownership” by Marissa Chappell from The American Dream of Homeownership unit.

The materials reviewed for Grade 11 meet the criteria for Indicator 1c.

Texts fall within an appropriate range for the grade level according to the demands of the core, the culminating tasks are appropriately complex, and the activities students complete with the texts during the unit provide opportunities for close reading and tools to support students when working with these texts. The Application Unit provides an opportunity for students to explore an inquiry question: “Students review texts and topics they have encountered throughout the year and choose a text or topic they want to explore further.”

Most anchor texts fall within the appropriate range for the grade level in the Current Lexile Band (1215L–1355L for Grade 11). The texts add layers of complexity through their use of rich academic and figurative language, the need to understand background knowledge, and the use of varying perspectives and points of view. While some texts are above the suggested Lexile band, the tasks and instructional supports scaffold student access to these materials. Texts that fall below the Lexile band are topically appropriate for students at this grade level, and associated tasks enhance the level of complexity for students to develop literacy by deeply analyzing the text and/or creating new texts. For example, The Great Gatsby falls below the grade-level band qualitative measure; however, quantitatively, the text’s meaning, especially its historical and cultural significance, creates an appropriate level of complexity for students. Students return to the texts presented in the materials to analyze and evaluate the texts, which adds to the complexity of the materials’ readings.

The publisher includes qualitative analysis for some core texts in the Text Overview, including details relating to the text structure, language features, meaning, and knowledge demands. Quantitative analysis of the core texts with available qualitative documentation indicates that texts will continue to challenge and develop students’ skills throughout the year.

Core/Anchor texts have the appropriate level of complexity for the grade according to documented quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis, and relationship to their associated student task. Documentation should also include a rationale for educational purpose and placement in the grade level. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Anchor/core texts have the appropriate level of complexity for the grade according to quantitative and qualitative analysis and relationship to their associated student task.

  • In the Development Unit, The Great Gatsby, Section 2, Lesson 1, students analyze sections of Chapter 2 in The Great Gatsby (1010L) and focus on the valley of ashes and the billboard of T.J. Eckleberg. Students work in pairs to answer the following questions:

    • Which words and phrases stand out as powerful or important?

    • What does the language cause you to see or feel?

    • What images stand out and create vivid pictures or evoke strong feelings?

    • How do the author’s word choices develop atmosphere, mood, or meaning?

  • In the Development Unit, The Great Gatsby, Section 2, Lesson 5, students read “Why the Americans Are so Restless in the Midst of Their Prosperity,” an excerpt from Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville (1310L), and compare the text to The Great Gatsby to synthesize what Tocqueville’s perspective would be on Fitzgerald’s perspective of Americans. These questions add to the complexity of analyzing the text, which will be a part of the culminating task at the end of the unit.

  • In the Development Unit, Friday Night Lights, students read Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger (1220L). The text’s quantitative measure falls within the grade level band, and the text structure and language features are moderately complex, while the meaning and knowledge demands are very complex. Students read the text in its entirety, “analyzing specific themes through close reads and synthesizing information with related texts.” The culminating task allows students to write an expository essay: “Choose one of the aspects discussed in class—fandom, race, gender, and values—as your focus for describing Bissinger’s portrayal of high school athletics in Friday Night Lights.”

  • In the Development Unit, The American Dream of Homeownership, Section 1, Lesson 3, students read the complex text Chapter 5: “Detached Houses: The Dream of Home Ownership,” and return to the text multiple times to analyze the text’s meaning. For example, students receive bibliography information about the author to expand their understanding of the text.

  • In the Development Unit, Friday Night Lights, students read Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger. The text structure and language features are moderately complex, and the meaning and knowledge demands are very complex. The quantitative measure of the text is 1220L, which is within the grade level band. Students read the text in its entirety, “analyzing specific themes through close reads and synthesizing information with related texts.” The culminating task allows students to write an expository essay: “Choose one of the aspects discussed in class—fandom, race, gender, and values—as your focus for describing Bissinger’s portrayal of high school athletics in Friday Night Lights.”

• Anchor/Core texts and series of texts connected to them are accompanied by a text complexity analysis and a rationale for educational purpose and placement in the grade level.

  • In the Foundation Unit, What Does It Mean to Be an American?, students read “The Declaration of Independence” by the Second Continental Congress with a Flesch-Kincaid score of 14. The quantitative measure of the text is slightly above the grade level band. Qualitative analysis indicates the text structure and purpose are slightly complex. The language features and knowledge demands are exceedingly complex. The Text Overview states, “Students use this text to begin to develop a common understanding of one of the founding documents of the United States.” Also, “[g]iven the complexity, this text is read aloud or supported by appropriate scaffolded activities and materials in the unit.” The overall complexity of the text is appropriate for Grade 11 students.

  • In the Development Unit, The Warmth of Other Suns, the materials provide a text overview that provides a rationale for the text presented in the unit. When reviewing The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (1160L) the materials explain that although the reading falls below the quantitative grade level complexity band, the qualitative attributes of the text in terms of structure and purpose, as well as the tasks that students perform, contribute to its complexity enhance the complexity of students’ experience with the texts.

  • In the Development Unit, The Great Gatsby, Section 1, Lesson 2, students read the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Lexile level for the novel is 1010L, which is below the range for this grade level; however, the topic and knowledge demands enhance the complexity of the text, allowing this text to be grade appropriate. Students spend time analyzing the structural elements of the novel, including the author’s use of imagery, symbolism, and idealization of the past, purpose, and perspective. The knowledge demands of the text are very complex, and students work through the demands with complex tasks, providing them with an appropriately rigorous experience.

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories with Film, students read “Flick Chicks: A Guide to Women in the Movies” by Mindy Kaling. The materials include a qualitative analysis of the text. The text structure and language features are slightly complex. The meaning is very complex, and the knowledge demands are moderately complex. A rationale is available for placement in the grade level: “This piece helps students distinguish well-developed characters from caricatures and stereotypes, and tacitly raises important questions about sexism and racism in the film industry.”

• Both the rationale and the analysis present accurate information.

  • The Text Overview provides accurate information relating to the texts’ qualitative features consistently for the grade level, and the Lexiles available on Metametrics indicate an appropriate quantitative level of complexity for Grade 11.

The materials reviewed for Grade 11 meet the criteria for Indicator 1d.

The program provides appropriate texts to support students’ literacy growth over the year, and the Foundation, Development, and Application Units allow students to access complex texts with appropriate scaffolds during the learning process. The materials are designed to help students grow their literacy skills from the Foundation Unit to the Application Unit. The flexibility of the program allows choice in which units to include in the course. As students move through the Foundation Unit and complete two or more Development Units, the selections should support growth in their literacy skills to achieve grade-level proficiency. The collection of texts is arranged to deepen students’ literacy skills and understanding by participating in a variety of text-based tasks. Students return to core texts throughout the until with an increased level of complexity through analysis and application of concepts learned. Additional ancillary texts curated to support the individual unit themes promote student growth from the over the course of each unit and across the school year. In tandem with the texts, the assessments and tasks are varied and increase in complexity, allowing students to deepen their reading skills. As tasks become more complex, the materials provide scaffolding material to help teachers support student learning.

Series of texts are at a variety of complexity levels appropriate for the grade band to support students’ literacy growth over the course of the school year. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The complexity of anchor texts students read provide an opportunity for students’ literacy skills to increase across the year, encompassing an entire year’s worth of growth.

  • In the Foundation Unit, What Does It Mean to Be an American?, Section 1, Lesson 11, students read “President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address” by Barack Obama, one of several texts in the unit worthy of students’ time and attention. The Flesch-Kincaid score for this text is 8.2. Other examples of varied texts throughout the grade level include, but are not limited to, narrative nonfiction Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger (1220L) and an article “Want to Measure a Film’s Diversity? Try ‘The DuVernay Test’” by Victoria Massey (1610L–1800L).

  • In the Development Unit, The Great Gatsby, Section 1, Lesson 1, students read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1010L), which is below the range of complexity for this grade level but provides an entry point for students at the beginning of this grade level.

  • In the Development Unit, The Warmth of Other Suns, the culminating task asks students to choose a thread that Wilkerson, the author of The Warmth of Other Suns (1160L), uses to describe the Great Migration. To complete the task, students develop their ability throughout the unit by reading and analyzing a variety of texts: In Section 2, Lesson 1, for example, students read informative texts on the Great Migration and apply what they learned to the works of W.E.B. Du Bois and Richard Wright. Students see the differing perspectives of the Great Migration, helping them perform better on the culminating task.

  • In the Development Unit, The American Dream of Homeownership, Section 1, Lesson 9, students read “Home Not-So-Sweet Home” by Paul Krugman and examine the text over a series of activities that increase in complexity. For example, students begin by annotating the text and then breakdown the text using the Delineating and Evaluating Arguments tools.

• As texts become more complex, appropriate scaffolds and/or materials are provided in the Teacher Edition (e.g., spending more time on texts, more questions, repeated readings, skill lessons).

  • In the Foundation Unit, What Does it Mean to Be An American?, students begin the unit by carefully exploring “The Declaration of Independence” (1410L). Though this text falls above Grade 11 complexity, students are supported by a variety of scaffolded activities and other unit texts, such as “The Preamble to the Constitution” and “A Quilt of a Country” by Anna Quindlen, which build toward the central question: What Does it Mean to Be an American? Students read and analyze changes in perspective since the writing of the Preamble and discuss how the concept of we has changed since its inception.

