10th Grade - Gateway 1

The materials reviewed for Grade 10 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 10 include, but are not limited to, poetry, a parable, nonfiction text, short stories, informational text, essays, 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, How Do We Determine the Right Thing to Do?, Section 1, Lesson 3, students read “A Framework for Ethical Decision Making” and watch the video “Utilitarianism: Crash Course Philosophy #36." Students examine and return to the texts through notetaking and discussions throughout the lesson.

  • In the Foundation Unit, How do we determine the right thing to do?, Section 2, Lesson 1, students analyze an excerpt from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The complex sentence structure and rich vocabulary make this excerpt a high-quality text.

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories, Section 2, Lesson 4, students engage in a careful study of the text “The Far and the Near” by Thomas Wolfe. This text includes rich language to help expand the student’s vocabulary.

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories, Section 3, Lesson 3, students examine Amy Tan’s “use of language to communicate her experiences and ideas” when reading the narrative essay “Mother Tongue,” a text of appropriate complexity and worthy of students’ time and attention.

  • In the Development Unit, Alexander Hamilton, Section 2, students examine a series of historical documents worthy of careful examination such as “Federalist No. 1,” excerpts from Publius in Lesson 5, and correspondences between Alexander Hamilton and George Washington in Lessons 8 and 9.

  • In the Development Unit, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Sections 1–3, students read and analyze the noteworthy novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. In addition to the core text, students also read a collection of tandem texts such as in Section 4, Lesson 2, “Henrietta Lacks (HeLa): The Mother of Modern Medicine” by Kadir Nelson and in Lesson 3, “HeLa” by L. Lamar Wilson.

  • In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, Section 2, Lesson 7, students read “Ethical Dilemmas in Protecting Individual Rights Versus Public Protection in the Case of Infectious Diseases” by Kai-Lit Phua. This article includes technical wording and an interesting tone that help make this text high quality.

• Anchor texts consider a range of student interests.

  • In the Foundation Unit, How Do We Determine the Right Thing to Do?, Section 2, Lessons 1–5, students read a variety of texts that consider a range of student interests on civil rights, sports, criminal justice, science, and medicine. Students read texts including an excerpt from Covering: The Hidden Assault on our Civil Rights by Kenji Yoshino, “What Roles Does Ethics Play in Sports?” by Kirk O. Hanson and Matt Savage, and an excerpt from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks titled “Prologue: The Woman in the Photograph” by Rebecca Skloot.

  • In the Development Unit, Alexander Hamilton, Section 1, Lesson 1, students watch a variety of multimedia including the broadway performance “Hamilton,” and a collection of videos including “Lin-Manuel Miranda Performs ‘Alexander Hamilton’ at the White House” and "Grammys 2016: Watch Lin-Manuel Miranda and the Cast of Hamilton Perform.” The performative aspect of these texts is interesting to students.

  • In the Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, Section 2, Lesson 7, students read a variety of text types, including the poem “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats, that connect to the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Students explore other texts throughout the unit, including excerpts from “An African Voice” by Katie Bacon and “Igbo Culture and History” by Don Ohadike. The variety of text types and voices are of interest to students.

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

  • In the Development Unit, Alexander Hamilton, students read the lyrics to the song “Hamilton,” which will engage students at this grade level.

  • In the Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, Section 2, Lesson 7, students read the poem “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats. The diction and concepts explored allow students to expand their academic vocabulary. The study of the poem encourages rich conversation about the title of the unit text and its meaning.

  • In the Development Unit, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, students read the poem “HeLa.” The complex structure of the poem engages students at this grade level.

  • In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, Section 4, Lesson 3, students read the poem “HeLa” by L.Lamar Wilson and analyze connections to the biography, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Smoot. Students “examine how texts in other mediums portray Henrietta Lacks’s story and the HeLa cells’ legacy in order to compare authorcraft.”

  • 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 “California Law to Restrict Medical Vaccine Exemptions Raises Questions Over Control” by Katherine Drabiak from The Ethics of Public Health Decisions unit.

The materials reviewed for Grade 10 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 (1050L–1335L for Grade 10). 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. In the Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, for example, though the core text Things Fall Apart falls below the 9–10 grade band, the complexity of meaning in the text, especially its historical and cultural significance, creates an appropriate level of complexity for students.

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 Foundation Unit, How Do We Determine the Right Thing to Do?, Section 2, Lesson 1, students read “Prologue: The Woman in the Photograph,” an excerpt from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (1140L), which is within the grade level band. Qualitative analysis in the Text Overview indicates that the text structure is slightly complex, and the language features, meaning, and knowledge demands are moderately complex. The materials include a rationale that the text is “used to introduce students to the biomedical ethics pathway and allows them to begin grappling with the larger issues they will find within other pathway texts of that topic.” The culminating task allows students to “develop a compelling final product that informs their audience about ethics and why ethical issues are complex.”

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories, Section 1, Lesson 2, students read the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson (1040L), which is appropriate for the grade level. Students analyze the structural elements in the story and apply the knowledge of analyzing complex text structures to another short story.

  • In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health, Section 4, Lesson 1, students read the argument “Measles, Mumps, and Religious Freedom: Mandatory Vaccination and the Limits of Parental Rights” by Christopher O. Tollefson. The Flesch-Kincaid score for this text is 12.6, which is at the higher end of the grade level range for complexity. Students analyze and evaluate the argument in this opinion piece to expand their knowledge of the topic and argumentative structure.

• 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 Development Unit, Telling Stories, in the unit Text Overview, the materials provide lists of short fiction with qualitative descriptions of their complexity. For example, in reference to the story “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner (1090L), the Text Overview explains the exceedingly complex nature of the structure, language, and meaning of the text.

  • In the Development Unit, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, students read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (1000–1100L). The materials include qualitative analysis of the text, which is moderately complex in terms of the language features, meaning, and knowledge demands. The text structure is very complex, with multiple narratives. A rationale provides evidence for placement in the grade level in that the author includes multiple “narratives to explore ethical issues of medical research, including race, poverty, privacy, and patients’ rights.” The materials explain that the informational text “should be engaging and interesting to students readers” due to the author’s writing style.

  • In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health, Section 2, Lesson 5, students read the opinion piece “Vaccination and Free Will” by Jeffrey Singer. The Flesch-Kincaid score is 12.6 text, which is in the higher range of complexity for this grade level. The text overview outlines an analysis of the text and why it is appropriate for the grade level. Students analyze the structure and progression of the arguments delineated in the text.

• 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 10.

The materials reviewed for Grade 10 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, How Do We Determine the Right Thing to Do?, Section 2, Lesson 2, students read “Prologue: The Woman in the Photograph,” an excerpt from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (1000L–1100L), one of several texts in the unit worthy of students’ time and attention. This text scaffolds to more complex texts in the forthcoming Development Units, and students have an opportunity to return to this text in its entirety in the Development Unit, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Other examples of varied texts throughout the grade level include, but are not limited to, excerpts from Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (1280L) in the Development Unit, Alexander Hamilton, and “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras” by Mark Twain (1310L) in the Development Unit, Telling Stories.

