10th Grade - Gateway 2

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 10 meet the criteria that texts are organized around a topic/topics or themes to build students’ knowledge and their ability to comprehend and analyze complex texts proficiently.

The materials include a logical sequence of texts and sufficient lesson scaffolds to ensure students are able to comprehend and analyze complex texts. In each chapter, the texts are connected by a theme or topic. Due to the number and increasing difficulty of texts, the ways in which they interact with the texts, and the topic-driven opportunities for synthesis, students build knowledge in the topic and are able to comprehend and analyze complex texts proficiently and independently.

The first four chapters are skill-based and focus on the topics of Reading the World, Thinking About Literature, Thinking About Rhetoric and Argument, and Thinking About Synthesis. The chapters are organized into a series of lessons and activities focused on the skill targeted in the chapter. 

The second set of chapters are each connected to a unifying theme: Identity and Society, Ambition, Ethics, Cultures in Conflict, (Mis)Communication, and Utopia & Dystopia. The thematic chapters begin with a series of essential questions and a Central Text, followed by accompanying texts. Texts are centered around topics like high school sports, causes and effects of cheating, and artificial intelligence, and all the texts support the theme. Chapters are divided into four sections: two Conversations and two Workshops. In the Conversation section, students complete activities to analyze the language of the text to build proficiency in comprehension. Texts are arranged in a sequence leading up to a culminating activity that asks students to analyze points made within the readings of the text set. The Workshop sections include one reading workshop and one writing workshop where students analyze a selection and write in a certain mode. 

Examples include, but are not limited to:

• In Chapter 2: Thinking About Literature, students complete a series of lessons and activities to prepare them for analyzing many aspects of literature: analyzing literature, theme in literature, literary elements, analyzing literary elements and theme, language and style, and analyzing style and theme. These lessons lead to a culminating activity where they practice what they learned through analyzing the poem, “The Tyger” by William Blake, and an excerpt from the short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe. In each activity and connected text, students practice the skills of reading literature, which serves as the topic of the chapter.
• In Chapter 4: Thinking About Synthesis, Section: Working with Multiple Sources, students read a series of texts on the topic of high school sports. The materials state: “using the following group of texts, we’ll examine this issue and develop an opinion that goes beyond a simple pro-or-con stance [...] Each text you’ll read in this Conversation introduces ideas or issues you might have not considered. And in the process, your thinking about the issue will become more informed, nuanced, and sophisticated.” In the Culminating Activity, students read a series of texts on “the ethics and economics of eating meat” and include an explanation: “After reading and analyzing them as you have done with the texts on sports, explain your position on the ethics of eating meat.” The materials are focused on topics and sequence activities to engage readers’ ability to build knowledge about the subject. 
• In Chapter 5: Identity and Society, the essential questions are “What does ‘identity’ mean? How is one’s identity formed? How do personal experiences affect our identity? To what extent do institutions emphasize conformity at the expense of individuality?” Students read the Central Text and participate in two conversations: “Changes and Transformations” contains mostly coming-of-age literary pieces and “The Individual in School” that contains mostly nonfiction texts about the positive and negative ways that school influences students’ identities. All of the activities and texts are related to and build understanding of the topic of identity.
• In Chapter 7: Ethics, Conversation: The Cheating Culture, students read a series of texts dealing with the causes and effects of cheating. The Teacher’s Edition includes Vocabulary exercises, Close Reading, Teaching Ideas for class activities, and Check for Understandings to build student comprehension and analysis of the texts and associated vocabulary. For example, when reading “Cheating Upwards” by Robert Kolker, one Check for Understanding suggests “Teachers might want to be sure students know what ‘proprietary knowledge (par.23) is.” Also, the Vocabulary activity includes exercises that are found on the Teacher’s Resource Flash Drive. 
• In Chapter 8: Cultures in Conflict, the essential questions for the chapter are “What defines ‘culture’? What causes cultures to come into conflict with each other? Who gets to tell the story of a conflict? How do cultures respond to change and to outsiders? What is lost and gained by assimilating into a new culture?” Students read the Central Text and participate in two conversations: “Stories of War” that contains mostly literary pieces about the stories of war and “Displacement and Assimilation” that contains mostly nonfiction texts and poetry about the historical and contemporary issues related to immigration, specifically into the United States. All the activities prepare students to analyze character and theme in a selection and write a literary analysis style interpretation of character and theme. 
• In Chapter 10: Utopia/Dystopia, Conversation: Our Robotic Future, students read a series of texts on the rise of automation and artificial intelligence. The introduction to the Conversation explains that students “will read about and consider the implications of robots in the future and not-so-distant future.” In the Teacher’s Edition, students use various activities to help them comprehend the text: Close Reading, Key Passage, Teaching Idea, Vocabulary, Building Context, and Suggested Responses. For example, while reading “Are Humans Necessary?” by Margaret Atwood, vocabulary exercises are offered in the Teacher’s Resource Flash Drive and the Key Passage offers an annotated handout also in the Teacher’s Resource Flash Drive to help students understand the key vocabulary in connection with the topic of the chapter.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 10 meet the criteria that materials contain sets of coherently sequenced higher order thinking questions and tasks that require students to analyze the language (words/phrases), key ideas, details, craft, and structure of individual texts in order to make meaning and build understanding of texts and topics.