  • In the Development Unit, Friday Night Lights, Section 2, Lesson 5, students read “The White Flight from Football” by Alana Semuels (1260L), a complex text for the grade-level band. Students engage in a close reading of the text, annotate, and use a Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool to respond to a question about how race impacts youth sports. Teaching strategies include collecting “this tool at the end of the lesson as an opportunity to observe students’ ability to comprehend complex text, analyze the text, draw evidence from the text, and interpret the text to identify the author’s claims without your support.” The materials also offer suggestions to support students to work in small groups when identifying the author’s claims. Additional notes are available to assist educators with information about the author, concept, text, and topic as students build to answer the unit question “How do high school athletics reflect American Society?” This progression demonstrates the continuation of exploration as introduced in The Foundation Unit, What Does it Mean to Be An American? and continues to develop student knowledge leading to their own development and choice of study in The Application Unit, What Do I Want to Research?

  • In the Development Unit, The Great Gatsby, Section 1, Lesson 2, provides a list of vocabulary words, including denigrates, propensity, and moral acumen with teacher support on how to examine the language with students using the Word Map tool. This activity supports students in reading the text “The Trouble with Nick: Reading Gatsby Closely,” which has complex language.

• Series of texts include a variety of complexity levels throughout the year.

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories with Film, Section 1, students read texts of varying levels of complexity, such as “Review: ‘Hidden Figures’ Honors 3 Black Women Who Helped NASA Soar” by A. O.Scott, “Hidden Figures’ Review: Three Women Make History in Inspirational Space-Race Drama” by Peter Travers, and “What Sets the Smart Heroines of Hidden Figures Apart” by Leneka Cruz.

  • In the Development Unit, The American Dream of Homeownership, materials introduce students to a variety of qualitative text complexities. Over the course of the unit, students read “Why Owning a Home Is the American Dream” labeled as “slightly complex,” to “Home Not-So-Sweet Home” labeled as “moderately” complex, and excerpts from “Where Should a Poor Family Live?” labeled “exceedingly” complex.

  • In the Application Unit, What Do I Want to Research?, Section 2, Lesson 2, students choose a text from The American Dream of Homeownership Unit Reader and use the Potential Sources Tool to analyze:

    • “Home Not-So-Sweet Home” by Paul Krugman.

    • “Obama Unveils Stricter Rules About Segregation in Housing” by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Binyamin Appelbaum.

    • “Trump Administration Postpones an Obama Fair Housing Rule” by Emily Badger and John Eligon.

    • “Disarming the Great Affordable Housing Debate” by Solomon Greene and Margery Austin Turner.

  • The unit is sequenced towards the end for Grade 11 and creates a range of complexity for students to access the texts and challenge themselves with more complex readings.

The materials reviewed for Grade 11 meet the criteria for Indicator 1e.

The Program Guide indicates that all students will “access and analyze grade-level texts with the help of effective scaffolding and support, regardless of reading ability,” and the Grade 11 materials provide a wide volume of texts of various types, lengths, and complexity levels to build student independence throughout the school year and to support students to reach grade-level proficiency. Each unit provides a range of texts, including novels, short stories, plays, poetry, and informative texts. In addition, the publisher provides a partial text overview and complexity document as well as a list of suggested independent reading texts.

Independent reading opportunities are available throughout the course of the year and provide choices for students. The Text Overview and Unit Text List provide suggestions for independent reading for each Foundation and Development Unit with texts grouped by topic, theme, or genre. To assist students to build reading stamina and to persevere when navigating complex text, students encounter a number of meaningful topics and engaging texts that deepen their understanding of the subject matter covered in the units and expand students’ literacy skills such as comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary to equip them to be successful independent readers.

Each unit includes specific procedures and accountability measures for independent student reading to ensure students are continually working toward independence. Materials include independent reading lessons, including suggestions on how to incorporate student reading into the classroom, at the end of each section in the Foundation and Development Units. In addition, each unit section contains a structured lesson for students to create an independent reading plan and to set their pacing. Students are accountable for text selection, connecting their independent readings to units of study, and creating a product based on their independent reading.

Materials provide opportunities for students to engage in a range and volume of reading to support their reading at grade level by the end of the school year, including accountability structures for independent reading. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Instructional materials clearly identify opportunities and supports for students to engage in reading a variety of text types and genres.

  • In The Foundation Unit, What Does it Mean to Be an American?, students use tools provided in each of the designated Independent Reading Lessons to support them with their independent reading. Tools include but are not limited to Analyzing, Attending to Details, Character Note-taking, and Evaluating Ideas.

  • In the Development Unit, The Great Gatsby, students read a variety of texts from novels to informational texts with supports such as Setting Note-Taking Tools, Analyzing Relationships Tool, and Mentor Sentence Journals. In Section 1, Lesson 8, students begin an Independent Reading Program in which they select the texts they will read independently throughout the unit. At this point in the unit, students have examined the Central Question and a few anchor texts and apply their learning thus far to their independent reading. Students select their independent reading text from the list of suggested texts for the unit and develop an independent reading plan. The list of independent reading texts includes nonfiction texts such as the play, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry and the novel, Jazz by Toni Morrison.

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories with Film, students read “Attributes and Aptitudes,” an excerpt from The Power of Film by Howard Suber as well as essays, such as “‘Review: ‘Hidden Figures’ Honors 3 Black Women Who Helped NASA Soar” by A.O. Scott. Students also explore filmic text, including excerpts from The Hate U Give by George Tillman, Jr, and study an interview “Theodore Melfi: Hidden Figures” by The Movie Times. Independent reading options to accompany the unit include, but are not limited to, “101 Things I Learned in Film School” by Neil Landau and Matthew Fredericks, The Power of Film by Howard Suber, and A Killer Life by Christine Vachon.

  • In The Development Unit, Friday Night Lights, students engage in one activity per section to plan and pace their independent reading and commence their Independent Reading Program in Section 1, Lesson 9. Core and Optional texts are explicitly written into the unit, including, but not limited to, historical, biography, song, interviews, and essays.

• Instructional materials clearly identify opportunities and supports for students to engage in a volume of reading.

  • In the Foundation Unit, What Does It Mean to Be an American?, Section 1, Lesson 13, students choose texts to read independently: “We will learn how to choose texts, what activities we may complete, about the final task, and about any materials we will use as we read our independent reading texts.” Students use note-taking tools to analyze important textual elements.

  • In the Development Unit, The Great Gatsby, Section 2, Lesson 5, students use the Character Note-Taking and the Analyzing Relationships tools to independently examine Tom’s and Myrtles apartment scene from Chapter 2 of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In Section 3, Lesson 2, students use the techniques of text analysis discussed in class to read Chapter 7 of The Great Gatsby for homework. Students continue to foster their independence by reading the text on their own.

  • In The Development Unit, Telling Stories With Film, Section 2, Lesson 5, students read a movie review of Blackfish to learn more about the language of film criticism, and in the next lesson students read an essay titled “Flix Chicks: A guide to Women in the Movies” by Mindy Kaling. The materials offer students an opportunity to closely examine films and pair with texts to support students in thinking critically about films they view. The student facing materials guide students through the process.

• There is sufficient teacher guidance to foster independence for all readers (e.g., proposed schedule and tracking system for independent reading).

  • The program plans and builds lessons for independent reading into the curriculum materials for teachers to follow and implement. Materials include teacher notes on strategy and decisions are included in the teacher edition of the materials.

    • In the Development Unit, Friday Night Lights, Section 3, Lesson 1, students read the first part of Chapter 7 in Friday Night Lights to analyze the text and how Bissinger approaches the concept of gender roles in high school athletics. Students answer text-dependent questions and write down takeaways in their Learning Log. Teaching notes provide guidance about the author, concept, text, and topic: “…Bissinger uses examples of how females are treated and the experiences of students to exemplify his perspective of gender roles at Permian and in the community.”

    • In the Development Unit, The Warmth of Other Suns, Section 1, Lesson 10, the materials outline tools to assist students’ independent reading suggesting that teachers "[p]rovide students with access to a list of texts to read independently and briefly explain how the suggested texts are related to the reading they will do in the unit.”

    • In the Application Unit, Section 3, Lesson 1, teaching notes provide additional guidance for student support and differentiation: “If students have independently chosen nonwritten resources, you might help them connect those sources with written texts (e.g., a written review of the film they have chosen to use).”

  • While a proposed schedule is not clearly stated in the materials, the Foundation and Development units consistently include an independent reading lesson at the end of each section; there are four sections in the Foundation Unit and four or more sections in each Development Unit. The Program Guide shares, “[l]essons are designed to span 45–90 minutes, but the total length of the lesson depends on how many activities the teacher chooses.” Materials promote the use of student agency to choose texts, set pacing, and prepare discussions with peers to report independent reading finds and further expand their peers’ knowledge and breadth of understanding on topics directly related to the unit of study. Students choose from the Text Overview or Unit Text List and follow the lesson to connect their learning, while building knowledge around similar topics and/or themes.