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories, students read a collection of texts that rise in complexity over the course of the unit. In Section 1, Lessons 2 and 3, students read “Introduction,” “But Sometimes What We Call 'Memory,’” and “Coyotes and the Stro’ro’ka Dancers,” excerpts from Storyteller by Leslie Marmon Silko (1000L) —which falls slightly below the quantitative level of complexity for this grade level but accommodates students’ entry into grade-level reading at the beginning of the year— and progressively read more challenging texts such as “The Lottery” (1040L), “A Rose for Emily” (1090L), and “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1310L).

• 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 Development Unit, Alexander Hamilton, Section 2, Lesson 5, students read “Federalist No. 1” by Alexander Hamilton (1350L–1460L), a complex text for the grade-level band. Students engage in a close reading of the text, annotating, and using the Delineating Arguments Tool to analyze Hamilton’s argument. Teaching strategies include the option of doing “one column as a class and then have students work on the others in small groups or with partners.” Additional notes are available to assist educators when students prepare to respond to questions in a small group before whole-class discussion:

    2. After delineating the argument, do you think Hamilton’s argument was effective? Why or Why not?.

    3. What did you learn about Alexander Hamilton from reading this text?

  • In the Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, Section 1, Lesson 4, students analyze the character traits of Okonkwo, the protagonist of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (890L). The Teacher Edition introduces the function of the Analyzing Relationships Tool as a support for students and explains, “As this is the first time students will be using the Analyzing Relationships Tool, you might guide them through the process.”

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

  • In the Development Unit, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Section 4, students examine a variety of works of varying levels of complexity, such as The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (1000L–1100L), artwork “Henrietta Lacks (HeLa): The Mother of Modern Medicine” by Kadir Nelson, and poetry “HeLa” by Lamar Wilson. In addition, students carefully study the text, “Henrietta Lacks, HeLa Cells and Cell Culture Contamination” by Brendan P. Lucey, Walter A. Nelson-Ree, and Grover M. Hutchins as a comparison in the way the story of Henrietta Lacks was told by Rebecca Skloot. Students engage with the exceedingly complex text to complete the culminating writing task to “Write an expository essay comparing the portrayal of Henrietta Lacks’s story in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks with its portrayal in one of the unit’s companion texts.”

  • In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, students read a variety of texts to prepare for the culminating activity, “Write an argument in which you state your response and logically and sufficiently support your position with claims and textual evidence, including the use of ethical frameworks, examples, statistics, arguments, and direct quotations with parenthetical citations.” Students build on this level of text complexity throughout the unit. In Section 2, Lesson 1, for example, students watch the video “The Vaccine War” then answer a series of questions and discuss their responses, and in Section 3, Lesson 1, students complete individual and group analyses of “The Belmont Report” published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that extends over several activities. In Section 3, Lesson 2, students read excerpts from “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights” by the United Nations General Assembly. The Flesch-Kincaid score for the excerpts range from 16.8–22.0, which is well above the complexity level for Grade 10.

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

    • “Eager to Limit Exemptions to Vaccination, States Face Staunce Resistance” by Roni Caryn Rabin.

    • “The Ethics of Opting Out of Vaccination,” Janet D. Stemwedel.

    • “Vaccination and Free Will” by Jeffrey A. Singer.

    • “Measles, Mumps, and Religious Freedom: Mandatory Vaccination and the Limits of Parental Rights” by Christopher O. Tollesfen.

  • The unit is sequenced towards the end for Grade 10 and creates a range of complexity for students to access the texts and challenge themselves with more complex readings.

The materials reviewed for Grade 10 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 10 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, How Do We Determine the Right Thing to Do?, students read a selection of narrative nonfiction, animation, essays, and articles in the curriculum embedded core and optional texts. Materials provide a list of suggested fiction and nonfiction texts as an independent reading list. Materials build lessons for independent reading, reporting, analysis, and presentation into each unit section.

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories, Section 1, Lesson 11, students begin an Independent Reading Program in which they select the texts they will read independently throughout the unit. After examining the Central Question and a few anchor texts at this point in the unit, students apply their learning to their independent readings. Students select their independent reading text from the list of suggested texts for the unit. After making their text selections, students develop an independent reading plan. The list of independent reading texts includes nonfiction texts such as the historical nonfiction text The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe and the novel The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.

  • In the Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, students encounter a variety of texts, including novels, poems, informational text, and artwork. Students engage in these texts by reading independently and discussing as a group. In Section 3, Lesson 2, students work collaboratively to discuss the theme of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe using the Theme Reference Guide.

  • In the Development Unit, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, students read the nonfiction text The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, and they study the art of Kadir Nelson, Henrietta Lacks (HeLa): The Mother of Modern Medicine. Students also explore filmic text, including The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by HBO, and read the poem “HeLa” by L. Lamar Wilson. Independent reading options to accompany the unit include, but are not limited to, The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, and Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg.

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

  • In the Foundation Unit, How Do We Determine the Right Thing to Do?, 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, Telling Stories, Section 2, Lesson 2, students read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and learn the elements of a story’s narrative structure and plot. Other texts students analyze in the same section include a Gothic short story, “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, and Thomas Wolfe’s “The Far and the Near” with time to examine these pieces closely; students choose one of these texts to rewrite from the first-person point of view of one of the characters and present to other students.

  • In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, students read a variety of informational texts with a range of supports such as Mentor Sentence Journals and Delineating Arguments Tool.

  • In The Development Unit, Alexander Hamilton, students engage in one activity per section to plan and pace their independent reading and commence their Independent Reading Program in Section 1, Lesson 14. Core and Options texts explicitly written into the unit include but are not limited to historical, biography, song, interviews, and essays.

• 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, Telling Stories, Section 1, Lesson 11, students select an independent reading and set a reading and pacing plan.

    • In The Development Unit, Alexander Hamilton, the materials provide teachers a set of teaching strategies and decision notes alongside Section 1, Lesson 14 lesson for independent reading. Suggestions include: “Explain to students how reading independently, outside of class, is a challenging but invigorating aspect of obtaining and furthering literacy,” and “When helping students select independent reading texts, you should use any prescribed or commonly used methodology and philosophy.”

    • In the Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, Section 1, Lesson 12, the materials include specific guidance to teachers to prepare students to begin their Independent Reading Program by providing “guidance around pacing and help[ing] students determine how much they should plan on reading per day or week. This will largely be based on your expectations for the Independent Reading Program.” Additional guidance suggests that teachers “[c]onsider having students complete [Reading Closely] tools to help them annotate and analyze their texts…If students have not encountered these tools, consider modeling them first.”

    • In the Development Unit, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Section 1, Lesson 1, students read the epigraph and prologue of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Students answer guiding questions in the Learning Log. Teaching notes provide guidance about the author, concept, text, and topic: “The questions will help students focus their initial exploration on the texts.” Materials include additional strategies to prepare students for independent reading: “Developing a system for annotating takes practice. You might use the sample annotation key in the Annotating and Note-taking Reference Guide to model how to annotate the text.”

