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.

This unit uses William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing as a vehicle to help students consider how a person is powerless in the face of rumor and how reputations can alter lives, both for good and for ill. They will consider comedy and what makes us laugh. They will see how the standards of beauty and societal views toward women have changed since the Elizabethan Age and reflect on reasons for those changes. As students consider the play, they will write on the passages that inspire and plague them and on topics relating to one of the themes in the play. Finally, they will bring Shakespeare’s words to life in individual performances and in group scene presentations.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Students read Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing .
Students read two Shakespearean sonnets and excerpts from an Elizabethan morality handbook dealing with types of women, and they respond to them from several different perspectives.
For each work of literature, students do some writing. They learn to write a sonnet; create a Prompt Book; complete a Dialectical Journal; and write an analytical essay about a topic relating to a theme in the play.
Students see Shakespeare’s play as it was intended to be seen: in a performance. They memorize 15 or more lines from the play and perform them for the class. Students take part in a short scene as either a director or an actor.

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 are society’s expectations with regard to gender roles?
Does humor transcend time? Do we share the same sense of humor as our ancestors?
How do we judge people?
How important is reputation?

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.

CLASSROOM FILMS

The Branagh version of Much Ado About Nothing is available on DVD through Netflix and for streaming through Amazon. Other versions are also available on both sites.

People often say that mankind should learn from history. Charles Dickens, whose books are considered classics, set his novel A Tale of Two Cities in the past. He wanted his readers to learn from the bloody French Revolution and from the widespread brutality in London. Both cities (Paris and London) offer the reader a glimpse into dark and dangerous times. As students read about Dickens's Victorian setting and learn his view of the French Revolution, they will think about what makes a just world. Students will have a chance to think about their own experiences, and, using techniques they have learned from Charles Dickens, they will do some writing that sends a message about your own world.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

To complete the unit accomplishments, students will:

Read the Charles Dickens novel A Tale of Two Cities.
Read several short pieces, including a biography of Dickens and excerpts from other literature, to help them understand Dickens’s world and the world of the novel.
Explore new vocabulary to build their ability to write and speak using academic language.
Practice close reading and participate in several role plays and dramatic readings to help them experience the dramatic writing style of Charles Dickens.
Write a vignette and a short narrative piece, and practice using descriptive detail and precise language.
Write a reflection about the meaning of Dickens’s novel.

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.

How does good storytelling affect the reader, and how can a good story promote change in the world?
What was the Victorian view of gender roles?
How can power be abused?
What is loyalty ? What are the limits of loyalty?

The 12th 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 12th 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. Language study is embedded in every 12th grade unit as students use annotation to closely review aspects of each text. Teacher resources provide additional materials to support each unit.

Who decides who among us is civilized? What rules should govern immigration into the United States? Whom should we let in? Keep out? What should we do about political refugees or children without papers? What if they would be a drain on our economy?

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Students read William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest and write a short argument about who in the play is truly civilized.
Students participate in a mock trial in which they argue for or against granting asylum to a teenage refugee, and then they write arguments in favor of granting asylum to one refugee and against granting it to another.
Students read an Independent Reading text and write an informational essay about a global issue and how that relates to their book.

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 role do national identity, custom, religion, and other locally held beliefs play in a world increasingly characterized by globalization?
How does Shakespeare’s view of human rights compare with that in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
Who is civilized? Who decides what civilization is or how it’s defined?
How do we behave toward and acknowledge those whose culture is different from our own?

The laws that govern and the social norms that regulate society are not always fair, legal, moral, or ethical. What is a person to do about all this injustice? What are the hazards of righting injustices or changing social norms? And what are the dangers of doing nothing?

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Students read and annotate Antigone, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” and Pygmalion.
Students write a literary analysis showing the effect of social class or the law on a character’s life.

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.

How do social class and legal institutions shape literary characters’ lives (and presumably our lives)?
How does social class affect a person in dealing with the law (protect a person, hurt a person)?
How is social class determined in America and in other places in the world?