    • In the Development Unit, The Warmth of Other Suns, students return to their independent readings in Section 1, Lesson 10; Section 2, Lesson 8; Section 3, Lesson 9; Section 4, Lesson 9; Section 5, Lesson 7; and Section 6, Lesson 7. Within the unit, this progression creates a schedule for students to select a text, record information from a text, discuss a text, make connections between the independent reading and the unit of study, and create a product based on the independent text read.

    • In the Development Unit, The American Dream of Homeownership, Section 1, Lesson 12, students plan their schedule for Independent Reading. The materials provide teacher guidance for students to select appropriate plans and pacing.

  • Students design their own tracking systems for their reading and are kept on pace and tracked through teacher-designated assessment for the activities within each Independent Reading lesson found in each section of the unit. The Program Guide states, “[s]tudents are encouraged to use the same tools and close-reading practices they use during instruction. Teachers can choose how to assign and collect those tools in order to monitor students’ reading comprehension.” Unit lessons include instructions and independent reading procedures consistently across the grade level.

    • In the Development Unit, The Warmth of Other Suns, Section 1, Lesson 10, students track their independent reading by using the Attending to Details, Analyzing Relationships, Evaluating Ideas, Extending Understanding tools as well as a Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool, a Summarizing Text Tool, or a Character (or other) Note-Taking Tool.

    • In The Development Unit, The American Dream of Homeownership Section 2, Lesson 9, students share their understanding of the texts they have been reading independently. This process continues throughout the unit so that students and teachers can track independent reading.

• Independent reading procedures are included in the lessons.

  • In The Foundation Unit, What Does it Mean to Be an American?, students encounter a series of four structured lessons, one from each section, building to the culminating task in the fourth activity. Each of the units in Grade 11 follow this procedure. In Section 3, Lesson 8, the materials provide a lesson overview in which students “share the analyses we have made about our independent reading texts and make connections to the unit. We will plan a final product to share our experiences from reading independently and the knowledge we have gained.” Activities follow to guide students as they discuss, write, and read independently to achieve the lesson goals.

  • In the Development Unit, The Great Gatsby, Section 5, Lesson 9, students follow teacher-created procedures for sharing their learning from their independent reading. Teacher notes for the lesson indicate “[d]epending on expectations around independent reading and the final product, you might direct students to conduct a culminating presentation, where they share the knowledge and understanding they have gained from their independent reading text.”

  • In the Development Unit, The American Dream of Homeownership, the materials outline for teachers a series of procedures to facilitate student use of the Attending to Details, Analyzing Relationships, Evaluating Ideas, and Extending Understanding tools as well as the Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool, the Summarizing Text Tool, and the Character (or other) Note-Taking Tool. The materials also include opportunities for teachers to engage students in classroom discussions or individual conferences.

The materials reviewed for Grade 11 meet the criteria for Indicator 1f.

The Grade 11 materials include a focus on text-specific and text-dependent questions, tasks, and assignments to deepen students’ knowledge and comprehension throughout each task.

The materials provide opportunities for students to engage in a variety of texts and to mine text for evidence. The questions and tasks in the materials require careful reading of texts over the course of a school year, and most of the questions are grounded in specific textual details to provide meaningful insight into the overarching Central Question for each unit. In addition, text-dependent guiding questions support students as they navigate and engage directly with the texts to draw evidence from what they have read, as well as to make inferences. The materials consistently pose guiding questions across grade levels and “reinforce the importance of leaning into the text itself for answers and clarification.”

The materials provide teacher guidance, including Teaching Notes, to support the planning and implementation of the text-specific and/or text-dependent questions, tasks, and assignments. The teacher notes also offer suggestions for contextualizing, teaching, and supporting students in text-dependent activities.

Most questions, tasks, and assignments are text-specific and/or text-dependent, requiring students to engage with the text directly (drawing on textual evidence to support both what is explicit as well as valid inferences from the text). Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Text-specific and text-dependent questions and tasks support students in making meaning of the core understandings of the texts being studied.

  • In the Development Unit, The Warmth of Other Suns, Section 3, Lesson 2, students work in expert groups to participate in a third jigsaw reading of Part 3 of The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. Students respond to guiding questions, including, but not limited to:

    • “Life Prior to Migration: What do you learn about each person’s life prior to their departure from the South? What questions do you have?

    • Immediate Impacts of Migration: What do you learn about the immediate impact of each person’s migration and about their life away from the South? What questions do you have?”

  • In the Development Unit, Friday Night Lights, Section 3, Lesson 1, students examine the core concept of how high school athletics represent American society by focusing on gender in Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights. Students answer text-specific and topic-specific questions, including:

    • “Read the sentence in the third paragraph on page 146 that begins “In the hierarchy…” How does this statement support Bissinger’s portrayal of females in the text?

    • After reading page 149, do you think Pepettes have a self-identity similar to the football players? Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.

    • On page 149, the school counselor uses the term programmed to describe the female students at Permian. Why do you think she chose this word? Who programs the female students? Why?”

  • In The Development Unit, The Warmth of Other Suns, Section 5, Lesson 5, students complete a Section Diagnostic challenging them to synthesize meaning from four texts in this unit. The Section Diagnostic states, “[w]e will participate in a formal discussion on the topic of how and why authors construct histories, citing examples from The Warmth of Other Suns as well as at least three print and non-print texts we have read.”

  • In the Development Unit, The American Dream of Homeownership, Section 2, Lesson 2, students read Act 2, Scene 3 from A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. Students answer text-dependent questions such as, “How does this scene from the play relate to what you have been studying about the American dream of homeownership?” to broaden their understanding of how the text reveals the obstacles some Americans face when seeking homeownership. These questions prepare students to answer the unit’s Central Question: How viable is the American dream of homeownership?

• Teacher materials provide support for planning and implementation of text-based questions and tasks.

  • In the Foundation Unit, What Does It Mean to Be American, Section 1, Lesson 3, students read and annotate the Preamble to the Constitution by the Framers of the US Constitution. Students deepen their understanding of the text by answering text-dependent questions, specifically:

    • “Focus on the first phrase, ‘We the People of the United States.’

      • Who are ‘we?’

      • Who do you think would have been included in ‘we’ in 1776?

      • Who is ‘we’ now?”

  • The Teaching Notes provide specific guidance to teachers outlining various purposes to consider when having students annotate text, including, but not limited to:

    • attending to details about plot, character, and the author’s craft

    • making inferences

    • making connections among different parts of the text, other texts, and students’ own lives

    • asking questions about points of confusion

    • defining unknown words and phrases

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories with Film, Section 2, Lesson 4, students use the Understanding a Movie Tool to compare and discuss the film Blackfish and a film they watched independently with a partner. The Teaching Notes suggest the teacher find film reviews for students to use in this discussion. The Notes also suggest the use of less text-specific questions for those students struggling to engage:

    • “How does a movie tell a true story?

    • How does a movie tell a fictional or fantastical story?”

  • In the Development Unit, The American Dream of Homeownership, Section 1, Lesson 2, students read “Why Owning a Home is the American Dream” by Anthony Depalma. Students consider questions, such as:

    • “According to the author, what are the motivations for owning a home? In 1988, what was the ‘essential motivation?’ Cite evidence from your text to support your answer.”

  • The Teaching Notes provide notes about author, concept, text, and topic: “The author introduces his thesis early on with the statement: ‘For most families, a house is the centerpiece and predominant part of the household wealth.’ He uses examples, statistics, and testimonials to support his advocacy for homeownership.” The notes provide the following suggestions to support the implementation of text-based tasks.

    • Rereading the text multiple times using guiding or text-specific questions, each with a different purpose (see the guiding questions in the Questioning Reference Guide for examples of additional text-dependent questions)

    • Using a Reading Closely Tool, such as the Attending to Details Tool

    • Walking through a model analysis of a passage from the text

  • In the Application Unit, What Do I Want to Research?, Section 2, Lesson 2, students practice assessing a text using the Potential Sources Tool. The Teaching Notes guide teachers to set up the Potential Sources Tool practice and to assess students’ ability to access the text independently.

The materials reviewed for Grade 11 meet the criteria for Indicator 1g.

As stated in the materials Program Guide, the instructional activities for this grade level engage students in both formal and informal speaking and listening activities and discussions throughout the units, and the materials offer students support in developing these listening and speaking skills. Section Diagnostics and Culminating Tasks include formal activities, such as Socratic seminars, philosophical chairs discussions, and presentations. Also, informal speaking and listening activities recur throughout the program as students engage in collaborative peer-to-peer, small- and whole-group discussions to analyze texts, discuss group norms, and peer review their projects.

The Academic Discussion Reference Guide provides protocols for a variety of academic discussions, and materials provide teacher guidance for modeling academic vocabulary and syntax during speaking and listening opportunities. Materials include guidance on modeling effective discussion techniques through the use of teacher-composed scripts, sentence starters, and vocabulary instruction to support students in incorporating new words and academic phrases into their discussions. Students build upon the protocols from previous lessons and activities to participate in more sophisticated speaking and listening activities throughout the year.

Materials provide frequent opportunities and protocols for speaking and listening. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Materials provide protocols for speaking and listening across the whole year’s scope of instructional materials.