The materials have higher order thinking questions in the form of both text-dependent and text-specific questions. These questions are embedded in student activities and used as guides when analyzing texts. The questions, tasks, and guided reflections connected to multiple, related texts do the following:  provide evidence of student understanding of definitions and concepts, help students make meaning and build understanding of texts, prepare them for culminating tasks. The materials offer opportunities for students to analyze the language, craft, and structure of texts; students build understanding by exploring higher order thinking questions. 

In each chapter, questions require students to analyze the language, key ideas, details, craft, and structure of several texts, which allows students to build understanding of texts with increasing sophistication. The thematic chapters are organized around the Central Text and two groups of additional texts and activities called Conversations. Conversations are designed to prepare students for the demands of AP (one for AP Language and one for AP Literature courses). The texts range in difficulty from approachable to highly challenging, and each of the texts is connected to reading activities that require rigorous, guided analysis. The Teacher’s Edition also includes questions for Vocabulary, Close Reading, and Check for Understanding to ask during reading. After reading, students answer increasingly complex questions for each text. The types of questions include: Understanding and Interpreting questions which progress from comprehension to interpretation,  Analyzing Language, Style, and Structure questions which analyze author’s craft and structure. Also, after reading the Central Text, the Topics for Composing prompts offer different ways students can write or speak about texts. 

Examples of sequenced higher order thinking questions include, but are not limited to:

• In Chapter 2: Thinking About Literature, Activity: Style and Tone, students read “My river runs to Thee” and complete the task: “Read this poem by Emily Dickinson and analyze how the diction, syntax, figurative language, and imagery help to create the speaker’s tone.”
• In Unit 6: Ambition and Restraint, Section 2: Voices of Rebellion, students read “Speech to the United Nations Youth Assembly” by Malala Yousafzai .  Then they  answer Analyzing Language, Style, and Structure questions: “What does this approach add to her message and how does it build her ethos? What was Yosafzai’s rhetorical purpose in presenting this perspective? What attitudes does she express toward these efforts, and what connotative words provide evidence of this attitude? What is the specific effect of each of these examples of anaphora? Why are these metaphors particularly appropriate for the content of her speech and the specifics of her experience?” The Teacher’s Resource Flash Drive also provides a handout with the following task: “Read and analyze the following passage from ‘Speech to the United Nations Youth Assembly,’ using annotation to investigate how Yousafzai uses language and style to convey her meaning effectively.” 
• In Unit 8: Cultures in Conflict, Section 1: Stories of War, students read an excerpt of the Central Text, When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka, and answer analysis questions while reading: “Throughout the novel, the main characters are identified only as ‘boy,’ ‘girl,’ ‘mother,’ and ‘father.’ How do you interpret the reasons for this choice?” Later, students read a selection from “The Storytellers of Empire” by Kamila Shamsie and answer questions about the author’s craft: “Identify one place where she inserts her own story into the argument and evaluate how effective or ineffective this section is at helping to convince her audience. What information does she share about her homeland, and how does this establish her ethos as a writer? How would you characterize Shamsie’s tone toward America?” Students also consider language with the questions: “A key word that Shamsie uses is ‘appropriation.’ How does she use this term to illustrate the theme of the piece? What patterns do you identify and how does her use of pronouns relate to her purpose for writing?”
• In Chapter 9: (Mis)Communication, Culminating Activity, students reread “Facebook Sonnet” by Sherman Alexie and answer, “Identify examples of verbal and situational irony. How do these ironies lead you to an understanding of the argument Alexie is making in this poem? Pay special attention to the ideas of ‘church.com’ and ‘the altar of loneliness’ (ll. 12 and 14) as you develop your interpretation.”
• In Chapter 10: Utopia/Dystopia, Section 1, while students read the Central Text, the first chapter of the extended essay, “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid, they answer analysis questions: “In the long opening paragraph, what assumptions does Jamaica Kincaid make in order to characterize ‘a tourist’? What characteristics does she ascribe to tourists in general?” In Section 2: Our Robotic Future, students read “Robot Dreams” by Isaac Asimov and answer questions on analyzing language: “How does Asimov use diction to illustrate the differences between Calvin and Rash? How does this use of diction reveal their different attitudes toward Elvex? Elvex repeats the line, ‘So it is in reality, Dr. Calvin. I speak of my dream.’ (pars. 57 and 63) What is achieved through this repetition” The Teacher’s Edition also extends this analysis of structure through Close Reading supplements: “Ask students to look at the structure from paragraph 79 on. How is the dialogue structured? What is the effect on the reader when dialogue is presented in this way?”

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 10 meet the criteria that materials contain a coherently sequenced set of text-dependent and text-specific questions and tasks that require students to build knowledge and integrate ideas across both individual and multiple texts.

The materials include sets of questions and tasks that provide opportunities to analyze across multiple texts as well as within single texts. Most sets of questions and tasks support students’ analysis of knowledge and ideas. Across the year, integrating knowledge and ideas is embedded in students’ work. Students have opportunities to learn about and analyze the content and structures of a variety of texts of increasing complexity. They have frequent opportunities to practice these developing skills and demonstrate their knowledge and ideas. Students are expected to apply what they learned from the text sets by using individual and multiple texts in their culminating tasks that focus on analysis of ideas found within the topics of the texts sets.

Each chapter contains text-dependent questions and tasks that require students to integrate knowledge and ideas both in individual texts and across multiple texts. The Seeing Connections sections of each chapter allow students to compare ideas across texts. The two Conversation sections in each chapter are specifically designed to provide an opportunity for students to synthesize their understanding of a group of texts on a subtopic related to the overall topic of the unit. The two literacy workshops at the end of each chapter ask students to draw on texts that they read in the two Conversations. After reading a selection, students have the opportunity to respond to prompts in a Connect, Argue, and Extend section in order to practice the skill of synthesizing across texts. At the end of each Conversation, students also complete writing prompts on Making Connections and Synthesizing Sources. Additionally, Chapter Four: Thinking About Synthesis is dedicated to building the skills students need to create an analysis across texts. 

Between the text-specific activities, culminating activities, teaching ideas, and workshops, the materials contain coherently sequenced sets of text-dependent and text-specific questions and tasks that require students to build knowledge and integrate ideas across both individual and multiple texts. Each of the chapter-specific instruction and skills are reinforced across texts through discrete and routine practice. While the majority of questions and tasks are text-dependent and/or text-specific, some are metacognitive or reflective tasks that continue to build knowledge and integrate ideas.

The Teacher’s Edition provides support for teachers to monitor student skills and understanding through suggested activities in sections called Building Context, Close Reading, Check for Understanding, and Teaching Idea. 

