9th Grade - Gateway 1

The materials reviewed for Grade 9 meet the criteria for anchor texts being of publishable quality and worthy of especially careful reading.

Texts within the units provide interesting and engaging subject matter that enable students to make personal and universal connections. The majority of texts are previously published and written by well-known authors. Texts range from historical to modern-day literature and represent a variety of text genres and multicultural and socially relevant themes across units. The units are designed to provide students a variety of text types centered on a topic, genre, or analytical skill; therefore, many units do not have an identifiable anchor text.

Some examples include:

• Unit 1 includes “Lamb to the Slaughter” by award winning Roald Dahl, well-known author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Students will enjoy the dark humor and suspenseful twists.
• Unit 1 also includes “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (Part 2) by Ambrose Bierce who was an author, journalist, and Civil War veteran. This short story is considered a part of the American literature anthology and provides students with historical context about the Civil War.
• Unit 2 includes excerpts of the canonical Romeo and Juliet by globally recognized playwright William Shakespeare. As a timeless classic, the story of an ill-fated teenage romance still connects to students today.
• Unit 2 also includes the poem and an excerpt of the short story “Lottery” by Rasma Haidri, a modern American author and poet. The poem depicts day-to-day events and dreams, and the essay discusses the writer’s revision process for writing the poem in a way to which students can relate.
• Unit 3 includes an essay “The Work You Do, the Person You Are” by Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison. Published in The New Yorker, the way in which the author refers to “Her” in the essay allows students to imagine what the person may look like or how she speaks.
• Unit 3 also includes “Remarks by the President in a National Address to America’s Schoolchildren” by President Barack Obama. The speech’s conversational style and contemporary language make it accessible and interesting to readers.
• Unit 4 includes excerpts from the Common Core exemplar text To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The timeless classic won Lee a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for addressing topics of racial prejudice, societal classes, justice, and humanity that still apply today.
• Unit 4 also includes another exemplar text, an excerpt of the dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 by award winning science fiction author Ray Bradbury. The text contains timeless topics and themes and can help readers uncover perceptions of a third person narrator.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 9 meet the criteria for texts having the appropriate level of complexity for the grade according to quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis.

Publishers provide a Text Complexity Measures document that indicates the quantitative data, qualitative analysis, and task considerations for the significant texts in each unit. The analysis uses Lexile and qualitative measures based on CCSS Appendix A (pages 5–6). Poetry and canonical or Common Core exemplar texts are not included in this document.

While some texts fall below the College and Career Expectations for Lexile Ranges in the grades 9-10 stretch band (1050–1335L), the publishers provide a rationale based on the complexity of the qualitative features and/or the student task associated with the text. Most texts below the grade band are accompanied by a more rigorous task or require more student independence.

Some examples include:

• Unit 1 contains a larger number of texts below the recommended grade band with a range of 590L to 1230L; however, publishers indicate that the texts are placed strategically in the beginning of the year and most texts are used for more complex student tasks. The majority of texts are short stories that have been previously published.
• Activity 1.6 text “What Happened During the Ice Storm” by Jim Heynen: Quantitative, 590L: Qualitative, Low Difficulty: Moderate–Analyze
• Activity 1.7 text “The Red Fox Fur Coat by Tiolinda Gersao: Quantitative,1230L: Qualitative, High Difficulty: Task, Moderate–Analyze
• Activity 1.17 text “Games at Twilight” by Anita Desai: Quantitative, 1140L: Qualitative, Moderately Difficult: Task, Moderate–Analyze
• Unit 2 contains poetry and excerpts of Romeo and Juliet which has a Lexile of 1260. Publishers provide a text complexity analysis for one additional text, “Lottery” by Rasma Haidri with a Lexile score of 1170 and a qualitative measurement of moderately difficult.
• For Unit 3, the majority of texts fall within the grade band with a quantitative score range of 940L to a high of 1460L. Publishers provide text analyses for nine texts in the unit which consist mostly of articles, reports, and essays.
• Activity 3.3 text “Drowning in Dishes, but Finding a Home” by Danial Adkison: Quantitative, 940L: Qualitative, Low Difficulty: Task, Challenging–Evaluate
• Activity 3.9 text “Teenagers have Stopped Getting Summer Jobs--Why?” by Derek Thompson: Quantitative, 1180L: Qualitative, Moderately Difficult: Task, Challenging–Evaluate
• Activity 3.12 text “Why College Isn't (And Shouldn’t Have to Be) for Everyone” by Robert Reich: Quantitative, 1340L: Qualitative, Moderate: Task, Challenging–Evaluate
• Unit 4 texts include multiple excerpts that fall below the recommended grade range but the publisher rationale is that the associated tasks are moderately difficult to complex. The unit features excerpts from the central text To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. However, the focus of the unit is on “Powerful Openings” and publishers use a variety of exemplary novel excerpts from a range of 340L to 1340L for students to analyze.
• Activity 4.5 includes a paired text lesson: an excerpt Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper: Quantitative, 340L: Qualitative, Low Difficulty: Task, Moderate–Analyze
• Activity 4.25 text from the essay “In Defense of To Kill A Mockingbird by Jill May: Quantitative, 1180L: Qualitative, High Difficulty: Task, Challenging–Create
• Activity 4.28 text excerpt from “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr. Quantitative, 1340L: Qualitative, High Difficulty: Task, Moderate–Analyze

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 9 meet the criteria for materials supporting students’ literacy skills (understanding and comprehension) over the course of the school year through increasingly complex text to develop independence of grade level skills (Series of texts should be at a variety of complexity levels).

