9th or 10th Grade English Curriculum | Full Year ELA | High School | Yearlong

Looking for a full-year curriculum that will support your students to improve their writing and critical thinking?

It’s so challenging to figure out yearly plans. Deciding on the best time to schedule assessments, slogging through multiple texts, trying to come up with activities and questions so that your classes aren’t bored all while you’re dealing with grading, faculty meetings, study halls, parent communication, and keeping up with the latest requirements and standards. It’s impossible for a teacher to do it all.

And if you don’t plan out the year sufficiently, you’ll be left teaching meaningless, irrelevant texts that don’t engage students, scheduling assessments for the last minute when you are already totally overwhelmed, and completely out of energy. Even worse, your boring plans will create classroom management problems and teach your classes to hate literature.

Why reinvent the wheel when someone else has already gone through all that for you? Have your entire 180-day schedule planned out so you can save your time and energy for the work that really counts: connecting with your students and giving them the challenges and support they need to grow as learners.

The extensive plans included in this resource are enough for 180 days of rigorous common-core aligned reading, analyzing, discussing, and writing as well as plenty of fun activities to keep students on their toes and trying new things. These resources are based on the best practices that I have learned over my sixteen years of teaching and they are all you need for a complete ELA curriculum.

With an over-arching theme of exploring new worlds, the units in this year-long plan will challenge your classes to learn about growth mindset and failure, family and coming of age, bullying and hate crimes, genocide and colonialism, and how we can work together to make our world a better place.

Your students will improve as writers and critical thinkers, and you’ll all learn so much about each other.

The variety of materials, real-life connections, and innovative approaches to the information will keep students engaged and excited about learning. Additionally, the concrete text-based questions and unique sources discourage cheating and encourage students to answer for themselves.

Want to see what you’ll get before you buy? Click on the Bundle Overview in the preview to see the entire 180 day schedule.

When you teach with the innovative units in this giant bundle, you will:

• Establish calming routines when you begin class with the daily bellringer freewrite prompts.

• Fulfill common core requirements when you teach some classic as well as some lesser known works from more contemporary world writers.

• Give even your most reluctant learners the scaffolding and support they need to engage with challenging texts when you utilize the no-prep handouts and extensive answer keys for every text in the bundle.

• Differentiate for your students’ needs with the varied choices and suggestions for activities, extension, and daily processes.

• Engage multiple learning styles with the interactive notebook extension activities involving everything from dynamic jigsaw activities to researching solutions for gang violence to drawing comics to reading articles from the Onion.

• Get your classes connecting classic literature with contemporary and historical ideas and issues such as the climate change, bullying and hate crimes, and the social media echo chamber, when you teach with the fascinating TED Talks and contemporary news articles included in these units.

• Create a classroom atmosphere that encourages experimentation, play, and fun when you complete the multiple creative writing questions and interactive activities together with your students.

• Teach powerful and effective writing units focusing on common core requirements when you utilize the proven mini lessons, activities, handouts, assignments, and rubrics.

• Give assessments that you will actually enjoy reading when you choose from the multiple options for each unit including an ironic how-to, an original short story, a original poem, a poetry anthology, a literary analysis paper, and a graded discussion.

• Explore the varied themes of this world literature curriculum together with your students as you challenge them to consider multiple viewpoints and perspectives and grow their empathy and compassion for people whose lives are very different from their own.

There are no lectures or power points here—students will do the work themselves, with guidance from you. Rather than telling them what the texts mean, you will be empowering them with the confidence and skills to tackle literature on their own.

Texts and sources included in this curriculum:

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula Le Guin

“[When My Love Swears That She is Made of Truth]” or Sonnet 138 by William Shakespeare

“A Certain Lady” by Dorothy Parker

“Judith and Holofernes” a painting by Artemisia Gentileschi

“Of Revenge” an essay by Francis Bacon

“Sonnet 130” a poem by William Shakespeare

“Sonnet 18” a poem by William Shakespeare

“Sonnet 73” a poem by William Shakespeare

Excerpt from A Tempest by Aime Cesaire

Excerpt from "Sycorax" by Suniti Namjoshi

“Rules to Live By” a radio story excerpted from This American Life’s show on Harper High School in Chicago, 2016

“We Real Cool,” a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks, 1959

“Harlem (A Dream Deferred)” a poem by Langston Hughes, 1951

“Harlem Gang Leader” a photo essay by Gordon Parks, 1948

“Judith and Holofernes” a painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, completed between 1614–20

“Of Revenge” an essay by Francis Bacon, 1625

“Bored, Broke and Armed: Clues to Chicago’s Gang Violence” an article by John Eligon, published in The New York Times, 2016

“How We Cut Youth Violence in Boston by 79 Percent” a TED Talk by Jeffrey Brown, 2015

“There's Another Solution To Gang Violence” an opinion piece by Don Williamson, published in The Seattle Times, 1990

"We Are Reclaiming Chicago One Corner at a Time” an opinion piece by Tamar Manasseh, published in The New York Times, 2017

“Editorial: A Chicago alderman finally speaks truth to gang violence” an opinion piece by Editorial Board, published in The Chicago Tribune, 2017

“The Wrong Way to Fight Gangs” an opinion piece by Lauren Markham published in The New York Times, 2017

“Elena” a poem by Pat Mora

“The Writer” a poem by Richard Wilbur

“Sonnet 130” a poem by William Shakespeare

“Sonnet 18” a poem by William Shakespeare

“Sonnet 73” a poem by William Shakespeare

“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” a poem by Dylan Thomas

"Hanging Fire" a poem by Audre Lorde

"The Victims” a poem by Sharon Olds

Night by Elie Wiesel

“The Birthday of the World” a poem by Marge Piercy

“The Shawl” a short story by Cynthia Ozick

“The Talent Myth” an essay by Malcolm Gladwell

“Fish Cheeks” an essay by Amy Tan

“Two Kinds” a short story by Amy Tan

“Hanging Fire” a poem by Audre Lorde

Annie John a novel by Jamaica Kincaid

“The Danger of the Single Story” a TED Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” a short story by Ursula K. Le Guin

“Harrison Bergeron” a short story by Kurt Vonnegut