Examples include, but are not limited to:

• Chapter 1: Reading the World, Culminating Activity, after students read three texts, a Teaching Idea suggests student compare and contrast the texts: “Each of the three texts is about literacy in some way. What commonalities and differences do you notice about what the author’s are saying about literacy?” Opportunities for analysis of content through Questions and Analysis are provided at the end of each reading. For example, after students read from “The Shallow: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” they answer, “What are some of the significant differences Carr identifies between reading books and reading online?” This question supports the culminating activity where students discuss literacy. 
• In Chapter 4: Thinking About Synthesis, for the Culminating Activity, students read five texts and answer the prompt: “Following are several texts on the ethics and economics of eating meat. After reading and analyzing them as you have done with the texts on sports, explain your position on the ethics of eating meat. Reference at least three of the sources in your argument.” Students practiced the skills of synthesis with the articles on sports to build to the independent culminating activity on a different topic.
• In Chapter 5: Identity and Society, Conversation: The Individual in School, students answer questions in a culminating activity titled Entering the Conversation: The Individual in School.  Students make connections between the texts read in the text set. For example, one question prompts “While Horace Mann clearly values universal education (p. 213), John Taylor Gatto suggests that compulsory education turns citizens into ‘servant’ (p. 211, par. 15). How would Mann respond to Gatto’s arguments, and which position do you support? Why?” In this example, a culminating activity has students to consider more than one text. 
• In Chapter 6: Ambition, the Unit Planner guides teachers through supporting students in building reading and writing skills related to the argument/persuasive genre: “While the entire chapter focuses on questions of ambition, several texts, especially those in the second Conversation, are persuasive texts, which lend themselves well to a close study of argument. Below we suggest a skills development pathway, rough pacing, prompt, and rubric for a unit that culminates in such an assessment of students’ persuasive writing abilities. In addition to using some, though not all, of the texts in the chapter, this pathway suggests using or re-examining portions of Chapter 3, and strongly recommends the use of the two Workshops found at the end of the chapter.”
• In Chapter 8: Cultures in Conflict, Conversation: Stories of War, before starting the Conversation, students read an overview of the knowledge demands: “In this Conversation, you will consider the difficulty of telling the stories of war by reading poems by soldiers who fought and, in some cases, died in battle, an essay that challenges the right of the victor to tell the story for the loser, and short stories that ask us to determine the truth of other people’s stories. Because of the nature of the topic, many of the texts will not be comfortable to read and will challenge your notions of war and truth.” After each text, students answer text-specific questions and writing tasks. In addition, at the conclusion of the Conversation, students answer questions and prompts that integrate ideas across the texts in the Synthesizing Sources section: “In an interview with the Paris Review, author Chinua Achebe remarked: ‘There is that great proverb— that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.’ In other words, history is written by the victors. Is this really how history works?” Students write an argumentative position essay using at least two sources in the Conversation, the Central Text, and an example from history to support their claim. 
• Chapter 10: Utopia/Dystopia, Conversation: Our Robotic Future, students read a text set and answer questions in the Entering the Conversation: Our Robotic Future that compare and contrast multiple texts: “According to Kevin Kelly (p. 910), James Barrat (p. 932), and Rose Brooks (p. 936), should we fear robots in the future? Choose at least two of these authors and compare and contrast their views?” In addition to the supports offered while reading the individual texts, students are given the opportunity to show understanding in a culminating activity.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 10 meet the criteria that materials contain a year long, cohesive plan of writing instruction and practice which support students in building and communicating substantive understanding of topics and texts. 

The materials include writing opportunities and instruction aligned to grade level standards that span the whole school year, such as argument, narrative, and expository. Students have frequent opportunities to learn through explicit instruction and practice writing skills needed to communicate their understanding of texts and topics through a variety of well-designed guidance, protocols, models. Support for teachers to implement and monitor students’ writing development include peer review resources, evaluative criteria, use of rubrics, whole class discussions, and proctoring of peer-group writing workshops. 

