Ninth Grade - ELA
• Literacy
1: Semester 1
Unit 1: Lord of the Flies
Lesson 1
The Call
The material explicitly states that "Lord of the Flies was written by William Golding as he grappled to find the root causes of the violence he saw during active duty in World War II," and further notes that "As Golding sought to explore the root causes of violence in society, he looked to human nature in its rawest form." Students are prompted to contemplate questions such as which aspects of human nature will prevail and to predict how the island may turn from a utopia into a dystopia, which directs attention to the question the author sought to address. Homework and discussion prompts ask students to consider why Golding wrote the novel and what themes or questions it explores about human behavior and survival.
Lesson 3
Paths in the Jungle
Students are directed to read and annotate an explanatory article titled "Why Is Dystopia So Appealing to Young Adults?" and to "identify the author's thesis and supporting points." The Student Activity Page explicitly includes a space labeled "Author's main argument/thesis" and columns for "Key points that support the thesis" and "Your reaction to the thesis." The Parent Plan states students will record the author's main arguments and then evaluate the writer's view and decide their own opinion.
Unit 2: World Religions (600 BCE - 600 CE)
Lesson 7
Christianity
Students are asked to read at least two articles on scientific explorations of the life and times of Jesus (Option 1) and to write summaries of each source in the provided boxes. The activity prompts students to answer reflective questions such as "What are some reasons scholars might want to try to determine whether or not the events detailed in religious scriptures can be proven scientifically?" and asks them to analyze the meanings of these studies for scholars and for Christians. The Parent Plan and activity instructions explicitly direct students to research, summarize, and reflect on secular archaeological and historical accounts.
Unit 5: Nonfiction
Lesson 7
Life in England
The Activity 1 prompts ask students to compare the book and the filmmaker's account and explicitly ask, "What is the filmmaker's focus? How does his focus differ from Malala's focus in the book?" The teacher notes also state that the filmmaker "tends to focus a lot on Malala's father" and that he "wonders what effect the media coverage of Malala had in her attack," which students are asked to consider and discuss. Several questions ask students to explain why a viewer of the film would have a different impression of Malala's mother than a reader of the book and to evaluate in what ways the film and book are effective in telling the story.
Lesson 8
Civil Rights
Students read substantial portions of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and answer questions that ask them to identify the four basic steps to a nonviolent campaign, requiring them to extract and list a described procedure. Students evaluate King's rhetoric by answering which argument they found most persuasive and explaining why, and they complete a double-entry diary on "Just and Unjust Laws" to articulate King's definition and their own responses. Students also identify the historical figures King references and write descriptions to explain how those references support his argument, practicing analysis of authorial purpose.
Lesson 9
Civil Disobedience
The Parent Plan Skills explicitly list "Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose." Multiple activities ask students to "analyze excerpts" from Thoreau and King, mark similar phrases, and "reflect on the areas of agreement" and disagreement between the authors. A wrapping-up question asks whether Thoreau "advocate[s] for the eventual overthrow of the American government" and directs students to cite evidence from the text.
Lesson 11
A Boy's Story
Students are asked directly: "According to the video, what does the author say the book tries to explain?" and the provided answer notes that Beah says the book explains how the violence of the war affected his culture and how a gentle boy could commit terrible acts. Students are also prompted to "consider what others can learn from the author's experiences" and to compare the memoir's style to I Am Malala, which invites attention to author purpose and perspective.
Lesson 15
A New Life
Students are asked to "determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose" (Parent Plan Skills). The Comparing Memoirs activity directs students to answer questions such as "What do you think was the author's purpose for writing the memoir?" and "What do you think the author wants to persuade the readers into understanding/believing?", requiring students to analyze authors' persuasive aims and style. Students also discuss whether the details each book included were appropriate for the author's purpose and audience, practicing linking rhetorical choices to purpose.