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 12th grade module, students read, discuss, and analyze four literary texts, focusing on the development of interrelated central ideas within and across the texts. |The mains texts in this module include|A Streetcar Named Desire|by Tennessee Williams, “A Daily Joy to Be Alive” by Jimmy Santiago Baca, “The Overcoat” by Nikolai Gogol, and|The Namesake|by Jhumpa Lahiri. As students discuss these texts, they will analyze complex characters who struggle to define and shape their own identities. The characters’ struggles for identity revolve around various internal and external forces including: class, gender, politics, intersecting cultures, and family expectations.|

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

The PDF is literary criticism in English Literature. Various theories are well explained with appropriate examples of British Literature.

This is a lesson plan which requires students to use part of the DSM-5 (specifically the section on Narcissistic Personality Disorder) to fill out a Psychological Assessment Diagnostic Report on Macbeth as having NPD using textual evidence.

The students compare the text version of Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun to two different movie versions. The students document the interpretations of the text presented in the movies in Venn Diagrams, write short reflections, and complete a final project.

The resource is a written summary of 'A midsummer night's dream'. I got inspired by a podcast [open education source] published by University of Oxford. Link:http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/embed/3ef3bcaff469fc8e8b05Embed Code: <iframe width="640" height="400" src="http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/embed/3ef3bcaff469fc8e8b05" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Sudhir Khullar

PDF Link to summary and appreciation: PDF : https://drive.google.com/file/d/19pEm0fne9Zo1Ke2tDNSF3X_vqfHrgWwg/view?usp=sharing

"Song of the Open Road" is a poem by Sir Walt(er) Whitman from his 1856 collection ‘Leaves of Grass’. It is widely admired by people of all age groups.
It symbolically speaks about self-awareness, free-will, tenderness of heart, mobility, love and freedom.
Out of the fifteen sections of the original poem, Yuvakbharati English book of Std. XII has prescribed the first section of the poem. This multi-themed poem has been written in free verse, and motivates us to cross hurdles, be optimistic and live in a free and democratic society. The title is apt as it depicts the poet’s free will and carefree tone. It appeals to the readers as it urges them to join the poet’s journey of the open road which is democratic and free.
Indoors is a place of secret and silent despair. It's only roads where people walk with some meaning and purpose. A road is classless and the most democratic segment of a society.Road symbolizes mobility. So don't stay at one place, move ahead. Mobility makes you wise and versatile!
Summary of the first section:
Sir Walt(er) Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road” is a celebration of travel - an ode to himself or any democratic individual. He embarks upon a journey “Afoot and light-hearted…” He is free to choose wherever he wishes. He chooses his own journey after being fed up of experiencing four-walled home spun politics, high philosophies and bookish disciplines. He feels self-contented and doesn’t desire anything more in life. He doesn’t want the influence of powerful or wiser people who appear good in their power and persona (constellations). He doesn’t want their support as he himself is his good fortune. He is the maker of his own luck. Mother Earth would take care of him. He appeals to his fellow-travellers to travel with him on that democratic path in which he himself is travelling. The powers and influence of great people are nothing when compared to a winding, tortuous road which bears stresses and turns of events due to passengers. The road bears our stress (burden), still takes us to the goals we had set for ourselves before commencing. There may be situations when difficulties would arise, but no shortcut or escaping would work. He tells the fellow Americans to understand the concept of freedom and break free from the fetters of conventional rules. In conclusion, he separates himself from the rest of the world by keeping himself in brackets and admits that he admires his delicious burdens because of their symbiotic relationship with each other - burdens fill him; he fills them in return!
Regards
Sudhir Khullar
License
Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)

Explore how masculinity is portrayed in a modern stylized version of Shakespeare's iconic play in this video from Great Performances: Romeo and Juliet. What does it mean to be a "man?" How is our understanding of masculinity reflected in the interplay of Shakespeare's words and the way in which this production interprets the text? Support materials ask students to analyze the fight scene in Act I of the play and whether Romeo accepts or rejects the ideas about masculinity introduced in that opening scene.