  • In the Development Unit, The Great Gatsby, Section 4, Lesson 1, students listen to the NPR podcast “American Dream Faces Harsh New Reality” by Shapiro and complete a peer discussion. Student-facing directions instruct students to “[l]isten to the podcast and follow along with the transcript text on the site. With a partner, discuss the presenter’s ideas and the following questions.” Questions include: “Shapiro references The Great Gatsby and its early representation of a form of the American Dream—six years before James Adam coined the term. What other connections between the ideas of the podcast and the themes of the novel do you see?” Student-facing directions instruct students to “[u]se a Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool, consider and respond to the final question above with your partner. Join another pair and compare the claims and evidence you have identified.” This tool is available for use and support throughout the academic year. In Lesson 9, students participate in a formal fishbowl activity as part of the Section Diagnostic. Students join discussion groups based on characters they select, and with teacher supervision, answer text-based discussion questions. Students in the inner circle discuss the questions and present evidence from the text. Students in the outer circle take notes, submit written questions to the discussion group, and evaluate the contributions of their classmates.

  • In the Development Unit, Friday Night Lights, Section 1, Lesson 1, students begin the unit by utilizing the Academic Discussion Reference Guide, which provides information to assist with a variety of academic discussions. Students work in small groups to discuss what they learned about H.G. Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights as preparation for a larger, whole-class discussion. The Teaching Notes in the teacher edition suggests that teachers “might also quickly highlight a few elements and norms from the Academic Discussion Reference Guide to support productive discussions.” Student-facing directions for the whole-class discussion include, “[a]s you listen attentively to other groups, ask questions to help the groups clarify and explain their thinking.”

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories with Film, Section 4, Lesson 7, students perform a dramatic reading of a character sketch they have created to small groups. In this activity, the materials provide speaking protocols for the dramatic reading, such as “[u]se your voice, as well as the descriptions in your sketch, to make the character’s story come alive.” The materials also include student protocols for listening during the activity. Students keep track of what is memorable about the character and ideas for improvement to share during a discussion after each dramatic reading.

• Protocols are varied across the academic school year and support students’ developing speaking and listening skills.

  • In the Foundation Unit, What Does It Mean to be an American, Section 2, Lesson 4, students engage in a Socratic Seminar. Before students participate in the discussion, the materials include several protocols for students to follow to appropriately engage in the seminar. The teacher edition offers guidance for teachers to help students develop their speaking and listening skills, such as “[w]hen a student speaks, they toss the object in the center of the circle. This kind of self-monitoring tool will enable more vocal students to be critical about what they share and allows time for less-vocal students to think and participate.” Students use the Discussion Tool to help organize their notes during a Socratic seminar, create norms with their classmates, and write open-ended questions in preparation for the discussion. Materials provide question frames to support students, including “[w]hat about this perspective do you agree or disagree with? What significance is this to _____? If _____ is true, then _____?”

  • In the Development Unit, The Warmth of Other Suns, Section 2, Lesson 5, students synthesize understanding of the section texts and the relationships among their ideas during a whole-class discussion. Student-facing prompts include “[w]hat connections do you notice between the video and the Du Bois article? Between the video and the maps? Between the video and the Lee article? Between the video and Wilkerson’s stories of Ida’s, Robert’s, and George’s experiences?” Materials direct students to use the Academic Discussion Reference Guide and sentence starters as needed.

  • In the Application Unit, What Do I Want to Research?, students present their research ideas to the class and receive feedback for the class following the discussion protocols. The student materials outline specific protocols for students to consider to develop their speaking skills, such as “share the overarching question or problem that will guide your research[;] invite the class to ask questions about anything that is unclear.” The materials also provide students with protocols to increase their listening skills, such as “[w]hen another team is presenting, do the following: listen intently to their Central Research Question[;] candidly and respectfully share your questions and responses.” In Section 5, Lesson 5, students confer with a teacher to receive feedback and to ask questions as they plan, draft, and revise their presentations. Students use a Culminating Task Checklist, which includes Speaking & Listening Goals as students organize work, communicate effectively, and publish their findings. Questions for consideration include, but are not limited to: “In the section or aspect of our presentation that I’ve created, how well do I use language and themes that are relevant and appropriate for our audience? How well do I share my research findings with my learning community in a way that is clear, logical, engaging, and appropriate for my audience?”

• Teacher guidance includes modeling of academic vocabulary and syntax during speaking and listening opportunities.

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories with Film, Section 2, Lesson 6, students discuss belief and disbelief, truth and fiction, and how these concepts play out in various movies. As a class, students discuss questions, such as “[d]o you think the documentary Blackfish presents a true and accurate story? Why or why not?” The instructions include making a list of evidence to support their opinion, “either evidence of truth in the movie or of distortions of truth.” Students engage in a respectful debate relating to the topic. Teaching Notes are available in the teacher edition with prompts to model the use of academic language in a discussion, including “[s]cript what students say during the discussion, focusing on strong examples of academic vocabulary and discussion stems.”

  • In the Development Unit, The American Dream of Homeownership, Section 1, Lesson 1, the materials outline resources for teachers to model academic vocabulary and syntax throughout the lesson and unit, specifically the word viable and what it means in relation to the American dream of homeownership. The Odell Education Literacy Toolbox and reference guides within the toolbox offer teacher guidance on ways to model for and support students. In Section 3, Lesson 3, students participate in a discussion about their research on trends in US homeownership. The teacher edition provides explicit protocols and ideas for modeling academic vocabulary and syntax for students to use during the discussion, such as “[y]ou might encourage students to practice using literary terms, academic language, and the vocabulary they have been exposed to in this unit or in prior units. Using the language of the discipline and topic is a powerful and empowering practice for all students.”

The materials reviewed for Grade 11 meet the criteria for Indicator 1h.

The Grade 11 materials focus on evidence-based discussion opportunities and standards-based questions as well as other instructional supports to help students grow in their speaking and listening skills throughout the school year, including opportunities for students to listen and speak during teacher-led discussions and when working with peers. All discussions require students to go directly back to the text, reference evidence or engage in repeated reading and analysis, and in many cases, the materials provide instructors with possible student responses for additional support.

Students have multiple opportunities throughout each unit to participate in various speaking and listening activities, such as small-group and whole-class discussions, Socratic Seminars, and Four Corners protocols, to discuss texts read. Most lessons and activities include standards-based guiding questions and tools to ensure students utilize, apply, and incorporate evidence from texts and other sources. Presentation of ideas and research opportunities are available through formal speaking and listening tasks and informally during the peer-to-peer discussions and sharing ideas. Students have the opportunity to participate in a variety of listening and speaking activities. The materials require students to use evidence to support their reasoning in class discussions.

Facilitation, monitoring, and instructional supports for teachers are embedded within the student-facing materials as well as specific guidance in the Teacher Edition. The materials offer teachers support on facilitating Socratic Seminars and how to use tools to monitor student progress. The Teaching Notes in the Teacher Edition provide additional guidance to facilitate discussions, and various tools, such as the Discussion Tool, the Delineating Arguments Tool, and the Academic Discussion Reference Guide, support student growth and developing proficiency in these skills.

Materials support students’ listening and speaking about what they are reading and researching (including presentation opportunities) with relevant follow-up questions and supports. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Speaking and listening instruction includes facilitation, monitoring, and instructional supports for teachers.

  • In the Foundation Unit, What Does It Mean to Be an American?, Section 2, Lesson 1, students select research teams and decide collaboratively how best to work in a group. In the Teacher Edition, materials direct teachers to consult the Academic Discussion Reference Guide for opportunities to support the diverse needs of their students: “There are several ways to have students select their research teams. You could assign students heterogeneously, based on their demonstrated reading, writing, and presenting skills. You could have each student write down their top two choices on index cards and assign groups from their choices, or you could have students select their own groups.” In Section 2, Lesson 9, students participate in a Socratic Seminar as part of the Section Diagnostic. Teaching Notes in the Teacher Edition offer instructional support for the teacher and explains the protocol for a Socratic Seminar. The Teaching Notes also offers questions to further student discussion and suggests that teachers direct students to the Discussion Tool resource to help them participate in the Socratic Seminar.

  • In the Development Unit, The Great Gatsby, Section 1, Lesson 2, students participate in a small-group discussion to discuss their initial impressions of the first five pages of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Students organize their ideas using the Attending to Details Tool and engage in a discussion of their findings with a partner. The Teacher Edition provides facilitation, monitoring, and instructional support for teachers with specific guidance such as, “This is the first time that students will debrief their responses to a close-reading tool in this unit. You might want to guide their conversations by suggesting that they start at the bottom of the tool and report first what they have concluded.”

  • In the Development Unit, Friday Night Lights, Section 1, Lesson 1, students participate in a whole-class discussion on what they learned from the preface about the city of Odessa; the author, H.G. Bissinger; and the reasons he wrote Friday Night Lights. Teaching Notes in the Teacher Edition provide instructors a list of evidence from the preface to help facilitate the group discussion.

  • In the Development Unit, The Warmth of Other Suns, Section 2, Lesson 3, students discuss the poems, “The Lynching” by Claude McKay and “Between the World and Me” by Richard Wright. Students explore connections between key ideas by participating “in a whole-class discussion to analyze the relationships between these two poems and the unit texts.” Students respond to questions, such as, “What do these poems suggest about the relationship between the end of slavery and the Great Migration?” Teaching Notes in the Teacher Edition provide guidance for instructors to model academic language in the discussion, by: “[scripting] what students say during the discussion, focusing on strong examples of academic vocabulary and discussion stems,” and to direct students to the Academic Discussion Reference guide by “[prompting] them to use the reflection checklist to monitor and assess their own participation.”