Throughout the four units of study, students encounter challenging, rigorous texts and accompanying lessons, tasks, and assessments. Text selections fall within a range of accessible to very complex and low to high difficulty, with most texts falling within the moderately difficult range. Skills and knowledge build as students analyze a variety of texts and grapple with literary elements to complete two embedded assessments per unit. Thus, students work toward independence of grade level skills within each unit and continue to grow their skills and knowledge of content and topics across the school year. The task demands and expected level of independence also increase across the year.

The complexity of anchor texts support students’ proficiency in reading independently at grade level at the end of the school year. Series of texts include a variety of complexity levels. Some examples include:

• In the beginning of the year, the focus is writing a literary analysis paragraph. In Unit 1, Telling Details, students work through a variety of tasks focusing on literary devices. For example, at the beginning of the unit, students analyze language choice as a literary device in “Bread” by Margaret Atwood. As students move toward the middle of the unit they read a variety of short stories within a moderate range of text complexity to continue literary analysis. Later in the unit, students create an outline based on “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce in order to “develop an analytical paragraph about how Ambrose Bierce uses shifts in language to make a larger statement in the story.” Activities like these lead students to Embedded Assessment 1: Writing A Literary Analysis and Embedded Assessment 2: Writing a Short Story.
• In the middle of the year, students write an argumentative essay. In Unit 3, Compelling Evidence, Embedded Assessment 1, students write an argumentative essay about the value of a college education. Their essay must be organized as an argument in which they assert a precise claim, support it with reasons and evidence, and acknowledge and refute counterarguments fairly. The Scoring Guide includes criteria for students in the areas of ideas, structure, and use of language with wording and demands similar to those found in the Scoring Guide for the literary essays in the first Embedded Assessment of Units 1 and 4.
• By the end of year, students research the historical, cultural, social, or geographical context in which the novel To Kill a Mockingbird was written. In Unit 4, Powerful Openings, Embedded Assessment 2, students “investigate how individuals, organizations, and events contributed to change in the United States during the Civil Rights Movement.” They will also work collaboratively to create an oral presentation of their findings with multimedia support and guiding questions for their audience. The scoring guide includes criteria for ideas, structure, and use of language. This scoring guide includes the same criteria that is used to assess students in Unit 1 on the Embedded Assessment 2.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 9 meet the criteria that anchor texts and series of texts connected to them are accompanied by a text complexity analysis and rationale for purpose and placement in the grade level.

The publisher provides a text complexity document for each grade level which includes a summary or rationale of the placement of the text and the overall, quantitative, qualitative, and task complexity measures. This document also includes qualitative considerations for levels of meaning, structure, language, and knowledge demands. The task considerations explain the assessments associated with the text and how they fit into the overall assessment picture, and reader considerations that help the teacher think about how individual students might understand and engage with the text. The Teacher Wrap and Teacher Edition instructional notes provide a framework with text-specific guidance and purpose for the text. Most tasks, such as close reading, independent reading, text-dependent questions, and writing assignments are addressed within the framework and are identified in the Teacher Wrap and Teacher Edition with a rationale for text placement and how the tasks relate to lesson goals and learning targets.

Some examples include:

• In Unit 1, Telling Details, Activity 1.19, students read “The Leap” by Louise Erdrich. The Text Complexity document provides a Lexile score of 1210L and an overall rating of complex. The Summary section provides this rationale for text placement: “This text is complex for a ninth grade reader, which gives students a reasonable challenge before the Embedded Assessment. The 1210 Lexile measure places the text in the Grade 9–10 band, and the qualitative measures indicate a moderate difficulty level due to the text’s challenging language. The task demands are also moderate, resulting in an overall complex rating.”

• In Unit 2, Pivotal Words and Phrases, Activity 2.3, The Art of Poetry Revision, students read an excerpt from the essay “Lottery” by Rasma Haidri to learn about how the revision process helps poets unlock the essence of a poem, then analyze the changes among various drafts of an award-winning poem. The Lexile level is 1170 and publishers score the essay at a moderate difficulty. The rationale states, “Though the excerpt includes some academic language, definitions are included to support readers in understanding the more advanced vocabulary.” Under task considerations, the analysis document explains, “Students use this text to gain a greater understanding of the importance of revision, which will benefit them as they prepare to write and revise their Embedded Assessments.” 

• In Unit 3: Compelling Evidence, Activity 3.14, students read the argument essay “Even With Debt, College Still Pays Off” by Gillian B. White. The Text Complexity document provides these complexity measures: Overall: Very Complex; Quantitative: 1460L; Qualitative: High; and Task: Challenging (Create). The Summary section provides this rationale for text placement: “This text is very complex for a ninth grade reader, which is appropriate given that the text is near the end of Unit 3 after students have been exposed to many texts of the same genre. The 1460 Lexile measure places the text above the 9–10 grade level band, and the qualitative measures indicate a high difficulty due to the inclusion of empirical evidence and infographics. The task demands are challenging, resulting in an overall very complex rating.”