    • 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, Telling Stories, Section 2, Lesson 10 and Section 3, Lesson 7, students return to their independent readings to share with a peer, class, or the instructor. This continuous return to the texts creates a schedule for the students throughout the unit.

    • In the Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, Section 1, Lesson 12, students create a plan and pacing for the Independent Reading Program for the unit. Teacher notes provide information to help students establish appropriate pacing and a plan.

  • 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 Foundation Unit, How Do We Determine the Right Thing to Do?, students begin this process in Section One, Lesson 13 and complete a culminating task in Section 4, Lesson 4.

    • In the Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, Section 1, Lesson 12, students track their independent reading by using the Attending to Details, Analyzing Relationships, Evaluating Ideas, Extending Understanding), a Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool, a Summarizing Text Tool, or a Character (or other) Note-Taking Tool.

    • In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, Section 3, Lesson 9, students track their understanding of their independent reading by sharing and summarizing their findings thus far. Students also track their understanding by using the Forming Evidence-Based Tools.

• Independent reading procedures are included in the lessons.

  • In the Foundation Unit, How Do We Determine the Right Thing to Do?, 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 10 follow this procedure. In Section 3, Lesson 9, for example, 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, Things Fall Apart, materials include independent reading procedures in Section 1, Lesson 12; Section 2, Lesson 13; Section 3, Lesson 9; and Section 4, Lesson 7. In Section 2, Lesson 13, for example, students use the Extending Understanding tool to discuss the connections they found in their text with a peer.

  • In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, Section 1, Lesson 10, the materials outline the specific procedures for students to follow to create their Independent Reading Program, including:

    • “Review the suggested options for independent reading related to the unit, and also consider other texts that you might have wanted to read.”

    • Select a text to read independently or determine if you need to think more before making a choice.

The materials reviewed for Grade 10 meet the criteria for Indicator 1f.

The Grade 10 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 Foundation Unit, How Do We Determine the Right Thing to Do?, Section 1, Lesson 4, students read philosophical excerpts from Immanunel Kant and analyze these sentences through discussions using text-specific questions such as:

    • “What are the verbs in this sentence?

    • What action is being suggested as part of this categorical imperative?”

  • These tasks help students approach how to discuss ethics which is at the heart of the unit’s Central Question.

  • In the Development Unit, Hamilton, Section 4, Lesson 1, students work in groups and use the Comparison Organizational Frame to make comparisons between Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton and the historical figure represented in primary sources. Students use the Comparison Organizational Frame to choose comparative points and to summarize the evidence from each source.

  • In the Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, Section 1, Lesson 9, students pay attention to details that relate to the guiding question, “How will Okonkwo respond to being exiled to his mother’s village?” Students use evidence from the text to predict Okonkwo’s response when reading Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

  • In The Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, Section 2, Lesson 7, students read the poem “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats. Two questions students answer after carefully reading, rereading, and listening to the poem are:

    • How do the lines each of you chose connect to Things Fall Apart or other material from this unit?

    • Where does the poem diverge from the other materials we have discussed in this unit?

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

  • In the Foundation Unit, How Do We Determine the Right Thing to Do?, Section 1, Lesson 4, students read and analyze philosophical excerpts from Immanunel Kant. The Teaching Notes provide suggestions “about the author, concept, text, topic” to support instructors to prepare, execute, and differentiate learning when dealing with text-dependent tasks.

  • In the Development Unit, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Section 4, Lesson 2, students use the OPTIC strategy to analyze the artwork “Henrietta Lacks (HeLa): The Mother of Modern Medicine” by Kadir Nelson. The Teaching Notes provide support on how to approach an analysis of a visual text, suggesting that teachers have students read the Caption and Description section aloud and discuss each symbol presented in the artwork as a class.

  • In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, Section 1, Lesson 3, students read “A Framework for Ethical Decision Making” by the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Students consider questions such as:

    • “What are the five sources of ethical standards presented in the framework? How do these connect to previous reading and thinking you have done? Cite evidence from the texts to support your answers.”

  • Available Teaching Notes include, but are not limited to, guidance to support students in comprehending the text: “Rereading texts gives students another opportunity to comprehend complex text, and the question sets provide an additional access point to help students peel the layers of the text to arrive at a deeper understanding of its meaning.” The materials include additional notes to guide teachers on student support and differentiation.

  • In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, Section 2, Lesson 2, students read “What Would Happen If We Stopped Vaccinations?” by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to learn how to delineate an argument in an informational text by considering the perspective, position, supporting claims, and evidence. The Teaching Notes provide guidance for supporting students through the process by using the Delineating Arguments Tool.

  • In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, Section 3, Lesson 2, the Teacher Notes support teachers in their planning to keep students on task and focused on relevant text-based information by providing access questions to pose based on the topic of study students have selected. One such question is, “In what ways does the argument reflect issues about equal access, free of socioeconomic considerations, to healthcare, vaccinations, public health information, and opportunities for advocacy?”

  • In the Application Unit, What Do I Want to Research?, Section 2, Lesson 2, the Teaching Notes explain the importance of the Assessing Sources Reference Guide and provide suggestions for student grouping and materials needed in order to complete this activity. For example, the Teaching Notes suggest chart paper and markers in order to promote discussions in groups.

The materials reviewed for Grade 10 meet the criteria for Indicator 1g.

As stated in the 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 Foundation Unit, How Do We Determine the Right Thing to Do?, Section 1, Lesson 1, students engage in a small-group discussion of the unit’s Central Question by following specific discussion protocols, such as “[e]lect a speaker in your group to share your positions. Share your perspectives, group by group. Listen carefully to each group’s rationale.”

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories, Section 3, Lesson 1, students read selections from the works of Mark Twain, including “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” and “Advice to Youth,” and engage in a series of teacher-led, text-based discussions by following protocols to consider the narration and point-of-view of the text and to support their reasoning with evidence from the text.

  • In the Development Unit, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Section 2, Lesson 4, students work in small groups utilizing the Academic Discussion Reference Guide to examine the sequence and structure of Chapter 18 of _The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks _by Rebecca Skloot. The Teaching Notes in the teacher edition guides teachers to “[p]rompt [students] to revisit the discussion norms” and “to use the reflection checklist to monitor and assess their own participation.” In Section 5, Lesson 6, students engage in a whole-class discussion of their understanding of _The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks _by Rebecca Skloot. Students use the Academic Discussion Reference Guide to prepare for the discussion following protocols, such as, “[w]hen other participants share their own observations, conclusions, or claims but do not clearly support them, respectfully probe their thinking by asking questions such as, ‘What in the text led you to your thinking?’”

