Grade 9: ELA by Austin Book

Template for Contributions:

austinbook1 — 2025-10-08 19:56:26 UTC

Unit Title:

Big Questions:

Skills Covered:

Unit Length:

Unit 1: Active Reading (Fiction Texts)

austinbook1 — 2025-10-08 21:39:29 UTC

What systemic obstacles do people face to achieving their dreams?

-Author's argument

-Text Connections (Text, World, Self)

-Summarizing

-Thematic questions

-Collecting evidence relevant to author's argument

-MLA citations and formatting quotes (transition term, point of quote, quote and citation)

-Allusions and SHAMPOO (simile, hyperbole, alliteration, metaphor, personification, oxymoron, onomatopoeia)

-Commentary on Race, Class, or Gender

-Weekly Vocab (definitions, synonyms/antonyms, use in a sentence).

Unit Length: 7 Weeks

Unit 2: Essay Writing

austinbook1 — 2025-10-08 21:54:36 UTC

How does an author use SHAMPOO to make an argument about Race, Class, or Gender?

-Making a clear argument supported by evidence

-Elaborating on reasoning

-Introduction to thesis structure (argument + 2 reasons why)

-4 paragraph essay structure

-Introductory paragraph and concluding paragraph

Unit Length: 3 Weeks

Unit 3: A Raisin in the Sun

austinbook1 — 2025-10-09 12:21:07 UTC

How do societal obstacles around race, class, and gender impact our daily lives?

-Annotations

-Applying Unit 1 skills to new texts

-Socratic Seminar

-Group discussion practice

-Independent Reading Project

Unit Length: 9 Weeks/1 Quarter

Unit 4: Media Literacy

austinbook1 — 2025-10-09 15:34:44 UTC

How do advertisers and creators use images to stories to get our attention? What do they want us to do? Why?

-Introduction to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

-AI and AI Slop Introduction

-Spotting bias in language (Headline evaluation)

Unit Length: 4 weeks

Unit 5: Research

austinbook1 — 2025-10-09 16:09:34 UTC

How did the people we hold up as "leaders" overcome the societal obstacles they faced?

-Developing a research question

-BOOLEAN

-Annotating academic sources

-Research presentations (individual)

Unit Length: 8 Weeks

Unit 6: The Third Door

austinbook1 — 2025-10-09 16:11:21 UTC

What skills can we learn from "great leaders"?

-Annotating for strategies that set great leaders apart

-developing an argument

-weekly practice of research process from Unit 5

Unit Length: 6-8 Weeks

All Year Skills:

austinbook1 — 2025-10-09 16:12:33 UTC

-WOW Vocab each week

-Each WOW week includes a new grammar skill based on IL Grade 9 assessment data at the start of the year