• In Unit 4: Powerful Openings, Activity 4.10, students read an excerpt from the novel The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow. The Text Complexity document gives a Lexile score of 610L and labels the text overall accessible. The Summary section provides this rationale for text placement: “The text is accessible for a ninth grade reader, which is appropriate given that it is used to develop students’ understanding of the effect of Scout’s narration style in To Kill a Mockingbird, the major novel students will be reading in the unit. The 610 Lexile measure places the text below the 9–10 grade level band, but the qualitative measures indicate a moderate difficulty due to the implied theme. The task demands are also moderate, resulting in an overall accessible rating.”

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 9 meet the criteria for anchor and supporting texts provide opportunities for students to engage in a range and volume of reading to achieve grade-level reading proficiency.

Students read and analyze a wide variety of text genres and topics across a broad range of high-quality, increasingly challenging literary and informational texts of varying length. All units come with an overview that includes a table of contents with a list of texts, authors, and genres for each activity. Each unit includes a wide range of text types addressing multiple learning styles of students including but not limited to visuals, texts with audio, and printed texts. Additionally, students experience a volume of reading as they engage in independent reading tasks that are embedded within specific activities and directly aligned to concepts and themes within the unit.

Some examples include:

• In Unit 1, Telling Details, examples of varied genres include “Bread” by Margaret Atwood (essay), “Quiet Places” by Mitch Epstein (photograph), “The Red Fox Fur Coat” by Teolinda Gersão (short story), “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry (short story), “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury (short story), “The Leap” by Louis Erdrich (short story), and “Write Badly to Write Well” by Donald M. Murray (essay).
• In Unit 2, Pivotal Words and Phrases, varied texts include Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (play), “The Fight” by John Montague (poem), an excerpt from West Side Story by Aurthur Laurents (script), “Prayer to the Pacific” by Leslie Marmon Silko (poem), “Bilingual/Bilingüe,” by Rhina P. Espaillat (poem), and “Abuelito Who?” by Sandra Cisneros (poem).
• Unit 3, Compelling Evidence, includes a range of texts on the topic of careers and work ethics including “The Work You Do, the Person You Are,” by Toni Morrison (essay), “Drowning in Dishes, but Finding a Home,” by Danial Adkison (essay), “Teenagers Have Stopped Getting Summer Jobs—Why?,” by Derek Thompson (argument), and “Remarks by the President in a National Address to America’s Schoolchildren, Wakefield High School, Arlington, Virginia, September 8, 2009,” by President Barack Obama (speech).
• In Unit 4, Powerful Openings, the majority of the texts are novel excerpts from published works including Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, 1984 by George Orwell, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling. The unit also features multiple excerpts from the featured novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Lee Harper and an excerpt from the essay “In Defense of To Kill a Mockingbird” by Jill May.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 9 meet the criteria that most questions, tasks, and assignments are text-dependent/specific, 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).

The materials provide frequent opportunities for students to interact with texts by answering questions and completing tasks and assessments that require them to provide textual evidence to demonstrate their knowledge and support their thinking. The lessons are organized into recurrent sections that require students to draw on texts directly multiple times over the course of a lesson. The questions in each section build towards the Embedded Assessments in the unit. As students read, they complete several standard task sections: Making Observations, Focus on the Sentence, Returning to the Text, and Working from the Text. Students work from initial thoughts about key details in a text, to focusing on specific sentences in the text. Then, students answer a series of text-dependent questions, and then finish the lesson focusing specific quotes and the connection of the text to the overall unit topic. In many lessons, there is also a Writing from Sources section for students to practice various writing types using the texts they read.

Students also complete text-dependent questions and tasks within the embedded unit assessments, informal and formal discussions, and quizzes. The Embedded Assessments require students to use the skills developed throughout the unit to interact with fresh texts and use textual evidence.

Instructional materials include questions, tasks, and assignments that are text-dependent and specific over the course of a school year. Text-dependent and specific questions, tasks and assignments consistently support students’ literacy growth over the course of the school year. Some examples include:

• In Unit 1, Activity 1.6, after reading “What Happened During the Ice Storm” by Jim Heynen, students answer the question, “What are the effects of the freezing rain throughout the first paragraph?” Then students provide “two sentences from the text that support the inference that the boys’ intentions towards the pheasants may differ from those of the farmers.”
• In Unit 3, Activity 3.3, students read the essay “Drowning in Dishes, but Finding a Home” by Danial Adkison. After reading, students answer questions such as, “In the essay, Adkinson doesn’t mention Jeff’s name until the seventh paragraph. How would the effect of the essay be different if the narrator had introduced him in the first paragraph, as ‘my manager Jeff,’ instead of ‘that person [who] wore a tie with a Pizza Hut logo on it’?”
• In Unit 4, Activity 4.18, while reading To Kill a Mockingbird, students answer questions such as, “How does Miss Maudie’s information about mockingbirds add to Atticus’s comment that ‘it’s a sin to kill a Mockingbird’?” and “Based on your understanding of Chapter 10, what might a Mockingbird symbolize? How does the author's use of language help you come to this conclusion?”

