English Language Arts, Grade 9 Module 1

Paths to College and Career is a new, comprehensive English Language Arts curriculum for grades 6 to 12 built from the ground up over a three-year period to address the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts and Literacy. It reflects a deep understanding of the standards and assessments, and is written with a focus on the shifts in instructional practice and student experiences the standards require. It includes daily lesson plans, guiding questions, recommended texts, scaffolding strategies, and other classroom resources.

Paths to College and Career provides teachers, schools, and districts with a concrete and practical ELA instructional program that engages students with compelling and complex texts. At each grade level, Paths to College and Career delivers a yearlong curriculum that develops all students' ability to

* read closely and engage in text-based discussions,

* build evidence-based claims and arguments,

* conduct research and write from sources, and

* expand their academic vocabulary.

Paths to College and Career's instructional resources address the needs of all learners, including students with disabilities, English language learners, and gifted and talented. The curriculum is flexible, user friendly, engaging, and purposefully built to prepare students for career, college, and life.

In Module 1 of Grade 9, students read, discuss, and analyze contemporary and classic texts, focusing on how authors develop complex characters and central ideas and considering the effects of authors' structural choices on the texts. Students read Karen Russell's short story "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves," Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke and Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. Students also participate in an unconventional study of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet by considering representations of the play in other media, first in film via Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet and then in painting with Marc Chagall's "Romeo and Juliet." Students examine key portions of the text through close reading, collaborative discussion, and writing to synthesize ideas.