  • In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, Section 2, Lesson 3, students complete a class discussion of how the two ethical perspectives considered throughout the unit, the common ground and individual rights, play out in the arguments around vaccination as presented in “The Vaccine War.” This development unit is the final unit of the year and anticipates student competence to complete a class discussion using the Analyzing Ethical Issues Questions Set document. In Section 3, Lesson 5, students work in research teams and complete the following steps to engage in small-group and whole-group discussions: first, students present their draft questions, then collaboratively develop a research overview based on their questions, and finally share their findings with other student groups.

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

  • In the Development Unit, Alexander Hamilton, Section 1, Lesson 4, students read the lyrics and listen to a list of songs from Hamilton the Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter. Students track their listening on the Act One Notice and Wonder Note-Taking Tool, which provides protocols for developing students’ listening skills, including specific questions for students to answer as they listen to each song, such as “[w]hat does it make me think? What connections can I make?” In Section 3, Lesson 8, students use the Discussion Tool to prepare for a small group discussion to consider, “[w]hy did Lin-Manuel Miranda choose to have Aaron Burr be the narrator of Hamilton: An American Musical?” The Teaching Notes in the teacher edition include a prompt to “have a model Discussion tool completed so students see the final product and understand expectations.” Student instructions include, “[r]eview your classroom discussion norms, or review those found in the Academic Discussion Reference Guide before beginning the discussion.” The Discussion Tool also allots time for students to summarize and reflect on the discussion via prompts including, “[r]ate the quality of the discussion based on the criteria.”

  • In the Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, students engage in a variety of discussions as they read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and prepare to participate in a more formal Socratic Seminar discussion at the end of Section 2. In Section 1, Lesson 5, students use the Academic Discussion Reference Guide to “participate in a partner discussion on Okonkwo’s attitude towards what he perceives as feminine characteristics.” In Section 2, Lesson 2, students discuss why one country might colonize another and what the colonized might say about colonization. In Section 2, Lesson 6, students discuss specific word and syntax choices the author makes.

  • In the Application Unit, What Do I Want to Research?, Section 5, Lesson 4, students follow protocols included in the Application Unit Presentation Guide to prepare their presentations, including delineating specific speaking roles for each team member. According to the Guide, “[t]he synthesizer calls on members of the audience to ask questions, and members of the team volunteer to respond to each. Alternatively, the moderator might suggest which team member should field the question.” 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 Foundation Unit, How Do We Determine the Right Thing to Do?, Section 1, Lesson 2, students share their responses to the Moral Machine quiz experience. The Teaching Notes in the teacher edition suggest that teachers, “[c]onsider having students use conversation stems during discussion, such as those found in the Academic Discussion Reference Guide.” The Teaching Notes also prompt teachers to model how to use academic language in a discussion by scripting “what students say during the discussion, focusing on strong examples of academic vocabulary and discussion stems.”

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories, Section 1, Lesson 4, students complete the first reading of a short narrative excerpt by Sandra Cisneros to determine what the text says about storytelling and how it uses language to convey its meaning. The teacher edition guides teachers’ modeling to support students as follows: “The two passages indicated below from Sandra Cisneros’s ‘A House of My Own’ can be used to study any or all of the following language use concepts:

    • Person (shift from third to first)

    • Verb tense (shift from present to past)

    • Sentences and fragments (two fragments are used artistically in the passage)

    • Parallel structure (phrases beginning with “between” in the first sentence)

    • Building sentences with participial phrases (first sentence in the third paragraph)”

  • The two passages from Cisneros’s “A House of My Own” are as follows:

    • “Excerpt 1 (pp. xvi-xvii)—four paragraphs, beginning with “The young woman in the photo,” and ending with, “What we have in common is our sense that art should serve our communities.”

    • “Excerpt 2 (pp. xxii-xxiii)—two paragraphs, beginning with “The people I wrote about were real,” and ending with, “All the emotions my characters feel, good or bad, are mine.”

  • In the Development Unit, Alexander Hamilton, Section 4, Lesson 4, students participate in a class discussion about Lin-Manuel Miranda’s interpretation and portrayal of Alexander Hamilton. The teacher edition provides recommendations for modeling how students should use academic language to prepare for academic discussions, including “[s]cript what students say during the discussion, focusing on strong examples of academic vocabulary and discussion stems. Write sentence starters on the board to help students formulate responses. Write vocabulary on the board to encourage and support students to practice using new words during the discussion.”

The materials reviewed for Grade 10 meet the criteria for Indicator 1h.

The Grade 10 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, How Do We Determine the Right Thing to Do?, Section 4, Lesson 1, students present their pathway presentations to the whole class. The Teacher Edition provides extensive notes on the purpose and execution of these presentations. Notes include ideas on different ways to organize the presentations and suggest requirements to ensure variety and learning opportunities for all groups when watching the presentations, such as, “Summarize the class’s current conversation about ethics: what has been said, what needs to be said, and how does your exploration resonate with existing and needed information?” Teaching notes also suggest how teachers might use this early data to plan future units once students’ individual speaking and listening skills have been assessed formatively.

  • In the Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, Section 1, Lesson 5, students participate in a partner discussion on the main character, Okonkwo’s attitude toward perceived “feminine characteristics” in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Student instructions direct students to, “With a partner, use the Academic Discussion Reference Guide to participate in a discussion,” by responding to questions, including, “What is Okonkwo’s attitude about gender roles? In other words, is his attitude about characteristics he perceives as feminine the same for women as it is for men?” In Section 3, Lesson 2, students engage in a whole-class discussion to share thematic ideas they have sourced from the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and to address themes they agree and disagree with.

  • In the Development Unit, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Section 3, Lesson 9, students engage in a Socratic Seminar addressing the question, “In what ways did the history of Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cells change our world?” Teaching Notes in the Teacher Edition provide a series of additional questions to help facilitate the discussion; suggestions for student supports, such as the Academic Discussion Reference Guide and the Discussion Tool; and suggestions on how to model academic language.

  • In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, Section 3, Lesson 7, students complete the Section Diagnostic by delineating, presenting, and defending their proposed arguments in response to the Central Question: “How do we balance the common good with individual rights and personal liberty?” The Teacher Edition includes specific facilitation, monitoring, and instructional support for teachers, such as encouraging teachers to monitor students during their discussions to determine necessary support by “[scripting] what students say during the discussion, focusing on strong examples of academic vocabulary and discussion stems.”

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

  • In the Foundation Unit, How Do We Determine The Right Thing to Do?, students engage in a series of speaking and listening opportunities to prepare for the Culminating Task in which they work collaboratively with a research team to compose a five to seven-minute presentation on ethics and why ethical issues are complex. In Section 2, Lesson 1, students create a collaborative list as a whole-class to share their thoughts on the group pathways selected for the Culminating Activity. In Section 2, Lesson 3, students engage in a conversation with a partner on how the texts read in the section answer the following questions:

    • “Which text is the most appealing?

    • Which pathway is the most appealing?

    • Why are you interested in this text and pathway?”

  • In Section 3, Lesson 5, students review group norms with their research team and discuss action steps to successfully complete the Culminating Task, including “gather more sources, analyze sources, develop claims, and determine individual group member’s tasks.”