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 9 meet the criteria for materials contain sets of sequences of text-dependent/text-specific questions with activities that build to a culminating task which integrates skills to demonstrate understanding.

The materials include several types of culminating activities for each unit of study throughout the year including assessments, frequent writing prompts, and collaborative tasks. The two Embedded Assessments per unit are directly aligned with the units’ topic and/or genre. The “Planning the Unit” section gives teachers a preview of the skills and knowledge that will be assessed in the Embedded Assessments. The beginning of the unit also unpacks the Embedded Assessments for students to keep the end products in mind as they progress through the unit. All lessons and writing prompts scaffold the required learning for the Embedded Assessments. The activities within each lesson include sequences of text-dependent questions that guide students’ understanding of the selections in the unit and build to daily and end of unit culminating tasks. Formative assessments along the way give students the opportunity to practice skills they are learning and allow teachers to assess student progress toward learning goals. The products that result from the Embedded Assessments vary in nature over the course of the year: literary analysis, short story, dramatic interpretation, poetry project, argumentative essay, career research and presentation, and historical investigation and presentation.

Some examples include:

• In Unit 1: Telling Details, students learn and practice analyzing literature through a series of readings and accompanying tasks. These assignments build to Activity 1.10, Writing a Literary Analysis Paragraph, where students reflect on their reading of Roald Dahl’s short story “Lamb to the Slaughter” and “plan, draft, and revise a literary analysis paragraph by creating complete sentences, adding transition words and phrases, and adding context for direct quotations.” Students continue to practice their literary analysis skills, building to another formative checkpoint in Activity 1.15: “Write a literary analysis paragraph about how Ambrose Bierce uses shifts in language to make a statement about the nature of war or another aspect of ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’ of your choice. Use a single-paragraph outline to plan your writing.” Students further practice their skills and demonstrate them in the culminating task Embedded Assessment 1: Writing a Literary Analysis. Students are prompted, “Your assignment is to write a literary analysis in which you analyze how Zadie Smith uses literary devices or other elements to express the theme of coping with emotional turmoil in the short story “Martha, Martha.” For this assessment, students develop a full length essay, engaging in the entire writing process.
• In Unit 2: Pivotal Words and Phrases, students take an in-depth look at the power of language particularly through poetry. Some of the lessons and assignments that build to the final assessment include comparing and contrasting a found poem with a piece of prose and creating a found poem in Activity 2.2: Finding Poetry in Prose; developing a written response on the use of words and phrases to convey the unpredictability of the human impulse in the face of nature in the poem “The Fight” by John Montague in Activity 2.5: The Double Edge of Impulse; analyzing poetics and craft in the poem “Prayer to the Pacific” by Leslie Marmon Silko in Activity 2.23: Sound, Rhythm, and Themes in Poetry; and writing a poem with a self-selected structure in Activity 2.25: An Ode to Whom? For Embedded Assessment 2, Presenting a Poetry Project, students collaborate to “create a poetry project that will include original works and analytical reviews of published works. Each group member must contribute three items to the project: either two original pieces and one analytical review or one original piece and two analytical reviews. Original works can include poems, illustrations of poems, or recorded spoken performances of original or published poems. Use multimedia to create your project and present it in a polished format.”
• Unit 3: Compelling Evidence, prepares students for argumentative writing and debating. Students complete tasks such as Activity 3.3, An Alternative Perspective on Work and Home. This lesson asks students to synthesize information from two different essays, “The Work You Do, the Person You Are,” by Toni Morrison and “Drowning in Dishes, but Finding a Home,” by Danial Adkison. Students then “discuss with a partner the topic of getting and keeping a job,” identify “pivotal scenes from ‘Drowning in Dishes, but Finding a Home’” to include in a storyboard of the essay,” and “write a paragraph or two from Adkison's point of view.” Other tasks in the unit build student learning on arguments and debating. In Activity 3.16, "Don’t Hate - Debate", students prepare for a debate using the articles previously read in the unit to complete a graphic organizer recording reasons, evidence, and devices used to persuade for both sides, “YES, a college education is essential” and, “NO, a college education is not essential.” The class debate transitions to Embedded Assessment 1: Writing an Argumentative Essay, in which students are asked “to write an argumentative essay about the value of a college education.” Students gather evidence, use quotes from texts to support the claim, present counterarguments, and apply the appropriate steps for the writing process.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 9 meet the criteria for materials providing frequent opportunities and protocols to engage students in speaking and listening activities and discussions (small group, peer-to-peer, whole class) which encourage the modeling and use of academic vocabulary and syntax.

