English Instructional Plan – Multi-day Lesson with Paired Passages “How do Social Pressures Impact our Decisions?” 

In this unit, students will delve deeper into nonfiction with a novel study titled, I Am Malala.  The students will apply nonfiction comprehension skills and close reading strategies to analyze and explore the challenges of an adolescent girl from a different culture analyze while reading.  The students will show mastery by completing a Persuasive Writing Performance Based Assessment. 

In this unit, students read the novel, Lyddie, by Katherin Patterson.  Students will read a variety of fiction and nonfiction through the novel to make connections between characters and settings.  Additionally, students will engage in character analysis to help them understand author's conventions.  Finally, students will engage in vocabulary study to help them understand the connotations and denotations of words as well as enhance reading comprehension.

In this unit, students read fiction, nonfiction, and poetry selections about acts of courage, big and small, ordinary and extraordinary.  Throughout the unit students will assume the role of a blogger and write expository essay profiles about the people and characters they read about and their acts of courage.  This work will be curated in a Google Site that will serve as the Performance Based Assessment. 

In this unit, students will read the novel, A Long Walk to Water, analyzing characterization, plot, and setting in small groups.   Students will read informational text and watch videos about The Lost Boys of Sudan and the water shortage crisis in Sudan to give them background knowledge regarding major events in the novel.   A journaling activity will be used to help students respond to events in the novel.   The unit will culminate with a two voice poem performance based assessment.

In this lesson, the art of blackout poetry is used to demonstrate how word choice estabishes an author's tone. Blackout poetry is a creative way for students to take a selected work and change the tone by selecting and pulling specific words from the text. Students see how choosing words and manipulating text impacts the tone and can change the meaning of a text.