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories, Section 1, Lesson 5, students begin designing an oral presentation for a documentary or narrative nonfiction text they will present to the class. Students “discuss recent events or people from the news who might be interesting to write about in a nonfiction narrative, modeled after the style of Hampton Sides or another writer or documentarian.” Students then use the results of their discussion to plan their oral presentations, which take place in subsequent lessons. In Section 2, Lesson 4, students participate in a jigsaw discussion to present what they have learned from the reading “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner. The student instructions prompt students to “reference sections of the Discussion Tool as you consider how to participate productively.”

  • In the Development Unit, Alexander Hamilton, Section 5, Lesson 1, student trios choose three persons from a provided list to research in preparation for their presentations to the class; the people on the list are directly pulled from the material students are reading in this unit. Students may take on various roles in this presentation group, such as Time Keeper, Document Keeper, or Discussion Leader.

  • In the Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, Section 4, Lesson 6, students participate in a class-wide discussion regarding what they have learned from reading Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. The teacher facilitates this discussion using guiding questions such as, “What avenue of analysis did you take for your Culminating Task, and how did it relate to the Central Question?”

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

  • In the Development Unit, Alexander Hamilton, Section 2, Lesson 5, students use the Delineating Arguments Tool to identify claims and supporting evidence from Alexander Hamilton’s “Federalist No. 1,” working in small groups to discuss the questions:

    • “After delineating the argument, do you think Hamilton’s argument was effective? Why or why not?

    • What did you learn about Alexander Hamilton from reading this text?”

  • Subsequent to their small group discussions, students share their thoughts with the whole class.

  • In the Development Unit, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Section 4, Lesson 1, students compare the structure and style of nonfiction writing to that of visual art. Students work in groups to prepare one presentation slide for each of the two stylistic elements they are assigned. Students must provide textual evidence to demonstrate each of the stylistic elements pulling from the nonfiction texts they have read in the unit. Design elements include balance, contrast, emphasis, proportion, pattern, rhythm, unity, and variety.

  • In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, Section 1, Lesson 6, students develop an initial claim and text-based rationalization from their learning. Students report and discuss various perspectives and positions in response to the ethical dilemma. Student instructions are as follows: “In groups or as a class, present, explain, and justify the decisions you have made individually. Compare and debate the thinking and ethics behind your decisions.” In Section 2, Lesson 5, students work in small groups to delineate and discuss “The Ethics of Opting Out of Vaccination,” by Janet Stemwedel. During this lesson, students use evidence from the text to answer guiding questions such as, “What claims does Stemwedel make about why parents should have their children vaccinated? Cite details from the text to support your answer.”

  • In the Application Unit, What Do I Want to Research?, Section 3, Lesson 1, student teams collaborate on research projects in preparation for their final presentation. Student directions include, “We will connect our sources to our inquiry paths and select four key sources that each member of our team can evaluate. While we also might use additional sources in our final presentation, this list of credible, rich, relevant sources will give us a strong foundation for our work.” This opportunity gives students access to the skills and development of choosing rich and relevant sources directly associated with the material they have been reading in the unit. Student instructions also state, “Working as a team, use the Research Frame Tool, the general comments on your Potential Sources Tools, your annotations on the texts, and your Research Note-Taking Tool, connect each of your sources to its relevant inquiry path. Make notes about which texts link to which inquiry path.” In Section 3, Lesson 7, students meet with their research teams and review the Peer Review Tool to review feedback and determine necessary revisions. The materials direct students, “Reading and Analyzing New Sources: Your group closely reads new sources to develop relevant evidence-based claims.”

The materials reviewed for Grade 10 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 10 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, How Do We Determine the Right Thing To Do?, Section 2, Lesson 1, after reading an excerpt from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, students write a response based on a series of questions, including:

    • “Skloot tells us that the photograph’s ‘left corner [is] torn and patched together with tape.’ What does this detail tell us about the relationship between the author and this object?

    • Skloot juxtaposes the youth of this woman with the ‘tumor growing inside her.’ How does this combination of positive and negative descriptions characterize Henrietta?”

  • In Section 2, Lesson 4, students select and read one of several seed texts. Then, using the Attending to Details Tool, students answer the following question as an on-demand writing opportunity: What are the text’s central ideas?

  • In the Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, Section 1, Lesson 3, students complete a quick-write in their Learning Logs in response to a quote from Chapter 2 of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. The Teacher Edition provides instructional considerations such as guidance on how teachers should instruct students to use the guiding questions for the quick-write as well as suggesting that the teacher could provide an example of a quick-write to further guide students. In Section 2, Lesson 6, students draw conclusions about how the missionaries in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe increase their ranks within the Igbo villages. Students use their Learning Logs to record reasons and draw on evidence from the text to write “an evidence-supported conclusion about the nature of the relationships among the Igbo and the missionaries.” Students then discuss the influence of the missionaries by answering text-specific questions with group members.

• 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, Telling Stories, Section 4, Lesson 5, students complete a free-write to develop a dramatization of a news story they have selected. To guide their writing and/or illustrations of the narrative, students consider planning questions, including:

    • “How can I tell the story in a vivid and memorable way?

    • How can I tell the story through people’s own words?”

  • Students then review, revise, and polish their historical narratives in preparation for presenting them to other students. The Teaching Notes in the Teacher Edition provide guidance to model how to review and revise the support and development of ideas using a strong and weak model.

  • In the Development Unit, Alexander Hamilton, students write a personal essay reflecting on the creative process they used to write their original song lyrics. In Section 5, Lessons 1 through 9, students engage with primary sources to research, analyze, and explore various research questions to create and present song lyrics of their own. In Section 6, Lesson 2, students develop a central claim that responds to the following question: How does the use of primary and secondary sources affect modern storytelling? In Section 6, Lesson 4, students engage in peer review groups to address the coherence of their essays by completing a series of tasks, including:

    • “Read each paragraph and write a brief note about the function of the paragraph on the back or in the margin.

    • Arrange the paragraphs in the order they should appear in the essay.

    • Highlight coherence markers and transitions that helped you determine the order.”

    • “If there are paragraphs for which you cannot determine the order, mark them with an asterisk.

    • Once you have the paragraphs in the proper order, go ahead and number them.”

• In the Development Unit, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Section 4, Lesson 7, students complete their Section Diagnostic in response to the following prompt: “Write a multiparagraph response that compares how The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and one of the companion texts address one of the following central issues: race, ethics, class, and science. Use the Section 4 Diagnostic Checklist to guide your writing.” After completing the multiparagraph response, students use the Section 4 Diagnostic Checklist as a guide when rereading their draft response. “Ask yourself the following questions:

  1. Does my response contain a strong central claim?

  2. Does my response include relevant details and evidence from each text to develop your ideas and analysis.

  3. Is my response organized into paragraphs that establish a logical, coherent, and well-developed analysis.

  4. Does my response clearly communicate my analysis through effective word choice, sentence and paragraph development, and transitions among ideas?