Teacher materials provide support and direction for teachers to fully implement grade level standards and grow students’ speaking and listening skills. At the end of each grade level, a Speaking and Reading Strategies document lists the strategies used throughout the units, and indicates whether each is a strategy for teachers or students or both. The definition and purpose of each strategy is listed for strategies including choral reading, debate, drama games, fishbowl, note-taking, oral reading, rehearsal, role-playing, and Socratic seminar. There are also a series of graphic organizers that provide structures and protocol activities such as active listening feedback, active listening notes, audience notes and feedback, collaborative dialogue, conversation for quickwrite, discourse starters, and round table discussion. In the Planning the Unit section at the beginning of each grade level, the Activities Features at a Glance section includes icons that indicate which activities include listening, speaking, and discussion tasks. The Teacher Wrap also provides detailed instructions for teachers on engaging students in a variety of speaking and listening activities and groupings. For some activities, the Teacher to Teacher notes offer more detail on best practices with the strategy, and scaffolding suggestions for both students who need additional support and students who need extension activities.

Materials provide multiple opportunities, protocols, and questions for discussions across the whole year’s scope of instructional materials. Some examples include:

• In Unit 1, Telling Details, Activity 1.2, students observe and analyze four photos of four different types of working environments. Afterward, they complete the final step of a Knowledge Quest: “With a small group, discuss what our working environments reveal about us. Be sure to: Set rules with your classmates to facilitate a collegial discussion of the topic. Ask and respond to questions to broaden the discussion, connect ideas, and draw others into the conversation; Respond thoughtfully to the various perspectives that classmates offer and summarize points of agreement and disagreement.” The Teacher Wrap includes these instructions for managing the activity: “Then arrange students in small groups to read the instructions for the Knowledge Quest closing task. Ask volunteers for examples of discussion rules and role-play applying them with one group. Then model posing and responding to questions and ideas. Circulate to help facilitate collegial discussions.”
• In Unit 2, Pivotal Words and Phrases, Activity 2.24, students study the poetic form sestina. An introduction to the section and a Literary Vocabulary box give a detailed explanation of this new academic vocabulary, and students apply this new knowledge in a text-dependent prompt: “Why do you think the poet chose the structure of the sestina for this poem? What effect does the repetition have on the theme?” Afterward, students participate in discussion groups to further analyze the poem’s structure and its effect on the reader. Some of the discussion prompts include: “How does this poem use repetition to make connections between ideas and images? What message does it seem to be conveying? To help you determine your answers, use the following graphic organizer to map out the repeated words and the images they bring to mind. What other words or phrases contribute to the tone of the poem? Why might the poet have made these language choices?” The Teacher Wrap provides detailed instructions for carrying out the lesson, including this advice in the Teacher-To-Teacher box: “Decide how you would like to set up the discussion groups for the three discussion prompts. Students can work in their poetry project groups, you can strategically reorganize groups, or you can conduct a full-class discussion. Have students discuss each prompt and record notes about their discussions in their books to use as a reference later.”
• In Unit 4, Powerful Openings: Activity 4.31, students receive direct instruction in what makes an effective presentation after working on research in groups. To practice presentation skills, students will present their part of the research project to other members of their group. Each group member will complete a graphic organizer with feedback on the presentation skills. Materials prompt the teacher to model giving supportive feedback and asking clarifying questions. After students complete the peer feedback process, they work with their group to develop the presentation. They receive a set of guiding questions to help them create the presentation in a logical order with sufficient depth and detail.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 9 meet the criteria for materials supporting students’ listening and speaking (and discussions) about what they are reading and researching (shared projects) with relevant follow-up questions and supports.

As noted in the teacher planning documents for each unit, speaking and listening skills are included throughout the unit. The majority of activities include at least one opportunity for students to speak and listen in academic discussions as they relate to reading selections and lines of inquiry. Materials provide directions for implementation and when appropriate for scaffolding the activity in the teacher edition. The Teacher Wrap offers additional support for teachers to facilitate discussions and prompt students with guiding and follow-up questions and activities. Discussions generally require students to provide textual evidence and use learned academic and literary vocabulary. Throughout the year students also have multiple opportunities to present in groups and as individuals. For each activity, teachers receive directions for implementation and when appropriate for scaffolding the activity in the teacher edition. The Teacher Wrap provides support for teachers to facilitate discussions and prompt students with guiding and follow-up questions and activities. The frequency and structure of the activities create the conditions for students to improve their skills over time.

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

Some examples include:

• In Unit 2, Pivotal Words and Phrases, Activity 2.11, the Teacher Wrap provides instructional support during the First Read. For example, “Students should be engaged with the reading and marking places they have questions about and words and phrases that are unfamiliar.” Then teachers are prompted to provide scaffolding with text-dependent questions such as “Paraphrase lines 5–8, 9–12, and 13–14. What are the main points brought up in these lines? What words are important enough to keep in a paraphrase?” The instructions direct teachers to “guide the class in a brief discussion by asking the Making Observations questions,” for example, “What details stand out to you in the prologue,” and “What questions does this text raise for you.” As students “work in small groups to reread the text and answer the questions” teachers are to “move from group to group and listen in as students answer the text-dependent questions. If they have difficulty, scaffold the questions.”
• In Unit 3, Compelling Evidence, Activity 3.12, students read “Remarks by the President in a National Address to America’s Schoolchildren” by President Barack Obama. The Teacher Wrap includes multiple sections titled Scaffolding the Text-Dependent Questions. Within these sections, teachers receive questions and follow-up questions to ask during classroom discussion, such as “The president begins his speech with statements about the audience’s feelings and then a story about his own childhood. Why does he begin his speech in this way? Which individuals does the president specifically speak to when he begins his speech? Which statements address how these individuals feel? How does the president’s own story help you relate to him?” and “What is the message of this speech? In paragraph 4, what does the president say is his purpose for appearing in front of this audience?”
• In Unit 4, Powerful Openings, Activity 4.3, students read an excerpt from 1984 by George Orwell. The Teacher Wrap includes directions and follow-up questions for class discussion. These include directions such as “Point out that paragraph 1 includes a description of what the setting of this story looks like. Ask: Based on what you have read so far, how do you picture the place where this story is set?” and “Point out that paragraph 3 includes a description of Winston Smith’s appearance. Ask: What does this paragraph tell us about the way Winston Smith looks?”

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 9 meet the criteria for materials including a mix of on-demand and process writing (e.g., multiple drafts, revisions over time) and short, focused projects, incorporating digital resources where appropriate.

Throughout the units and over the course of the school year, the instructional materials require students to produce a mixture of standards aligned, on-demand, short, informal, focused writing projects and longer independent writing process tasks and essays that require multiple drafts and revisions over time with the use of digital resources where appropriate. The materials follow a scaffolded approach to writing within units and across the year. Students study authors’ craft and practice applying what they learned to their own writing. Students frequently practice the writing process of pre-write, plan, draft, review, revise and edit, which includes opportunities to collaborate with peers.

Students engage in on-demand writing daily throughout the lessons and process writing tasks in the unit embedded assessments, unit prompts, and supplemental workshops. The majority of writing tasks are evidence-based and text-based. There are two embedded assessments per unit which both include process writing tasks. These are outlined in the Teacher Edition, and the Teacher Wrap offers guidance to the teacher for revision and editing. Each assessment also includes a scoring rubric and questions to help students in planning, drafting, and revising throughout the writing process. For on-demand writing, materials include Focus on the Sentence activities, in which students practice writing at the sentence level and then move into paragraphs and then essay-length writing pieces. The Gaining Perspectives section of the lesson uses an on-demand writing task for students to summarize the classroom discussion on a given topic. Knowledge Quests include on-demand writing-to-source prompts. Independent Reading Checkpoint sections also include informal writing assignments where students reflect on and/or synthesize their independent reading.

The supplemental materials include ten Writing Workshops per grade level that provide direct instruction on the writing process for argumentative, explanatory, narrative, literary, research, narrative nonfiction, poetry, script, and procedural writing; however, it is critical to note that these are not part of the core materials and are used at the teacher’s discretion.

Examples of on-demand writing include, but are not limited to:

• In Unit 1, Telling Details, Activity 1.7, students read the short story, “The Red Fox Fur Coat” by Teolinda Gersao, and respond to this prompt: “From the moment the bank clerk in ‘The Red Fox Fur Coat’ spots the coat in the shop window, she is emotionally affected. Some of her emotions are directly stated, while others are indirectly expressed. Read the first paragraph of ‘The Red Fox Fur Coat’ and use the My Notes section to list the directly-stated and inferred emotions the bank clerk experiences.”
• In Unit 2, Pivotal Words and Phrases, Activity: 2.5, students respond to an Opening Writing Prompt that requires students to reread the last stanza of John Montague’s poem, “The Fight,” and respond to the following question: “How is this stanza different from the rest of the poem?”
• In Unit 4, Powerful Openings, Activity 4.5, students are given a choice of two narrative prompts: “Rewrite a section of the Out of My Mind novel from the third-person point of view, allowing the reader to see Melody from more of a distance,” or “Rewrite a section of the Fahrenheit 451 novel opening from the first-person point of view, allowing the reader direct access into Montag’s thoughts.”

Opportunities for process writing tasks and focused projects include, but are not limited to:

• In Unit 1, Telling Details, Activity 1.10, students plan, draft, and revise a literary analysis paragraph by creating complete sentences, adding transition words and phrases and adding context for direct quotations. Students are prompted: “Use the following single-paragraph outline to plan a paragraph about how Roald Dahl conveys humor in ‘Lamb to the Slaughter.’” This is followed by a task that requires them to apply what they learned about effective sentences to revise an unelaborated paragraph.
• In Unit 1, Telling Details, Embedded Assessment 1: “Writing a Literary Analysis,” students write a literary analysis in which they analyze how Zadie Smith uses literary devices or other elements to express the theme of coping with emotional turmoil in the short story, “Martha, Martha.”
• In Unit 3, Compelling Evidence, Embedded Assessment 1, students write an argumentative essay about the value of a college education. They are asked to “assert a precise claim, support it with reasons and evidence, and acknowledge and refute counterarguments fairly.”

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 9 meet the criteria that materials provide opportunities for students to address different text types of writing that reflect the distribution required by the standards. (Writing opportunities incorporate digital resources/multimodal literacy materials where appropriate. Opportunities may include blended writing styles that reflect the distribution required by the standards.)