Final Project
Expository Essay
Students are required to develop a focused research question and to create a thesis that explicitly answers that question; they complete a "What's My Question?" activity and a K-N-S chart to define the inquiry that guides their writing. Students analyze audience and purpose for their own expository essay, locate and evaluate sources, and are asked to paraphrase, summarize, or quote source material (including noting step-by-step accounts in a source) to support their points. The curriculum asks students to turn source material into paragraphs and to document sources, which requires them to read explanatory or procedural texts and extract key facts.
Semester Exam
Semester Exam
Students are asked to review the Nonfiction unit and may be asked to "explain how Malala Yousafzai and Ishmael Beah have used their experiences to try to improve others' lives," to explain "how Thoreau's writing influenced Martin Luther King, Jr.," and to relate how terms like "war crimes" apply to Wiesel's and Beah's experiences. Discussion prompts (Part IV) ask students to reflect on why authors write about the horrors of war and how authors' transparency leads readers to learn valuable lessons. The exam includes short-answer and discussion tasks that require students to analyze authors' purposes and the effects of nonfiction writing on readers.
2: Semester 2
Unit 1: Ender's Game
Lesson 12
Campbell's Comparisons
Students watch a video that summarizes Joseph Campbell's 12-step "hero's journey" and record the 12 steps in their journals. Students choose six of those steps and use an activity sheet to describe parallels between those explanatory steps and events in Ender's Game. Students also read a Forbes article (homework) that summarizes leadership lessons from Ender's Game, which is an explanatory nonfiction text they will later work with.
Unit 3: Informational Texts
Lesson 1
What Are Informational Texts?
Students answer homework Question #2 asking why Stewart Wolf wanted to study the residents of Roseto, which requires identifying the research question about unusually low rates of heart disease. Students answer Question #3 and #4 about researchers' initial hypotheses (diet, exercise, genetics, region) and the study's conclusion that a close-knit community protected residents from outside stress. Students read Gladwell's use of other researchers' studies in Outliers and watch his TED talk, connecting his storytelling to presentation of research findings.
Lesson 2
Outliers
Students are asked in Activity 1 to consider "What purpose, therefore, does the section have in the book?" and to explore how Gladwell uses analogy and other strategies to clarify the term "outlier." The answer key directs students to identify the Roseto study as an analogy and to explain how Gladwell is applying that study to his investigation of success (looking beyond individuals to culture, family, background). The skills list explicitly includes determining an author's point of view or purpose and analyzing how the author unfolds an analysis or series of ideas.
Lesson 3
The Matthew Effect
Students are asked to evaluate the charts the author uses and create an alternative visual representation of the birth-month data (Activity 1, Option 1), and to sketch a graphic that would replace or supplement the TIMSS-study paragraph (Activity 1, Option 2). The lesson prompts students to consider how diagrams and graphics help readers visualize relationships (Ideas to Think About) and includes a skill to "translate quantitative or technical information expressed in words in a text into visual form" in the Parent Plan.
Lesson 4
The 10,000 Hour Rule
The Parent Plan lists as a targeted skill: "Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose." The Activity 1 questions ask students to explain why Bill Joy is omitted in Section 2, analyze how the three sections are structured, and how Section 3 adds to understanding of the 10,000-hour idea. The Wrapping Up and discussion prompts ask students to decide whether Gladwell credits talent, opportunities, or luck, and the homework asks students to keep in mind Gladwell's goals when visually representing how examples tie to the rest of the chapter.
Lesson 5
Harlan, Kentucky
Students are asked to read the section that describes the University of Michigan experiment and to "Explain the University of Michigan experiment and what it found," which requires them to identify the experiment's setup and results. Students also answer questions about the chapter's explanations (e.g., defining a "culture of honor" and describing patterns of violence), showing engagement with the explanatory material Gladwell provides about cultural legacies.
