At the 9-12 English Language Arts session this morning, participants were excited about the new ELA grades 10 and 11 modules and looked forward to digging into the work. They began by getting oriented to the 9-12 modules, including the research module and the new modules for grades 10 and 11. Participants got a better understanding of the structure and content of the modules and how to implement the curriculum with fidelity, including how to scaffold to meet the rigor of the standards for students, and also how to adapt curriculum to meet students’ needs.
Module 9.3 takes a slightly different approach because it focuses on research. This module has three units that start with the reading of a “seed text” which leads to the second unit detailing the research process using some materials from the Odell Research units and informational texts. In the third unit, students then conduct their own research, culminating in a research paper.
Module 10.1 also has three units. The first unit is poetry-based and includes studying the language of Marlowe, Williams, and Raleigh. The second unit focuses on a short story called “The Palace Thief” which focuses on character study and plot development. The third unit is also a character study which uses excerpts from The Joy luck Club and Friday Night Lights.
Module 11.1 (coming soon) starts with “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning, leading to a study of Hamlet and finishing with an excerpt from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.
Approaching Research in the Curriculum Modules:
Participants started with a discussion about the writing standards that are emphasized in the research module including how to paraphrase and synthesize information and which citation style is used in the modules. MLA is used here, but districts are able to decide which format works best for their students. The research module also incorporates some of the research techniques found in the Odell Research units with instruction around the writing process. Standards are applied through both the inquiry and writing processes. The module is really driven by student inquiry which is cyclical. Students should be able to select their own topic which is derived from the seed text and then gain deeper understanding of how to write from sources in their final product. In groups, participants looked at the overviews for each unit of this module and talked about the research process and how each unit builds upon the other.
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