The materials provide opportunities for students to learn, practice, and construct a variety of writing modes and genres across the school year. Because writing instruction starts at the sentence level and progresses through paragraphs to full, multi-draft pieces of writing, students and teachers are able to monitor progress. The majority of writing prompts, assignments, and assessments are text-based and reflect an in-depth look at author's craft across a variety of text types. Each unit contains two Embedded Assessments that require students to demonstrate their understanding of the unit focus through writing types and media as required by the standards. Students regularly engage in task-based writing and writing to sources, and direct instruction in narrative, argument, and informational writing. Students engage extensively in each writing type across the year as each unit exemplifies a different mode of writing. There is also variation of writing types within each unit typically for smaller tasks within lessons.

There are also ten Writing Workshops per grade level that provide direct instruction and practice for argumentative, explanatory, narrative, literary, research, narrative nonfiction, poetry, script, and procedural writing. It is important to note that these workshops are not a part of the core materials and must be used at the teacher’s discretion.

Materials include sufficient writing opportunities for a whole year’s use. Some examples include:

• In Unit 1, Telling Details, the unit focus is literary analysis and narrative writing with an in-depth look at narrative elements. After analyzing multiple narratives and exemplar analyses, students complete Embedded Assessment 1: “Write a literary analysis in which you analyze how Zadie Smith uses literary devices or other elements to express the theme of coping with emotional turmoil in the short story ‘Martha, Martha.’” By the end of the unit, Embedded Assessment 2 requires students to write an original story from real or imagined experiences or events. The story must include a variety of narrative techniques—such as foreshadowing, point of view, figurative language, imagery, symbolism, and/or irony—as well as telling details and a well-structured sequence of events.
• In Unit 2, Pivotal Words and Phrases, students read multiple short stories, drama excerpts, and poems to practice informational writing to sources and creative writing. Some tasks require students to synthesize information across sources for their analyses. Embedded Assessment 1 is a collaborative dramatic interpretation. Students perform a scene from Romeo and Juliet and keep a staging notebook that chronicles their interpretation and preparation. At the end of the unit, students create and revise an original poem to present it for Embedded Assessment 2.
• In Unit 3, Compelling Evidence, students examine and analyze multiple argumentative sources, such as editorials and essays on various social issues, to study rhetoric and practice argumentative writing. Embedded Assessment 1 requires students to follow the writing process building an argumentative essay on the value of a college education. In the remainder of the unit, students practice synthesizing information and writing from multiple sources to prepare for a research presentation on their career choice.
• In Unit 4, Powerful Openings, students focus on literary analysis and researching historical context. After reading multiple chapter excerpts from To Kill a Mockingbird, students complete Embedded Assessment 1 in which they “write a passage analysis of a key coming-of-age scene” in the novel and demonstrate “how the literary elements in this passage help develop a theme of the novel.” After reading the novel, students study several historical essays and articles from the Civil Rights Movement that help situate the context of the novel. After writing several analytical compositions, students complete Embedded Assessment 2 which requires them to “research the historical, cultural, social, or geographical context” in which the novel was written and show their findings with a multimedia presentation.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 9 meet the criteria for materials include frequent opportunities for evidence-based writing to support sophisticated analysis, argumentation, and synthesis.

The instructional materials provide frequent opportunities for writing that requires students to analyze sources, make arguments with claims and supporting evidence, and synthesize information across texts and various media sources. These opportunities include on-demand tasks within lessons, as well as both embedded assessments per unit. Close, critical reading activities throughout the units incorporate text-based writing from the sentence level to multi-draft full-length compositions. Students also read additional texts independently within each unit and synthesize in writing what they learned from these texts and selections embedded in the lessons. Students complete two Knowledge Quests per unit, in which they read and analyze a collection of texts around a topic, theme, or idea and synthesize what they learned either in a Writing to Sources prompt or a class discussion. For significant tasks such as the Embedded Assessments, students are provided with graphic organizers, checklists, and/or rubrics to support their work.

Writing opportunities are focused around students’ analyses and claims developed from reading closely and working with sources. Some examples include:

• In Unit 1,Telling Details, Activity, 1.17, students closely read a story, titled “Games at Twilight,” to find details about complex characters’ traits and feelings. Students must cite “strong and thorough” text evidence to analyze the author’s purpose and write detailed sentences.
• In Unit 2, Pivotal Words and Phrases, Activity, 2.5, students use an outline to develop and write a multiple-paragraph response about how pivotal words and phrases illustrate the unpredictability of human impulse in the face of nature. Students must gather and synthesize evidence from the short story, “What Happened During the Ice Storm” and the poem “The Fight.” Students must include examples of language that imply impulsive or unpredictable action toward nature.
• In Unit 3, Compelling Evidence, students examine and analyze multiple argumentative sources on various social issues. Embedded Assessment 1 requires students to use evidence from multiple sources to build an argumentative essay on the value of a college education. During the second half of the unit, Activity 3.21 prompts students to identify evidence from at least four sources for a research project on their career choice. Students track this evidence in their Reader/Writer Notebook for a presentation on their career choice for Embedded Assessment 2.
• In Unit 4, Powerful Openings, Activity 4.27, students read a series of documents and photographs. Then students complete the “Writing to Sources: Informational Text” prompt which reads, “After viewing and discussing the details and implications of both sets of primary-source photographs as well as the list of Jim Crow laws, write an essay explaining how To Kill A Mockingbird could be viewed as a commentary on the time in which it was written.” Students are advised to “include specific, relevant details about the images and laws that stood out or informed your understanding of the author’s purpose.”