  5. Does my response use proper conventions of usage, mechanics, and punctuation.”

• In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, Section 5, Lesson 1, students “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 in public health.” Throughout the process, students create, revise, and edit multiple drafts before final submission of their argument or argumentative presentation.

• In the Application Unit, What Do I Want To Research?, students complete a Culminating Activity that is based on ideas developed throughout the school year. In the Development Unit Alexander Hamilton, Section 6, Lesson 5, for example, students discuss possible themes to explore in the Application Unit’s Culminating Task and complete the Application Unit Potential Topics Tool by identifying the unit, central question, and questions or subtopics to explore. Subsequently, in the Application Unit, Section 1, Lesson 1, students work in research teams to review the topics they explored in earlier units and use the Application Unit Potential Topics tool to discuss a series of discussion questions, such as, “What topic, angle, or text from this unit interested me most? Why?” and “What questions do I have about this topic that remain unanswered?” When students finish discussing as a group they complete the Exploring a Topic tool individually and write a brief account of the discussion that took place and what they know about the topic.

• Materials include digital resources where appropriate.

  • In the Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, Section 4, Lesson 1, students organize their ideas before writing an analysis of one of the characters from the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. To prepare, students use the digital resource Things Fall Apart: Internal and External Factors Organizer that allows students to organize their ideas before drafting and includes guidance for students to consider when planning, such as a section prompting students to analyze the figurative language used to describe the character.

  • In the Development Unit, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Section 2, Lesson 2, students use digital writing tools to develop their ideas. The Forming Evidence-Based Claims tool, for example, prompts students to locate details from a text, capture their analyses of what they found, explain connections among details, and state a conclusion based on their analysis and details recorded.

  • In the Development Unit, Ethics of Public Health Decisions, Section 5, Lesson 1, students begin preparing for the Culminating Task to write an argument in response to the Central Question: How do we balance the common good with individual rights and personal liberty? Students draw on notes from texts and digital resources they have analyzed throughout the unit, including, but not limited to, “The Vaccine War” by Frontline, “The Public Good Versus Individual Freedom” by Michael Gerson, and “Freedom: The Harm Principle” by Harry Shearer and Nigel Warburton.

  • 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 3, Lesson 4, students build on their previous work using the Forming-Evidence Based Claims Tool and complete an Organizing Evidence Tool for a first claim to begin to develop their main conclusions about an inquiry path for their presentations.

The materials reviewed for Grade 10 meet the criteria for Indicator 1j.

Grade 10 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 Ethics of Public Health Decisions, Section 4, Lesson 1, students “determine the order in which they want to develop claims, and consider both deductive and inductive organizational models and arguments that are built almost exclusively as counterarguments to an existing argument.” This preparation is for the culminating writing task, an argumentative essay with the following prompt: “Write an evidence-based argument in response to a complex ethical debate in the realm of public health.” In Section 5, Lesson 1, students begin to write an argumentative essay about a public health issue. The Section Overview in the student-facing materials includes the following guidance: “We will 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 in public health.” In Section 5, Lesson 2, students write one or more paragraphs that present and explain their argumentative claims, with supporting evidence and appropriate citations, to the Central Question: “How do we balance the common good with individual rights and personal liberty?” The student materials prompt students to consider “what information, examples, or statistics you will use and cite to support the claim” for each claim.

    • In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, Section 5, Lesson 3, students complete a draft of their argumentative essay that addresses the question: “In light of personal beliefs, individual rights, and social justice, how should we address the common good as it relates to topics of public health?”

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

    • In the Development Unit, Alexander Hamilton, Section 6, Lesson 2, students consider the prompt, “How do storytellers use primary sources?” as they draft a controlling idea to address the Culminating Task to write an explanatory essay. The student-facing materials direct students to “Express your controlling idea about your topic in one to two sentences that can be used to direct and organize your essay. This will be your essay’s controlling idea, an expression of the understanding you have developed by examining your topic.”

    • In the Development Unit, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, students read widely and write purposefully in preparation for the expository explanatory writing prompt: “Evaluate and explain which text is the most compelling in relating the story of Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cells.” In Section 2, Lesson 1, students answer the Central Question: How do we tell someone else’s story? Students also answer a series of framing questions to prepare for the expository Culminating Task. In Section 5, Lesson 1, students begin drafting an explanatory essay to evaluate the text set about Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cells. The Section Overview provides the following description regarding the explanatory writing activity: “We will write an expository essay that evaluates which text is the most compelling in relating the story of Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cells.” In Section 5, Lesson 3, students write an explanatory essay “comparing the portrayal of Henrietta Lacks’s story in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks with its portrayal in one of the unit’s companion texts.”

  • Students have opportunities to engage in narrative writing.

    • In the Foundation Unit, How Do We Determine the Right Thing To Do?, Section 4, Lesson 2, students write a reflective narrative to discuss their process of research. The student-facing materials provide the following information about the reflective narrative: “A reflective narrative is focused on a short event or series of events in the writer’s life. Most importantly, it shares how the writer has grown as a result of an experience.” The Culminating Task includes an individual reflection in which 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.”

    • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories, students prepare to write a fictional, personal, or historical narrative that addresses the Culminating Task prompt: “Write an original narrative that presents an interesting story from your life, your imagination, current events, or history.” In Section 4, Lesson 4, students storyboard, relate, and describe in a nonfiction narrative a list of events as encountered in the articles “Points of Impact,” an excerpt from Americana: Dispatches From the New Frontier, or “The Birdman Drops In” by Hampton Sides. In Section 5, Lesson 8, students complete a draft of their narrative for the Culminating Task based on three options:

      • “Option 1 - Personal Narrative or Memoir: Recall an experience that was important in your life. Tell the story of that experience and its meaning to you so that it comes to life for your readers.

      • Option 2 - Original Story or Folk Tale: Combine your experiences and imagination with the art and craft of storytelling to tell a fictional story that is entertaining and meaningful.

      • Option 3 - Nonfiction or Historical Narrative: Identify a contemporary or historical event or character and use new-journalism narrative techniques to tell the story of the event or character in an original and engaging way.”

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

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories, students consider a text set focused on narrative voice in preparation for the Culminating Task to “Write an original narrative that presents an interesting story from your life, your imagination, current events, or history.” In Section 3, Lesson 1, students read “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, “A Rose for Emily’’ by William Faulkner, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” by Mark Twain, “Corn Pone Opinions,” an excerpt from Europe and Elsewhere by Mark Twain, and “The War Prayer,” an excerpt from Europe and Elsewhere by Mark Twain.

  • In the Development Unit, Alexander Hamilton, Section 2, Lesson 11, students write an explanatory response to compare the interpretation of the view of slavery in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton The Revolution to primary and secondary sources reflecting Alexander Hamilton’s view of slavery. This writing task is anchored in using information and evidence from the text set.