• Students have multiple opportunities over the school year to demonstrate what they are reading through varied speaking and listening opportunities.

  • In the Development Unit, The Great Gatsby, Section 4, Lesson 9, students organize themselves into the appropriate groups for the first fishbowl discussion and debate. Students share their claims about Gatsby’s character and his role in response to questions, such as, “Is Gatsby a character to be admired or pitied? Why?” The student instructions direct students to “Complete a personal reflection and self-assessment about your participation in the fishbowl discussion, using the self-assessment reflection portion of the Discussion Tool.”

  • In the Development Unit, Friday Night Lights, Section 3, Lesson 1, students review the Central and Framing Questions for the unit, including, “How do ideas about gender and gender roles impact student sports culture? Students discuss questions with a partner or small group and consider what they have read in Chapters 1-6 of Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger. Students will then “share insights gleaned from the discussion with the whole class.” In Section 4, students participate in a variety of speaking and listening activities that lead to the Section Diagnostic in which students engage in a whole-class discussion. In Lesson 3, students engage in a whole-class discussion to discuss ethos, logos, and pathos and to share examples found in popular culture. In Lesson 5, students use the Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool as a group to record evidence from the reading “Baseball is Life” by Sara Corbett to address whether young athletes are being prepared for the real world. In Lesson 8, students prepare for and perform the Section Diagnostic, a formal academic discussion that focuses on guiding questions, such as, “How do Bissinger’s perspectives compare to those of the authors of other section texts?”

  • In the Development Unit, The Warmth of Other Suns, Section 1, Lesson 3, students begin a series of jigsaw group discussions, working in small groups to learn about the characters in The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. To keep track of their thoughts and to guide their discussions, students complete the Jigsaw Note-Taking Tool. After students work with their “expert groups” to learn about the specific character, students return to their “home groups” to share their findings.

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories with Film, Section 3, Lesson 7, students create and present a three-to-five-minute oral movie review and present their review to a four-to-five member student review team. After students show their movie review, group members pose questions and reflect on the concept of the movie, how the movie represented high school life, and what they learned about the movie’s style.

  • In the Development Unit, The American Dream of Homeownership, Section 4, Lesson 1, students participate in a class discussion in which they delineate and discuss the argument in “The False Promise of Homeownership” by Marissa Chappell. For the discussion, students are instructed to “Compare and discuss your analyses of the argument’s structure.”

• Speaking and listening work requires students to utilize, apply, and incorporate evidence from texts and/or sources.

  • In the Foundation Unit, What Does It Mean to Be an American?, Section 4, Lesson 5, students engage in a group discussion addressing the unit’s central question: What does it mean to be an American? Guiding questions ask students to incorporate evidence from texts they read in the unit, specifically:

    • “How did the texts in this unit help you understand or think about the Central Question?

    • What about this text or topic do you still want to know?

    • Was there any particular topic or text that captured your attention? Why?”

  • In the Development Unit, The Great Gatsby, Section 4, Lesson 1, students listen to and discuss the podcast “American Dream Faces Harsh New Reality” by Ari Shapiro and make connections to The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Students work in pairs to discuss their findings, responding to guiding questions that require students to pull evidence from the podcast and the novel such as: “Shapiro references The Great Gatsby and its early representation of a form of the American Dream—six years before James Adam coined the term. What other connections between the ideas of the podcast and the themes of the novel do you see?”

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories with Film, Section 3, Lesson 1, students reread the article “Disney+ adds disclaimer about racist movie stereotypes” and use the Vocabulary in Context Tool to determine the meaning of unknown words. Students work with a partner to use context clues to determine the meaning of words that have enough context in the passage to provide the meaning, noting their thoughts in the Learning Log, and then discussing their thoughts with the class.

  • In the Development Unit, The American Dream of Homeownership, Section 2, Lesson 4, students study “Mapping Segregation” by Matthew Block, Amanda Cox, and Tom Giratikanon. Student groups share and compare observations and interpretive claims formed in response to equations, such as, “To what extent has the city you examined been able to respond to the Fair Housing Act’s expectation that communities will move toward desegregation?” Students also share a claim-based summary with the class.

  • In the Application Unit, What Do I Want to Research?, students work in collaborative groups to “use the research portfolio you have built over the course of the unit to develop a presentation for your learning community that shares your findings and conclusions.” In Section 2, Lesson 6, student groups read another team’s Research Frame Tool: “Analyze and assess the inquiry paths and inquiry questions. Consider the following questions and provide feedback to help improve the research frame: 1. How effective is their use of language in conveying their Central Research Question? Is it clear what they are looking to solve or answer in their research?” Student groups complete the Credibility and Richness of Sources row on the Research Evaluation Checklist by looking at sources and texts read throughout the unit and the year, as this is the final unit of the year. In Section 3, Lesson 4, students work with a partner to make claims based on evidence from closely read texts. Students use the Claims Reference Guide to review the Claim Types and Purposes section, they review the primary inquiry questions for an inquiry path they have identified in the previous lesson, and choose a claim type that best responds to the inquiry questions before sharing their examples with the class.

The materials reviewed for Grade 11 meet the criteria for Indicator 1i.

Writing tasks center student learning around a common topic or inquiry by clarifying and deepening understanding of the text; exploring the essential question of each unit, section, or lesson; and helping students to prepare for a Culminating Activity. Overall, these tasks include long assignments with multiple drafts, short assignments for in class responses, focused projects, and other short answer responses. Section Diagnostics prepare students for the writing and presenting tasks they complete during unit Culminating Tasks that emulate one of the following: short story, personal narrative, explanatory essay, literary analysis, argumentative essay, or research essay.

The Grade 11 materials include activities for students to connect writing to texts and incorporate many opportunities for students to engage in on-demand writing (e.g., completing digital pdf guides such as the Delineating Arguments Tool and Theme Reference Guide to help them engage in various writing activities including constructing paragraphs based on claims found in texts read) and process writing that is formal or informal (e.g., journaling using an individual Learning Log). Process writing engages students in multiple steps to develop final drafts of their writing; lessons include prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing activities and provide multiple layers of instructional support for teachers and students. During process writing activities, students develop ideas and construct writing projects over a series of lessons, including revisiting writings to revise and edit their work from previous units. The materials also include multiple opportunities for students to receive a year’s worth of instruction for on-demand writing opportunities such as reflections and quick-writes. These on-demand writing assignments, including shorter, more focused writing projects, occur throughout all units in the grade level.

Materials include a mix of on-demand and process writing that covers a year’s worth of instruction. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Materials include on-demand writing opportunities that cover a year’s worth of instruction.

  • In the Foundation Unit, What Does It Mean to Be An American?, Section 1, Lesson 2, teachers have the option of having students listen to “A July 4 Tradition: NPR Reads the Declaration of Independence” by Thomas Jefferson read by NPR staff and write a response to the following question: “How does hearing the Declaration of Independence being read aloud by a variety of people help your understanding or modernize the declaration?” In Section 1, Lesson 6, students study mentor sentences and then choose one or two of the mentor sentences to mimic in an on-demand piece of writing. Students answer the following prompt: “Use your deconstruction analysis of your chosen sentences to write your own, mimicking what the author does in terms of structure, style, grammar, and punctuation.”

  • In the Development Unit, The Warmth of Other Suns, Section 2, Lesson 6, students prepare for a discussion and for the Section Diagnostic by composing a quick-write in response to discussion questions, such as:

    • “What were the most significant factors that impacted the lives of African Americans in the South between 1915 and 1975?

    • How do the texts from this section enhance our understanding of the decision to migrate?”

  • In Section 3, Lesson 2, students complete a quick-write based on their reading of The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. To develop their quick-writes, students respond to prompts, including: “What is the relationship between the epigraphs that began this section and what you learned about your focus figure during the reading?”

• Materials include process writing opportunities that cover a year’s worth of instruction. Opportunities for students to revise and edit are provided.

  • In the Development Unit, The Great Gatsby, Section 5, Lesson 1, students demonstrate their understanding of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and other paired texts by writing a multiparagraph literary analysis and critical argument in response to the Central Question: How do perceptions, illusions, and dreams influence our lives? Students take a position, develop claims, gather evidence to support their analysis, draft, revise, and edit the essays before publishing.

  • In the Development Unit, Friday Night Lights, Section 2, Lesson 1, students have an opportunity to read and annotate the text, write a portion of a literary analysis response concerning the author’s use of tone to impart perspective, and then peer review and revise their answers in the next portion of the lesson before presenting their ideas to the class.

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories with Film, students complete a Culminating Task to develop an original pitch for their own feature film. In Section 2, Lesson 7, students brainstorm two or three possible ideas and use a series of prompts to develop these ideas, including:

    • “What type of movie might it be?

    • In general, what might the story and film be about?

    • What might be the moral, meaning, or theme that the movie adds up to?”

  • In Section 3, Lesson 4, students use the Movie Planning section of their Learning Log to develop a concept for their own movie describing the setting, style, and mise-en-scene. In Section 4, Lesson 3, students develop the backstory and arc of their central characters by “listing key events, experiences, and changes that your central character might face, both before and within the story you intend to tell in your movie.”

