Created for a business student, pre-internet, who was struggling with analyzing literature and films. It's a walk through a book or film and looking for the symbols, signs, and themes; and the best way to annotate and interact with books.

Students will read an informational text about variations in college completion rates for people born in different years. To help students better understand the text, the teacher will model how to annotate the first half. Students will then annotate the second half themselves. After that, students will answer a series of questions about the text, drawing inferences from what they’ve read and citing textual evidence to support their responses.

Step-by-Step instructions for collaboratively annotating a public-domain text in your course and sharing it with the world.

ACADEMIC READING BADGE
Article Annotation Assignment

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.

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 lesson, students continue to discuss Dr. King’s writing style. Then they will read and discuss W. H. Auden's “Law Like Love,” focusing on the comparisons to law in the poem.

This activity can be used after reading Chapter 5 of The Great Gatsby. Listening and watching the video for Lana Del Rey's song, and title track for the film, students will dig deep into the lyrics of the song identifying figurative language, draw connections between the lyrics of the song and direct quotes from the text, and have meaningful discussion about point-of-view and symbolism in the video. Guaranteed to engage students and make valuable text to text connections!

This activity can be used after reading Chapter 5 of The Great Gatsby. Listening and watching the video for Lana Del Rey's song, and title track for the film, students will dig deep into the lyrics of the song identifying figurative language, draw connections between the lyrics of the song and direct quotes from the text, and have meaningful discussion about point-of-view and symbolism in the video. Guaranteed to engage students and make valuable text to text connections!

Students will read an article about the relevance of politics in Julius Caesar and compare it to a real-world experience as well as create a visual representation of its relation to specific scenes in Julius Caesar.

In this resource, students will be asked to use a graphic organizer in order to identify and track the development of theme and character in a literary text. Students will use evidence from the text to construct an evidence based response.

In this resource, students will be asked to use a graphic organizer in order to identify and track the development of theme and character in a literary text. Students will use evidence from the text to construct an evidence based response.

This activity can be used after reading Chapter 5 of The Great Gatsby. Listening and watching the video for Lana Del Rey's song, and title track for the film, students will dig deep into the lyrics of the song identifying figurative language, draw connections between the lyrics of the song and direct quotes from the text, and have meaningful discussion about point-of-view and symbolism in the video. Guaranteed to engage students and make valuable text to text connections!