  • In the Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, students write a character analysis of Okonkwo from the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe as part of their Culminating Task. The novel anchors the unit as students participate in a series of on-demand writing that helps build the skills they would need for the Culminating Task to write a character analysis of Okonkwo. In Section 1, Lesson 7, for example, students complete quick-writes comparing Okonkwo to his friend Obierika.

  • In the Development Unit, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Section 1, Lesson 8, students write sentences that mimic the structure, style, grammar, and punctuation of sentences in the mentor text The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. Students complete a close reading and analysis of Skloot’s sentences, analyzing the diction and sentence structure. The student materials include the purpose of the task: “Reading like a writer involves studying how an author writes and determining why the author makes specific writing choices at the paragraph and sentence level. Understanding what those writing choices mean and deconstructing how the author made those choices can help you emulate those choices in your own writing practice and diversify your range of writing strategies.”

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

  • The materials for this grade level, in particular, the unit Culminating Tasks, provide sufficient writing opportunities across the year. Students complete narratives in the Foundation Unit, How Do We Determine the Right Thing to Do?, and in the Development Unit, Telling Stories. In addition, students complete forms of informative/explanatory writing in the Development Units, Things Fall Apart, Alexander Hamilton, and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Finally, students engage in argumentative writing products in the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, and in the Application Unit, What Do I Want to Research?

  • 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. In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, for example, students practice writing an argument, a skill applicable both to the presentation portion of the Application Unit Culminating Task and to any of the topics students may be interested in researching further. 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 10 meet the criteria for Indicator 1k.

The Grade 10 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 Foundation Unit, How Do We Determine the Right Thing to Do?, Section 3, Lesson 2, students use the Foundation Unit Pathway Texts Handout to select a text to examine in their pathway groups using the Attention to Details Tool to cite details that answer the question, “What are the central ideas of the text?” Students then describe how the details relate to the central question and pose questions to deepen their understanding. Students then use the Evaluation Ideas Tool to cite, analyze, and evaluate evidence from the pathway text they selected from the previous activity.

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories, Section 2, Lesson 2, students read “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and answer a series of evidence-based questions, including:

    • “What details, descriptive phrases, and dialogue from the story does Jackson use to create an atmosphere of routine and normalcy?

    • What details, descriptive phrases, and dialogue from the story does Jackson use to create an atmosphere of foreboding and to foreshadow the horrifying climax?”

  • In the Development Unit, Alexander Hamilton, Section 2, Lesson 11, the Section 2 Diagnostic instructs students to “Compare Miranda’s interpretation of Hamilton’s views of slavery with what you found in your reading of primary and secondary sources.” Students write in response to the text Hamilton the Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter. The student-facing materials prompt students to “Support your response with evidence from the musical and multiple texts.” Students utilize a self-evaluative Section 2 Diagnostic Checklist by answering questions, such as “How well do I develop and clearly communicate meaningful and defensible claims that represent valid, evidence-based analysis?”

  • In the Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, Section 1, Lesson 7, students perform a quick-write to examine the juxtaposition of characters in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. After completing the quick write, students improve their drafts by developing a central claim. Student-facing instructions direct students to “Develop at least two supporting claims for your main claim. For each claim, provide evidence from the text. Then, analyze the evidence by explaining how the evidence supports the supporting claim and your central claim.” Then, in Lesson 10, students practice this skill in the Section Diagnostic by responding to the following prompt: “Write a multi-paragraph analysis of the external influences on Okonkwo’s character. In your response, consider how Okonkwo’s character is shaped or influenced by his father.”

  • In the Development Unit, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Section 3, Lesson 4, students practice writing analytical statements about the author’s craft as evidenced in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. To analyze one of the central issues in Chapters 29–30, students use the Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool that prompts students to consider “[w]hat central claims does Skloot make about _____ in Chapter _____, and how does she present them?” The tool prompts students to attend to details, emphasizing the importance of “searching for and annotating details that relate to the questions or prompt.”

  • In the Application Unit, What Do I Want to Research?, Section 3, Lesson 2, student research teams continue to read their four, self-selected key sources and utilize their Research Note-Taking Tools to collect “the details, ideas, information, or evidence captured during research that relate to the subtopic, idea, or question,” and to “Explain why the details are important and how the notes relate to the idea.” Students then exchange their Research Note-Taking Tool notes with a partner pair to “Write down your own comments, questions, and impressions of their notes on the texts,” and then return the notes to their partners to review the comments and change or create new key words, subtopics, or inquiry questions.

• 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, How Do We Determine the Right Thing to Do?, 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, Alexander Hamilton, Section 2, Lesson 2, students read “From Alexander Hamilton to The Royal Danish American Gazette, 6 September 1772,” by Alexander Hamilton and use the Character Note-Taking Tool to analyze Hamilton’s character by citing evidence from the letter and explaining what the details suggest about Hamilton.

  • In the Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, Section 2, Lesson 6, students select their own mentor sentence from the text, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and answer the following text dependent questions of the quote:

    • “What mood does the author create in this sentence? How do you know?

    • What tone is conveyed by the author in this sentence? How do you know?

    • How does the sentence contribute to your understanding of the ideas in the text?”

  • Students also read the article “Igbo Culture and History” by Don Ohadike and can call upon information from this article to develop their responses to the mentor sentence.

  • In the Development Unit, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Section 2, Lesson 2, students read Chapter 14 of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and use their Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool to answer the question, “What writing techniques does Skloot use to present ________’s perspective on the central issue of ____ Chapter 14?” Students use the characters Gey, Berg, or Skloot to focus their analysis on answering the question presented and “Find relevant evidence from the text, analyze the evidence, and explain the connections between the evidence and analysis in order to form a claim about your selected topic.”

  • In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, Section 4, Lesson 1, after students read “Measles, Mumps, and Religious Freedom: Mandatory Vaccination and the Limits of Parental Rights” by Christopher O. Tollefson, the Delineating Arguments Tool directs students to find “a claim made by the author as a cornerstone of his argument, a summation of an opposing claim that might be made by someone with a different view of the issues and ethics, and a counterclaim made by Tollefson in response to an opposing claim or argument. Note the pattern of claim statements in the argument.” Students use textual evidence from the article to respond to the prompt: “Having read and analyzed the argument, think further about its perspective, purpose, and audience. Draft a statement that summarizes the ethical position Tollefsen is taking.”

  • In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, Section 5, Lesson 2, students formulate claims to develop their analyses of the texts read throughout the unit. The student-facing materials prompt students to develop claims by providing supporting evidence: “We will draft one or more paragraphs that present and explain our claims and then develop and support our claims by citing evidence from our research and other arguments.”

  • 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 “[d]etermine 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 10 meet the criteria for Indicator 1m.

The Grade 10 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 Foundation Unit, How Do We Determine the Right Thing to Do?, Section 2, Lesson 6, students collaborate in teams to create group research proposals. Teaching Notes in the Teacher Edition guide teachers to “Remind students to reference their Vocabulary Journals when composing their drafts.”