  • In the Development Unit, The American Dream of Homeownership, Section 4, Lesson 1, students begin preparing for the Culminating Task to write an argumentative response to the Central Question: How viable is the American dream of homeownership? Throughout the process of developing their arguments, students complete various instructional steps to build their writing skills. In Section 4, Lesson 3, for example, students work with a partner to review the argument they have developed by answering guiding questions such as, “How likely is it that the argument will meet most of the criteria from the Evaluating Arguments Tool.”

• Materials include digital resources where appropriate.

  • In the Development Unit, The Great Gatsby, Section 4, Lesson 8, students plan their writing using the digital resource Organizing Evidence Tool, which helps students to develop claims by answering prompts such as, “Explain how the evidence supports the supporting claim and the central claim or thesis.”

  • In the Development Unit, The American Dream of Homeownership, Section 5, Lesson 1, students begin preparing for the Culminating Task to write an argument addressing the Central Question: How viable is the American dream of homeownership? Students draw on notes from texts and digital resources they have analyzed throughout the unit, including, but not limited to, “The Rise of Suburban Areas during 1950s” by AP US History Resources, “Federal Housing Administration (FHA)” by Marie Justine Fritz, and “Home Sweet Home. Still.” by the Pew Research Center.

  • In the Application Unit, What Do I Want to Research?, students utilize a set of digital resources, including a digital Culminating Task Checklist, Evaluation Plan, Presentation Guide, and Research Plan, to aid their research products. In Section 2, Lesson 1, students use the Potential Sources Tool and Assessing Sources Reference Guide to help them assess the credibility of sources and determine relevance. In Section 4, Lesson 2, students discuss their research frames and researched materials to determine relevance, coherence, and sufficiency. Students complete a revision of their Research Frame Tool to reflect the new information and questions that have emerged from their research.

The materials reviewed for Grade 11 meet the criteria for Indicator 1j.

Grade 11 materials provide sufficient opportunities across the year for students to engage in argumentative, informative/explanatory, and narrative writing that connects to the texts students read and analyze. Opportunities may include blended writing styles that reflect the distribution required by the standards.

Mentor texts model the various writing types, and instructional activities include opportunities within and across units for students to develop writing based on anchor texts and text sets. Students write after each reading or viewing experience, and most writing experiences distill distinct elements of the overall writing process, which may be completed as stand-alone products, or as part of a larger task or learning experience. Across the entire school year, students write six process essays, including short story, personal narrative, explanatory essay, literary analysis, argumentative essay, and research essay, that reflect a deep understanding of the Central Question and genre study within each unit. The multiple modes, genres, and types of writing practiced in informal and formal writing tasks, including the unit Culminating Tasks, as well as the support and scaffolding in place, should help students to meet grade-level proficiency by the end of the year.

Materials provide opportunities for students to address different text types of writing that reflect the distribution required by the standards. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Materials provide multiple opportunities across the school year for students to learn, practice, and apply different genres/modes/types of writing that reflect the distribution required by the standards. Different genres/modes/types of writing are distributed throughout the school year.

  • Students have opportunities to engage in argumentative writing.

    • In the Development Unit, The American Dream of Homeownership, Section 5, students complete the Culminating Task to write an argumentative essay. The materials prompt students to “use a collaborative, criteria-based writing process to produce a final written argument, or alternatively, an argumentative presentation, that addresses a key subtopic issue and question.” For this argumentative essay, students “take a position and write an evidence-based argument in response to a controversial issue about homeownership in America.” In Section 5, Lesson 1, students “Draft a paragraph that introduces and explains your position. Consider your purpose and intended audience as you determine the tone and language you will use.” Students also review the Mentor Sentence Journal and include at least one technique when writing their responses. In Section 5, Lesson 2, students review and finalize claims and counterclaims to the position paragraphs drafted in Section 5, Lesson 1. This preparation for the Culminating Task can also be a stand-alone argumentative writing assignment. In Section 5, Lesson 3, students develop drafts of their Culminating Task addressing the Central Question: How viable is the American dream of homeownership? Students base their draft on the following subtopics:

      • “The American Dream: Should homeownership still be an important component of ‘making it’ in America?

      • The Role of Government: What role, if any, should government take in relation to supporting homeownership, funding affordable housing, and enforcing the Fair Housing Act?

      • The Dream Deferred: Has the expectation of a decent home and suitable living for every American family been a false promise? Should our society take responsibility for the history of discriminatory housing practices that continue to cause disparity of opportunities for Black Americans?

      • Future Aspirations: Should you and other members of Gen-Z aspire to or reject the traditional American dream of homeownership? Why?”

  • Students have opportunities to engage in informative/explanatory writing.

    • In the Development Unit, The Great Gatsby, Section students write a literary analysis based on the following prompts:

      • “What does The Great Gatsby ultimately suggest about human perception, illusions, and dreams—and potentially about the American Dream?

      • As a narrator, is Nick Carraway the novel’s ‘most important character’ (Mellard), a judgmental ‘snob’ (Donaldson), or an ‘unreliable’ voice (Boyle)? What is your own reading of Nick’s character and role in the novel?”

    • In the Development Unit, Friday Night Lights, Section 2, Lesson 1, students address the unit Central Question: How do high school athletics reflect American society? The unit Culminating Task prompts students to write an expository essay analyzing how Bissinger portrays high school athletic culture using the non-fiction narrative Friday Night Lights and articles concerning race and gender issues. This activity can act as a stand-alone expository writing task and can also deepen student thinking about the culminating writing task. In Section 5, Lesson 2, students consider, “How do high school athletics reflect American society?” as they draft support paragraphs using their Note-Taking Tools and preparatory notes, collaborating with elbow partners during the drafting process as needed. The student materials direct students to “[f]inish drafting the support paragraphs of your essay and be ready to share and receive feedback in a peer review in the next lesson.”

  • Students have opportunities to engage in narrative writing.

    • In the Foundation Unit, What Does It Mean to Be an American?, Section 4, Lesson 2, students write a multiparagraph reflective narrative describing their research process and explaining their “strengths and areas of growth as a reader, writer, collaborator, and presenter” as part of the Culminating Task.

    • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories with Film, students develop an idea for their own original feature film and then develop “a description that tells the film’s story and gives some details of its style, visual effects, and sounds.” In Section 2, Lesson 9, students write an essay comparing the levels of realism in Blackfish by Gabriella Cowperthwaite to another film of their choice. In Section 4, Lesson 3, students finish imagining and describing internal and external traits about their central characters. This stand-alone activity is also part of the Culminating Task to create an original idea for a feature film and create a package to “pitch” the idea. In Section 5, Lesson 5, students complete their final pitch for a proposed film. In their film pitch packet, students “Present a vivid synopsis of the movie’s three acts, highlighting its storyline and beats and how it develops from exposition, to complication, to a climax and resolution.”

• Where appropriate, writing opportunities are connected to texts and/or text sets (either as prompts, models, anchors, or supports).

  • In the Development Unit, The Warmth of Other Suns, the materials provide students with writing opportunities connected directly to texts and text sets as prompts and anchors. In Section 2, Lesson 2, for example, students read “The Migration of Negroes” by W.E.B. Du Bois and respond in their Learning Logs to a series of prompts, including:

    • How do the ideas and information in the text relate to what you already think and know about the topic?

    • According to the article, what are three immediate causes of migration?

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories With FIlm, students view film excerpts to help develop their own ideas for characters in an original feature film. Excerpts focused on developing character’s attributes include, but are not limited to, excerpts from Hidden Figures by Theodore Melfi, Blackfish by Gabriella Cowperthwaite, Rushmore by Wes Anderson, and The Hate U Give by George Tillman, Jr. In Section 2, Lesson 6, students create lists of evidence supporting their claims of either proof or distortion of truth in the documentary Blackfish by Gabriella Cowperthwaite. Questions students consider and respond to include, but are not limited to:

    • “Can any movie tell a complete, true story? Or is it impossible for any movie, documentary or not, to present every fact and perspective in an objective way?

    • Do you think the documentary Blackfish presents a true and accurate story? Why or why not?”

• Materials include sufficient writing opportunities for a whole year’s use.

  • The materials for this grade level, in particular, the unit Section Diagnostics and Culminating Tasks, provide sufficient writing opportunities across the year. In the Foundation Unit, What Does It Mean to Be an American, Section 1, Lesson 11, for example, students write a multi-paragraph essay about what it means to be an American. Similarly, in the Development Unit, The Great Gatsby, students compose expository paragraphs for point of view, characterization, literary devices, and scene analysis as part of the unit Section Diagnostics. These expository writing opportunities help prepare students for the literary analysis they construct for their Culminating Task.

