Students examine books, selected from the American Library Association Challenged/Banned Books list, and write persuasive pieces expressing their views about what should be done with the books at their school.

The 11th grade learning experience consists of 7 mostly month-long units aligned to the Common Core State Standards, with available course material for teachers and students easily accessible online. Over the course of the year there is a steady progression in text complexity levels, sophistication of writing tasks, speaking and listening activities, and increased opportunities for independent and collaborative work. Rubrics and student models accompany many writing assignments.Throughout the 11th grade year, in addition to the Common Read texts that the whole class reads together, students each select an Independent Reading book and engage with peers in group Book Talks. Students move from learning the class rituals and routines and genre features of argument writing in Unit 11.1 to learning about narrative and informational genres in Unit 11.2: The American Short Story. Teacher resources provide additional materials to support each unit.

In this unit, students will produce two major pieces of work.  The first piece is an argument essay that grapples with one of the core questions of the unit: who are we, and who have we become because of the ways we connect? Students will read, annotate, and discuss several texts together as they consider the issues surrounding this question, and they will also research and annotate independently as they search for more evidence and perspectives to help deepen their ideas.  They will also create a museum exhibit as part of a team.  The exhibit project will help students identify what's worth preserving about their unique place in history.

PROJECT UNITS

This project unit continues to meet the English Language Arts standards as it also utilizes the learning principles established by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. It is designed to support deep content knowledge and perseverance through long-term project planning and implementation. In addition, it will help students to recognize, develop, and apply the planning, teamwork, communication, and presentation skills they will use while presenting a final product to their class and/or the greater community. This real-world project-based activity will give students an opportunity to apply the skills they have been learning all year and will guide them to develop the motivation, knowledge, and skills they need in order to be college and career ready.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Students write an argument paper where they develop a claim about current culture as it has been influenced by digital connectivity.
Students participate in a group project to create a museum exhibit that captures a unique place, time, and relationship to technology. Students acknowledge the differing perspectives of each group member and use those perspectives to synthesize one cohesive visual argument together.

GUIDING QUESTIONS

These questions are a guide to stimulate thinking, discussion, and writing on the themes and ideas in the unit. For complete and thoughtful answers and for meaningful discussions, students must use evidence based on careful reading of the texts.

What does it mean to be digitally connected?
What are the implications of living in a world where everyone is digitally connected?
How does the availability of instant connectivity shape our relationships?
What does our Internet use reveal about people's needs as humans?

BENCHMARK ASSESSMENT: Cold Read

During this unit, on a day of your choosing, we recommend you administer a Cold Read to assess students’ reading comprehension. For this assessment, students read a text they have never seen before and then respond to multiple-choice and constructed-response questions. The assessment is not included in this course materials.

In this lesson, you will consider the ways that ubiquitous computing has changed how we interact with information and how it has changed how we think about knowledge. You'll also have an opportunity to research independently.In this lesson, students will consider the ways that ubiquitous computing has changed how we interact with information and how it has changed how we think about knowledge. They'll also have an opportunity to research independently.

The purpose of this lesson is for students to gain a better understanding of the passage of time. Students with the help of their teacher should work to design an investigation to find out how successful the class is at predicting when 30 seconds has passed. Once the data is recorded students should begin to graph their findings to make comparisons.

This lesson plan uses song lyrics to teach students to read and listen to poetry without letting personal bias influence their understanding of their reading. Students listen to a song as a class and analyze various details about the words, while also considering how perspective influences their understanding of it.

No matter what you’re doing--solving homework, playing a video game, simply picking out a shirt--all of your actions and decisions relate to your consciousness. But as frequently as we use it, have you ever stopped to ask yourself: What really is consciousness? In this module, we discuss the different levels of consciousness and how they can affect your behavior in a variety of situations. As well, we explore the role of consciousness in other, “altered” states like hypnosis and sleep.

This lesson examines point of view in nonfiction writing, using "THe Death of Benny Paret" by Norman Mailer. Students explore the point of view of the author and any bias he bring to the writing.

This problem-based learning module is designed to bring "Awareness " to students about being judgemental and pre-judging people. Students will become aware of their own judgmental issues and develop a presentation that will bring awareness to their audience on the topic. This module is developed with instruction based on whole group discussions, station rotations, partner research as well as final presentation. This module is created with the ELA standards of W.7.6, W.7.2 , SL.7.1 and the history standard of 7.16 as the focus.