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories, Section 1, Lesson 3, teachers provide words from the unit Vocabulary List to support instruction of the year-long vocabulary development component. Teaching Notes in the Teacher Edition describe the role of Vocabulary Lists and Vocabulary Journals as follows:

    • “Suggested vocabulary words can be found in the Vocabulary List for each major text in the unit. The Vocabulary List is not comprehensive in nature—each student will need support with different words. For this reason, students should be encouraged to add unfamiliar or interesting words or concepts to their Vocabulary Journals as they encounter them.”

  • Students use the Vocabulary in Context Tool to develop their vocabulary skills when they encounter unfamiliar words. Teaching Notes in the Teacher Edition articulate:

    • “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.”

  • To support student understanding of unfamiliar words by examining the context, the Vocabulary in Context Tool provides prompts such as, “Does the author use any words to indicate the unknown word has a nearby synonym (i.e., a word that has the same meaning as the unknown word)?”

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories, Section 2, Lesson 2, students read an essay, “Memory and Delusion” by Shirley Jackson. Materials include a unit vocabulary list which includes the academic vocabulary word conviction for students to reference. As students consider the author’s writing process, guiding questions during the lesson, such as “How does Jackson’s choice of words and examples reveal her perspective?,” direct students to consider the term conviction within the text and provide a foundation for consideration in other contexts.

  • In the Development Unit, Alexander Hamilton, Section 1, Lesson 3, students review important concepts or challenging words from Act 1 of Hamilton: An American Musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda, paying attention to both word use and meaning in context. The Teaching Notes in the Teacher Edition state:

    • ‘Suggested vocabulary words can be found in the Vocabulary List for each major text in the unit. To help students understand the differences among types of vocabulary, the list is divided into three columns: Academic (Tier 2), Content (Tier 3), and ELA Concepts.”

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

  • In the Development Unit, Alexander Hamilton, Section 1, Lesson 3, students examine a list of academic and domain-specific language from Hamilton the Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter. Students use the Vocabulary in Context tool to complete the first three words presented on the vocabulary list by addressing the following questions:

    • “What does the context suggest Miranda means when using the word? What is its connotation, and how does that compare with a dictionary definition?

    • Why is this word and its meaning important in this part of the text?

    • How might I use this word in my own thinking, speaking, and writing?”

  • The materials explain that students will record these words in their Vocabulary Journals as they will return to these terms later in the unit as students approach the Culminating Task. In Section 4, Lesson 4, for example, students return to their Vocabulary Journal to include words they would like to use in the Section Diagnostic.

  • In The Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, Section 1, Lesson 3, students unpack and examine the academic word prosperous before reading chapter 2 of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, where the word appears. Previously, students encountered the word prosperous in the Foundation Unit, How Do We Determine the Right Thing to Do?, when reading Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

  • In the Development Unit, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Section 2, Lesson 2, students encounter the academic vocabulary word conviction when reading Chapter 14 of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. The unit vocabulary list is available as a reference. During the activity, students “pay attention to word use and meaning in the text’s context. We will also write down important terms in our Learning Logs, so that we can refer to them later in the unit.”

  • In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, Section 1, Lesson 2, students work in groups to complete a close reading of two government documents: “The Declaration of Independence” and “The Bill of Rights.” Teachers pre-teach vocabulary, such as redress, and students develop a deeper understanding of this vocabulary word and other vocabulary words across both of these texts.

• 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, How Do We Determine the Right Thing to Do?, Section 1, Lesson 1, when students learn new vocabulary, the Teaching Notes in the Teacher Edition include the following guidance:

    • “Students track their words in a Vocabulary Journal to keep track of words and their definitions throughout the unit. Vocabulary Journals play an important role in building new vocabulary. The word dilemma provides an opportunity for students to work with morphology.”

  • Students define the word dilemma in the Vocabulary Journals they will keep throughout the unit and watch a TED Talk by Patrick Lin titled “The Ethical Dilemma of Self-Driving Cars” as a way to introduce the concept of an ethical dilemma. Students then answer a series of questions with a partner:

    • “What potential problems do self-driving cars present?

    • How are the decisions made by humans and self-driving cars different?

    • According to reports from 2015, self-driving cars could prevent 300,000 deaths per decade from traffic accidents. Other benefits include more productivity, less traffic, and environmental improvements. Considering the ethical dilemma the video names and these potential benefits, are self-driving cars worth it? Why or why not?”

  • In the Development Unit, Things Fall Apart, Section 2, Lesson 3, students “examine both academic (Tier 2), content (Tier 3) words in this activity.” The Teacher Edition suggests specific attention be paid to the following academic vocabulary words: “quinine (Para. 1), facilitate (Para. 1), lucrative (Para. 2), retain (Para. 3).” Materials also provide specific strategies for students to ensure they understand these terms, such as encouraging students to draw picture representations of the words.

  • In the Development Unit, The Ethics of Public Health Decisions, Section 2, Lesson 3, students complete their reading of “New Media, Old Messages: Themes in the History of Vaccine Hesitancy and Refusal” by Jason Schwartz. Before reading, students encounter the academic word refuting in the vocabulary list for the unit. Students then read the word in the context.

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

  • In The Development Unit, Telling Stories, Section 1, Lesson 9, Activity 1, student-facing materials read, “Access and read the ‘Key Concepts’ section of the Section 1 Key Concepts, Vocabulary, and Ideas Handout for Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller.” Students answer a series of vocabulary related questions, including:

    • “What does the context suggest Silko means when using the word?

    • What is its connotation, and how does that compare with a dictionary definition of denotation?’

  • Students then include the words in their own writing in response to reading the passage.

  • In the Development Unit, Telling Stories, Section 2, Lesson 3, students refer to their Vocabulary Journals to cement their understanding of key words from the texts they have read in the unit thus far. Students accelerate their learning by using vocabulary for reading, speaking, and writing tasks such as the following activities outlined in the Teacher Edition:

    • “Write example and nonexample sentences that use the new words.

    • Use the words in a discussion.

    • Complete a Word Map for one of the words. Complete an Open Sort or Closed Sort for categories of words.”

  • In the Development Unit, Alexander Hamilton, Section 3, Lesson 8, students engage in a small group discussion answering the guiding question: Why did Lin-Manuel Miranda choose to have Aaron Burr be the narrator of Hamilton: An American Musical? Students use the Discussion Tool to prepare for the class discussion. Student-facing instructions direct students to use significant words from their Vocabulary Journal 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 Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Section 4, Lesson 1, students encounter terms referencing art and design elements, including form, space, texture, balance, and contrast. Student-facing materials include the following directions:

    • “For each word, create a one-slide presentation that includes the term and definition, three visual examples of the term, and the term used in a sentence.”

  • Students then present their slide to the class and record the definitions their group collected in their Vocabulary Journals.

  • In the Application Unit, What Do I Want to Research?, Section 2, Lesson 1, students work towards the unit Culminating Task by using the Application Unit: Research Frame Tool to organize their research as well as to identify and collect vocabulary relevant to the necessary reading, speaking, and writing tasks. 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.