  • In the Application Unit, What Do I Want to Research?, students choose to further research one of the topics and text sets they have studied in a previous unit to complete the Culminating Task to answer a self-developed inquiry question using research-based claims and explaining how the process of investigation led to said conclusions and discoveries. Students can consider and research privilege in Alexis de Tocqueville, “Why the Americans Are So Restless in the Midst of Their Prosperity” and how it connects to F. Scott Fitgerald’s The Great Gatsby and to Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger. Students use literary analysis skills practiced in the Development Units, The Warmth of Other Suns or The Great Gatsby, as well as expository writing opportunities developed throughout the Development Unit, Friday Night Lights, to explain how privilege is presented in American Literature. Throughout the unit, students develop a research portfolio and presentation connecting to a self-selected topic of inquiry that presents “a clear, engaging narrative of your research process, communicating the evolution of your critical thinking and learning, reflecting on the challenges and successes you experienced, and using details to help your audience understand the context and conclusions of your work.” In Section 3, Lesson 5, students develop claims about their inquiry question or research problem. In Section 5, students apply writing skills developed over the year and connect to texts and topics they have studied closely. In Section 5, Lesson 8, students reflect on what they have learned and evaluate their skills and knowledge by completing the Culminating Task Progress Tracker prompt: “Add or refine any skills and content knowledge required for the Culminating Task. Evaluate how well you are mastering skills and knowledge required for the Culminating Task.”

The materials reviewed for Grade 11 meet the criteria for Indicator 1k.

The Grade 11 materials provide frequent opportunities for students to engage in short writing responses, argumentative writing tasks, and synthesis of ideas, as well as allow students to connect their writing to various texts they read and analyze across the year. Materials provide tools to guide students in completing writing tasks, such as diagnostic checklists, including student self-assessment of their writing goals, and an Organizing Evidence Tool to guide students in explaining how the evidence supports the supporting claim and the central claim or thesis.

Students learn and practice skills before applying them in their writing. Students revisit texts when responding to questions and cite evidence to support their positions, create claims and support those claims with textual evidence, review and revise claims, and consider whether additional evidentiary support is necessary. Supporting their ideas with evidence from the texts, students write literary and rhetorical analyses, as well as argumentative and informational responses throughout the year. Additionally, each unit ends with an extended writing Culminating Task that requires students to review across texts and genres and to support their claims and arguments with evidence from multiple texts. Students write to practice and apply writing standards that require them to write with a task, purpose, and audience in mind, to delineate and evaluate arguments, and to develop a short research response.

Materials include frequent opportunities for evidence-based writing to support sophisticated analysis, argumentation, and synthesis. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Materials provide frequent opportunities across the school year for students to learn, practice, and apply writing using evidence.

  • In the Development Unit, The Great Gatsby, Section 2, Lesson 3, students practice using evidence in their writing by analyzing a character from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The following guidance to direct students’ practice is outlined in the Teacher Edition:

    • “Students should do the analysis individually, unless you believe that they need additional support, in which case you can have them work with a reading partner, with a team, or with the class as a whole. This is an opportunity to see how well they can analyze a passage and develop an evidence-based claim on their own.”

  • In Section 2, Lesson 8, students complete the Section 2 Diagnostic by using evidence to develop their responses. The following information in the student-facing materials guide students to apply their skills:

    • “We will write our Section 2 Diagnostic responses using materials from the unit. We will respond to questions about contrasting elements and literary devices, using evidence from the novel to support analytical claims.”

  • In Section 4, Lesson 5, students read an excerpt from “Unreliable Narration in The Great Gatsby” by Thomas E. Boyle and answer the following writing prompt using textual evidence from the article:

    • “How is Boyle interpreting the final lines of the novel? What is unusual or ironic about the author’s interpretation of Nick’s final comment that ends the narrative? How is Boyle’s perspective similar or different to how you previously interpreted this comment?”

  • In the Development Unit, Friday Night Lights, Section 1, Lesson 5, students read Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger and annotate Part 3 of Chapter 3. To complete the task, students gather evidence using the Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool and develop a claim that answers the guiding question: “How do the backgrounds of Boobie and his uncle, L.V., shape Boobie’s self-image as he enters adulthood?” The student-facing materials provide guidance, such as, “Forming an evidence-based claim, the last activity on the tool, is the most important task. This claim should answer the guiding question using evidence from the text.” In Section 1, Lesson 9, students create an independent reading plan for the unit and utilize helpful note-taking tools, such as the Analyzing Relationships Tool, Attending to Details Tool, and Character Note-Taking Tool. In Section 2, Lesson 2, students practice using the Analyzing Relationships Tool when reading the unit core text, Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger. Students read Part 4 of Chapter 5 and use the Analyzing Relationships Tool to answer the question: “How does Bissinger convey a suspicious tone regarding the true motivation for the desegregation of Odessa’s schools?” Students address this question using the tool to identify key details, analyze the relationships between the details, and explain how the details contribute to their analysis of Bissinger’s suspicious tone.

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories with Film, Section 2, Lesson 9, students review and edit their comparative essays, which connect the text Blackfish by Gabriella Cowperthwaite to a self-selected filmic text. The student-facing materials provide a reminder to “draw evidence” from the texts. Students also utilize the Section 2 Diagnostic Checklist as an opportunity for self-evaluation of their writing goals when answering questions, such as: “How well do I develop and clearly communicate meaningful and defensible claims that represent valid, evidence-based analysis?”

  • In the Application Unit, What Do I Want to Research?, Section 3, Lesson 4, students practice identifying and developing claims before they apply them to their research project. Working in groups, students review the Claims Reference Guide to select a claim type and develop an inquiry question satisfied by that claim type. Students then practice developing claims that answer their inquiry question. Students also review the Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tools to analyze a resource that addresses the group-developed inquiry question, to assess what type of claim is needed for that particular inquiry question, and to revise claims as needed. Finally, students use their claim to complete the Organizing Evidence Tool by providing evidence and analyzing the evidence.

• Writing opportunities are focused around students’ analyses and claims developed from reading closely and working with texts and sources to provide supporting evidence.

  • In the Foundation Unit, What Does It Mean to Be an American?, from the Foundation Unit Pathway Texts, students select texts based on the inquiry questions they developed as a group and complete their Evaluating Ideas Tool. Students then use the Evaluating Ideas Tool to record evidence from the text, to analyze the author’s point-of-view, to assess the credibility of the information presented, and to evaluate the position, argument, and/or value of the text. In Section 3, Lesson 9, students summarize and share their analyses of their independent reading texts. The student-facing materials prompt students to “[b]e sure to give a brief summary of your text so that your audience understands any analysis and unit connections that you communicate.” Students also review their notes collected in the Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tools and revise their claims “to produce more formal statements that express” their analysis.

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories with Film, Section 2, Lesson 6, with a partner, students closely read and paraphrase sections of the text “Flick Chicks: A Guide to Women in the Movies” by Mindy Kaling prior to participating in a group discussion of the text. In Section 4, Lesson 1, students return to Kaling’s text and discuss and compose a paragraph about their “thoughts regarding character stereotypes and caricatures in the movies. Then write about characters you might create in your own original movie—and how you might use or avoid tropes, caricatures, or stereotypes.”

  • In the Development Unit, The Warmth of Other Suns, Section 1, Lesson 8, students write their analysis of Part 1 and Part 2 of The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. The student-facing materials include the following directions to guide students: “Based on Part 1 and Part 2 of The Warmth of Other Suns, we will write responses to demonstrate how well we understand Wilkerson’s use of sources, organization, and structure and how they relate to her purpose and perspective.” Within the directions for this task, the materials specify that students should support their writing with evidence from the text. In Section 5, Lesson 1, students complete Part 5 of The Warmth of Other Suns with a quick write in response to text-based guiding questions such as, “What is the relationship between the epigraphs that began this section and what you learned about your focus figure during this reading?”

  • In the Application Unit, What Do I Want to Research?, Section 3, Lesson 3, students synthesize their understanding across multiple sources. Students work collaboratively in teams to determine revisions to the Research Frame Tool. The student-facing materials direct teams to “Determine what kind of revisions or refinements you might need to make to your Research Frame Tool.” The student facing materials provide questions for consideration, including, but not limited to: “Which inquiry question best summarizes each inquiry path? What are the primary, or most important, inquiry questions for each inquiry path?”

The materials reviewed for Grade 11 meet the criteria for Indicator 1m.

The Grade 11 materials provide a Program Guide that details the structure of the program and how vocabulary is incorporated into both instruction and student work, noting that “While the program prioritizes Tier 2 language, students are exposed to Tier 3 language as well.” The materials offer instructional guidance in outlining and using year-long vocabulary development tools and activities to support student vocabulary development across the school year, and the Teacher Edition and student-facing materials provide specific structures to help students build vocabulary knowledge within and across texts by including specific opportunities for students to connect their understanding of words in multiple contexts and situations.

Academic vocabulary acquisition and use are prioritized within and across the units, as students identify essential vocabulary and apply it to their reading, speaking, and writing tasks. The materials provide opportunities for students to learn new academic and domain-specific terms as students encounter vocabulary in a series of contexts before, during, and across texts, and opportunities for students to determine the meaning of vocabulary words using context clues are consistent. The materials attend to content vocabulary essential to understand each text and to analyze the purpose of word choices. Vocabulary instruction and practice accompany the core program’s selections to build vocabulary knowledge and improve students’ abilities to access complex texts.

Students apply their vocabulary skills to reading tasks utilizing tools, such as the Vocabulary in Context Tool, to assist them in understanding the meaning of unknown words and that words may have multiple meanings. In addition, students have regular opportunities to record vocabulary throughout the units using tools, including Word Maps and Vocabulary Journals, to note and define words throughout the unit. Teaching Notes in the Teacher Edition provide definitions and suggestions on implementing the Vocabulary Journals. Materials also prompt students to incorporate vocabulary during speaking opportunities and utilize tools, such as the Discussion Tool, to consider language used during classroom discussions.