In the first four skill-based chapters, students learn the importance of analysis and the skills of literary analysis, close reading, rhetorical analysis, argument analysis, persuasive writing, and synthesis. Over the course of these chapters, students have opportunities to write informally to demonstrate their skills and also complete a summative Culminating Activity to demonstrate understanding of the writing skill. The skills that students learn in the first four chapters translate to the following six theme-based chapters where they are given frequent opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge of texts and a topic. These writing prompts are organized into categories: Understanding and Interpreting; Connecting, Arguing and Extending; and Analyzing Language, Style and Structure. After reading the Central Text in each chapter, students also complete Topics for Composing, covering a variety of modalities, including analysis, personal, research, argument, and analysis. At the end of each of the six theme-based chapters, students complete a reading and writing workshop that both result in writing in a particular genre/mode on the topic of the chapter. 

Examples include, but are not limited to:

• In Chapter 1: Thinking about Literacy, Activity: Thinking About Literacy Communities, students write about a topic to multiple audiences and examine their choices: “Describe the latest movie you saw, game you played, or song you listened to. Write one description directed to a close friend, one for a parent or grandparent, and one for your teacher who is going to grade you based on the level of detail you include in the description. Afterward, look back at the language choices you used and examine what is similar and different between the pieces. How do your language choices represent the differences among your literacy communities?”
• In Chapter 2: Thinking About Literature, Culminating Activity, students read the poem “The Tyger” by William Blake and answer, “Read the poem carefully. Then write a response in which you analyze how the tone of the speaker is developed through such devices as diction, syntax, figurative language, and imagery.” 
• In Chapter 3: Thinking About Rhetoric and Argument, students complete activities to improve their writing. For example, in Activity: Finding The Claim, students examine models of texts: from On Being a Cripple by Nancy Mairs, from Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv, and “The Case for a Higher Minimum Wage” by New York Times Editorial Board. The Teacher’s Edition includes a Check for Understanding to have students reflect on how they are taught writing as they read the texts provided. In Activity: Shifting The Rhetorical Situation, students examine and create their own scenarios to build to the Culminating Activity where students analyze the rhetoric of Lenore Skenazy’s “Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone” and write their own argument on “whether you believe a nine-year-old in your community should be allowed to travel [...] without adult supervision, and if so, to what extent.”
• In Chapter 5: Identity and Society, students read the story “Zolaria” by Caitlin Horrocks. After reading, students answer Connecting, Arguing, and Extending prompts, such as “It is apparent that even years after the events the narrator has still not forgiven herself for her actions (and inactions) toward Hanna. Is the narrator truly responsible for her actions, or should she be excused because of her youth and other factors? Support your response with direct evidence from the story.”
• In Chapter 7: Ethics, Writing Workshop, students read multiple texts on boxing and are guided through the “entire process of writing their own synthesis essay, balancing their voices with the ideas presented in outside sources.” The Summative Assessment prompt states, “Read the sources provided carefully. Then in an essay that synthesizes at least two of the sources, explain your position on whether boxing should be preserved as it is, should be changed to make it safer for participants, or should be banned altogether as a competitive sport. You may quote from the sources directly or paraphrase them. Remember that the sources should inform your opinion, but your own voice should be central to the argument.” A scoring rubric is provided. 
• In Chapter 8: Cultures in Conflict, students read the Central Text, from When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka. After reading the selection, students complete a series of Topics for Composing writing tasks, such as “Creative/Exposition: This chapter is told from the perspective of an eight-year-old boy. Choose a short passage from the chapter and rewrite it from the perspective of the girl, the mother, or the father. Then, explain what changed when you changed the perspective of the narration.”
• In Chapter 9: Writing Workshop: Writing a Close Analysis of Prose, students follow a five-step process to write an analysis essay: analyze a passage, find a focus, develop a strong thesis to guide the analysis, provide textual evidence, and address the “So What?” Many of the key elements of the analysis steps come from Chapter 2: Thinking About Literature, such as analyzing diction, figurative language, and point of view. The Workshop builds on skills learned throughout the year and offers opportunities for instructors to model and gauge students abilities. For example, in Check for Understanding, it suggests the instructor model the analysis of stylistic choices in the reading “Children as Enemies” by Ha Jin.