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 9 meet the criteria for materials include instruction and practice of the grammar and conventions/language standards for grade level as applied in increasingly sophisticated contexts, with opportunities for application in context.

Materials provide embedded instruction and practice of grammar and language concepts throughout the four units of study at each grade level. Sections titled Grammar and Usage point out authors’ use of grammatical constructs in the selections students are reading in the activity. The goal of providing these call-outs is to increase reading comprehension and to provide a model for students to incorporate the constructs into their own writing. Students engage in sentence-level grammar and usage practice through Focus on the Sentence tasks. Several times in the unit students complete Language and Writer’s Craft tasks that “address topics in writing such as style, word choice, and sentence construction.” These exercises are also embedded in daily lessons, reference the text at hand, and include application to the students’ own writing.

Units also contain Language Checkpoints which provide more in-depth practice of conventions and usage; students study examples from unit selections and complete multiple exercises for practice, including revising sample sentences and revising sentences within their own work. The design of the various grammar and usage exercises enables students to practice concepts in increasingly sophisticated ways. Most tasks address the specific grammar and conventions/language standards for the grade, though not all lessons align to the grade-level standards. Language Workshops provide supplemental exercises on vocabulary, sight-words, and word studies; however, it is important to note that these workshops require additional instructional time and teacher planning as they are not a part of the core materials.

Materials include instruction of all grammar and conventions standards for the grade level. Some examples include:

• Students have opportunities to use parallel structure.
• In Unit 3, Compelling Evidence, Activity 3.12, Language Checkpoint: Using Parallel Structure, students participate in a lesson on using parallel structure (L.9-10.1a). In the previous activity, students read “Remarks by the President in a National Address to America’s Schoolchildren” by President Barack Obama. In the Language Checkpoint, students complete a series of practice activities based on the parallel structure used in Obama’s speech, for example: “Read the following sentence from President Obama's speech: ‘...None of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities, unless you show up to those schools, unless you pay attention to those teachers, unless you listen to your parents, and grandparents and other adults and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.’ In this sentence, President Obama uses parallel structure by repeating the same clause: unless you [verb].How does parallel structure help make the sentence clearer? Why?”
• Students have opportunities to use various types of phrases (noun, verb, adjectival, adverbial, participial, prepositional, absolute) and clauses (independent, dependent; noun, relative, adverbial) to convey specific meanings and add variety and interest to writing or presentations.
• In Unit 1, Telling Details, Activity 1.4, A Study in Characterization, students read the short story “The First Day” by Edward P. Jones. After reading and analyzing phrases in the text, students study grammar in context through a Language and “Writer’s Craft Box” titled “Language and Writer’s Craft: Subordinating Conjunctions and Complex Sentences.” Students read an explanation of the function of complex sentences and subordinating conjunctions and an example sentence. Then they practice the concept. Finally, the students applying what they learned to the text they are studying: “Consider the contrasting traits you unearthed in the narrator's depiction of her mother in ‘The First Day.’ What subordinating conjunction could you use to signal that contrast? Write a sentence that captures two contradictory traits of the mother.”
• Students have opportunities to use a semicolon (and perhaps a conjunctive adverb) to link two or more closely related independent clauses.
• In Unit 2, Pivotal Words and Phrases, Activity 2.5, students reread the last stanza of the poem “The Fight” by John Montague. In the section “Revisiting the Fight,” students complete two tasks, including this one based on the author’s use of punctuation: “Sometimes writers use a semicolon (;) to connect two complete thoughts, while also creating a dramatic pause between them. Reread the last stanza of ‘The Fight’ and write one sentence for each half of the stanza, translating the poetic verse into prose.”
• Students have opportunities to use a colon to introduce a list or quotation.
• In Unit 1, Telling Details, Activity 1.16, the Language Checkpoint addresses semicolons, colons, and dashes. After providing a definition and multiple examples of each, students complete several text-related tasks in which they identify which type of punctuation fits in the blank. Students are then prompted to add these to their own writing: “Reread the paragraph you wrote in Activity 1.16 aloud. As you read, listen for where you naturally pause within your sentences. If you pause and there’s no punctuation on the page, consider whether adding punctuation within the sentence would make it clearer. Add commas, colons, semicolons, and dashes to clarify your ideas.”
• Students have opportunities to spell correctly.
• In Unit 3, Compelling Evidence, Activity 3.18, students review the process of peer-editing and self-editing: “After revising, it is essential that writers take the time to edit their own drafts to correct errors in grammar and usage, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. Return to your draft and self-edit to strengthen the grammar and language conventions. Use your Editor’s Checklist as a reference.”