Materials include a cohesive year-long plan for students to interact with and build key academic vocabulary words in and across texts. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Materials provide teacher guidance outlining a cohesive year-long vocabulary development component.

  • The Program Guide outlines a philosophy and structure regarding vocabulary noting that “vocabulary is essential to comprehension” and that “the program contains a variety of tools to help students build a robust body of vocabulary and incorporate vocabulary into their own writing and speech.” The materials contain Critical Thinking & Analytical Tools, including the Vocabulary in Context Tool, Word Map, Vocabulary Journal, and Vocabulary Lists, to utilize during instruction and support vocabulary development. Also, Reference Guides, including the Arguments Reference Guide and Claims Reference Guide, “define English language arts concepts and equip students with content terminology used to explain their analysis of text.” Other guides, including the Narratives Reference Guide, Style Reference Guide, and Symbolism and Motifs Reference Guide contain “explanations of key literary elements and syntax techniques.” Additionally, Teaching Notes in the Teacher Edition embed guidance within the lesson activities throughout the year by suggesting specific instructional strategies and supports for academic and content-specific vocabulary development and practice before and during text examination.

  • In The Development Unit, The Great Gatsby, Section 1, Lesson 1, Teacher Notes in the Teacher Edition provide the following guidance for the Vocabulary in Context Tool:

    • “Throughout the unit, students also interact with the Vocabulary in Context Tool. The purpose of the Vocabulary in Context Tool is twofold: 1. Students build vocabulary and develop a strategy for determining the meaning of unknown words and phrases when there is contextual information and when there is not. 2. Students metacognate on their process for determining the meaning of unknown words, determine the effectiveness of that process, and articulate a plan for using it in future texts.”

  • In the Development Unit, Friday Night Lights, Section 1, Lesson 1, students identify and define important vocabulary in the Prologue of Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger. Teaching Notes in the Teacher Edition provide the following guidance:

    • “Explain to students that in a text, there will be some words that can be defined using context and some that cannot. If appropriate, you might model how to use the Vocabulary in Context Tool in this activity.”

  • In the Development Unit, The Warmth of Other Suns, Section 1, Lesson 1, students encounter words from the Vocabulary List. The student-facing materials prompt students to engage in this aspect of year-long cohesive vocabulary development as follows:

    • “For this activity, you will use a Vocabulary Journal, which you will maintain for the entire unit. In other activities, you might use a Vocabulary in Context Tool for words you can decipher from the text; for others, you might use morphology to decipher the meaning, or a reference resource to check if your meaning is accurate. For some words, your teacher might present you with definitions.”

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories with Film, Section 3, Lesson 1, students analyze a clip viewed from the film, Hidden Figures directed by Theodore Melfi. Teaching Notes in the Teacher Edition issue guidance to provide additional support to students by using the Filmmakers Glossary to help them discuss the conventions used in the excerpt.

• Vocabulary is repeated in contexts (before texts, in texts) and across multiple texts.

  • In the Foundation Unit, What Does It Mean to Be An American?, Section 1, Lesson 2, students define the terms declaration and independence in their Vocabulary Journals and add examples and nonexamples of each term prior to reading and discussing the Declaration of Independence. Teaching Notes in the Teacher Edition include this prompt: “By paying attention to the Tier 2 vocabulary in the title, students become anchored to the rest of the text without giving away the content.”

  • In the Development Unit, The Warmth of Other Suns, Section 1, Lesson 2, students prepare to read The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson and encounter the vocabulary word repressive, which is repeated in the Development Unit, The American Dream of Homeownership, Section 2, Lesson 1, when students read “Legacy of the Great Migration” by Isabel Wilkerson. In Section 2, Lesson 1, Activity 3, students review the Vocabulary List before reading Section 3 of the novel, The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, and encounter the vocabulary word resilient. Previously, students encountered and examined the term resilient in the Foundation Unit, What Does It Mean to Be an American?, when reading “Immigration & Civics: What Every American Should Know” by The Aspen Institute.

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories with Film, Section 1, Lesson 4, students complete a close reading of “‘Hidden Figures’ Is a Subtle and Powerful Work of Counter-History” by Richard Brody to “identify its perspective and the central claims of its critical responses to the movie Hidden Figures.” The student-facing materials direct students to note new or unfamiliar vocabulary in their journals and to use the Vocabulary in Context Tool to determine the meaning of unknown words, including: ambient, dilapidated, and bureaucracy.

  • In Section 2, Lesson 1, students use the Filmmaking Glossary to support a class discussion of the definition of a movie concept. Students then apply the term to their own films to be developed as part of the unit Culminating Task by writing a few sentences addressing the following considerations in their Learning Logs:

    • “what the story might be

    • the world in which it might take place

    • the idea or premise that the movie might develop (the ‘What if…’)”

  • Students then watch the Pixar video “Story Spine,” and “As a class, discuss the concept of a movie’s story spine and its beats, referring to the entries in the Filmmaking Glossary.”

  • In the Development Unit, The American Dream of Homeownership, Section 2, Lesson 1, students encounter the word dilapidated when reading Paragraph 13 of Excerpts from “Legacy of the Great Migration” by Isabel Wilkerson. Students establish an understanding of the Great Migration, its impact on American history, and its relationship to homeownership by reading and forming claims during the lesson. A unit vocabulary list calls attention to the academic vocabulary and students utilize this as a reference throughout the unit.

• Attention is paid to vocabulary essential to understanding the text and to high-value academic words (e.g., words that might appear in other contexts/content areas).

  • In the Foundation Unit, What Does It Mean to Be an American?, Section 1, Lesson 2, as students encounter new vocabulary words, such as declaration, Teaching Notes in the Teacher Edition offer the following guidance:

    • “To cement understanding, it is important to have students interact meaningfully with new words. Walk students through an understanding of the noun declaration, which is a form of the verb ‘to declare.’ You might tell students the word declare means something is said in a solemn and emphatic manner. In other words, the speaker is serious and forceful. Share with students examples and nonexamples of what it means to declare something.”

  • In the Development Unit, Friday Night Lights, Section 4, Lesson 1, students use the Friday Night Lights: Vocabulary List provided at the beginning of the unit and their Vocabulary Journals to construct Word Maps of vocabulary from Chapter 11 of Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger to see how the vocabulary is used in context. Students use the maps to define the terms; to locate antonyms, synonyms, and examples from the text; to use the terms in sentences; and to provide characteristics and/or facts about the terms.

  • In the Development Unit, The American Dream of Homeownership, Section 1, Lesson 1, students complete their reading of “Why Owning a Home Is the American Dream” by Anthony Depalma. Students encounter the academic word transient in the Vocabulary List for the unit prior to reading the word in the context of the text. The term transient is listed as a Tier 2 academic word. In Section 1, Lesson 2, Teaching Notes in the Teacher Edition provide the following guidance to help students understand academic words:

    • “Make these terms the first ones you add to a class Word Wall, which can be maintained as a visual classroom reference throughout the unit.”

• Students are supported to accelerate vocabulary learning with vocabulary in their reading, speaking, and writing tasks.

  • In the Development Unit The Great Gatsby, Section 1, Lesson 1, students use vocabulary words to accelerate their analysis of the first five pages of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. To support students’ use of vocabulary to accelerate their learning, the student-facing materials prompt students to “Use your Vocabulary Journal to support your reading as well as to write down new and interesting words you encounter.” In Section 1, Lesson 4, Activity 2, student-facing materials direct students to:

    • “Select three words from your Vocabulary Journal that you wrote down for the previous lesson’s homework. Determine the meaning for each of the words and identify the vocabulary strategy (e.g., context, morphology, reference resource) you used to determine its meaning. Use the Vocabulary in Context Tool to support your analysis.”

  • Teaching Notes in the Teacher Edition prompt teachers to assign a particular dictionary to help vocabulary development and to have students use the three vocabulary words they chose in their own writing in response to the questions in Activity 3.

  • In the Development Unit, Friday Night Lights, Section 4, Lesson 8, students prepare for the Section Diagnostic by completing Part 1 of the Discussion Tool. Student-facing instructions direct students to use significant words from their Vocabulary Journals as follows:

    • “Review your Vocabulary Journal and the Discussion Stems in the Academic Discussion Reference Guide. Record words and stems you want to use during the discussion.”

  • In the Development Unit, The Warmth of Other Suns, Section 2, Lesson 6, students use vocabulary in speaking and writing tasks. The Teacher Edition includes several activities for students to deepen their vocabulary knowledge on the activities, including the following: “Have students reword sentences to use the new terms. Respond to true and false statements that use the words. Use the words in a discussion.”

  • In the Application Unit, What Do I Want to Research?, Section 2, Lesson 1, students work towards the unit Culminating Task using the Potential Sources Tool to evaluate which resources should be used in their pathway groups. The Accessibility and Interest section of the Potential Sources Tool supports students to consider vocabulary as a key part of their reading and research using the following guiding questions:

    • “Am I able to read and comprehend the text?

    • What background knowledge do I need to understand the terminology, information, and ideas in the text?”

  • In Section 6, Lesson 1, students revise their presentation rough drafts into final drafts utilizing the Culminating Task Checklist to consider how well they use language and themes that are relevant and appropriate for the audience to ensure effective communication. Students incorporate vocabulary acquired throughout the research process into their final product.