Lesson 6
The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes
Students answer directed questions about the purpose of specific sections (e.g., Activity 2 asks "What is the purpose of the description of the wrecked military convoy?" and asks how descriptions contribute to understanding). The Homework prompt asks students to explain why Gladwell structured the chapter as he did and to predict the ethnic/cultural issue—prompting students to define the question the author seeks to address. Activities 4 and 5 require students to identify Gladwell's explanatory claims, evaluate objections from a critic, and judge whether Gladwell's explanations and responses are convincing, while the Parent Plan explicitly lists determining an author's point of view or purpose and analyzing how ideas are developed as targeted skills.
Lesson 7
Rice Paddies and Math Tests
Students are asked in the Wrapping Up section to judge whether the author's main goal was to inform, persuade, or both, prompting consideration of authorial purpose. The Skills list instructs students to determine a central idea, analyze its development, and analyze how the author unfolds an analysis or series of ideas, which requires examining why the author explains topics and how explanations are presented. Activities and homework require students to explain why Asian students learn counting/fractions faster and to create an infographic that condenses or clarifies explanatory material from the chapter.
Lesson 8
With Malice Toward None
Students read and analyze Lincoln's "Second Inaugural Address" and are asked to identify rhetorical strategies Lincoln used to strike a unifying tone and to preserve the Union. The Parent Plan explicitly asks students to "determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text" and to analyze how rhetoric advances that purpose. Student activities require identifying quotes, naming literary devices (parallelism, antithesis, allusion), and explaining the intended effect, and homework asks students to pick sentences that show the speech's background, main message, and forward-looking statement.
Lesson 9
Writing about History
Students analyze how an author organizes facts and communicates purpose in the homework on "The Search for the Site of the Sand Creek Massacre," answering questions about the subtitles, organization, and what evidence the author provides to show a desire to find and memorialize the site. Students compare secondary-source claims to supporting primary-source testimony on the Student Activity Page and the Parent Plan shows students matching specific primary excerpts to secondary claims (e.g., flags, who was killed). Students read Chivington's testimony and complete a "Primary Falsehoods" activity that asks them to identify motives and inaccuracies, and the Parent Plan lists skills to analyze structure, reasoning, evidence, and author point of view.
Lesson 10
Science Writing
The Parent Plan skills list explicitly includes "Analyze the author's purpose in providing an explanation…" and several student-facing skills (e.g., "Determine how an author explains or clarifies a scientific phenomenon" and "Assess the extent to which the reasoning and evidence an author presents supports his or her scientific analysis"). The student activity page asks students to explain how the author supports two specific claims, identify the methods the author uses to explain a term, and evaluate audience appropriateness, which requires students to examine the author's explanations and supporting details.
Lesson 11
Technical Writing
In Activity 1, students are instructed to "take on the role of technical writer to discover the purpose(s) of the information in the paragraph" and to annotate the passage to identify main topics, highlight vocabulary, and mark areas for lists or images. The passage students work with is an explanatory text about hydroponics and coco coir processing, so students practice analyzing an explanatory passage and its organizational needs. The glossary and audience guidance ask students to assume a general audience and identify terms that need defining, which requires considering why the author explains certain information for a particular reader.
Final Project
Argumentative Research Essay
The lesson asks students to evaluate the credibility and purpose of websites, including explicit guidance to ask whether a site's purpose is educational/informational or trying to argue or sell something. Students are asked to use the "Present the Evidence" activity to record source quotes/ideas and reflect on what the evidence makes them think, which requires them to consider authors' viewpoints and motives. The lesson also prompts students to notice when sources contradict one another and to treat those contradictions as arguments and counterarguments.
Unit 4: Drama
Semester Exam
Semester Exam
Students are asked to review the Informational Texts unit and to understand types of informational writing (history, science, technical) and common features of informational writing. In Part IV question F, students must evaluate Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers as primarily informational or persuasive and consider the chapter "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes," including the rhetorical methods (ethos, logos, pathos) Gladwell uses and the criticisms of his explanation. Other items ask students to explain Gladwell's claims (e.g., cultural factors in plane crashes) and to summarize explanations from Outliers, which requires analyzing an author's explanatory claims.