scope and sequence — high school

No Fake Work.

The Core Competencies Curriculum for High SchoolAn Inquiry By Design Scope and SequenceDesigned to help 9th–11th grade English Language Arts teachers and students tackle the most challenging aspects of the Common Core State Standards

1211 Avery Street, Suite 201, Golden, CO 80403 • 817-269-9154 • www.inquirybydesign.com

No Fake Work.

FALL WINTER SPRINGFoundations for Inquiry, Grade 9

Being and Unbeing: A Study of Four Poets

Dealing with Difficulty, Module #1 (Grade 9)

Tracing Cultural Influences: A Study of Research-Based Report Writing


Error JournalWriting Text-Based Arguments

Scope and Sequence9th Grade

Being and Unbeing: A Study of Four Poets centers on four very different sets of poems written by Carolyn Forché, Sonia Sanchez, e.e. cummings, and the Philadelphia-based rap group, The Roots. The study is framed by a short selection from one of e.e. cummings’ Charles Eliot Norton poetry lectures. In these paragraphs, cummings sketches out his idea of poets and poetry using the terms “being” and “unbeing.” The selection serves as a lens for studying each of the poem sets in the unit as students return again and again to consider what cummings’ notions about poets and poetry can help them see and say about each poet’s work and, consequently, about poetry more generally.

Tracing Cultural Influences: A Study of Research-Based Report Writing. This two-part study is anchored by selections from Héctor Tobar’s book, Translation Nation: American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States. In the end, students will have completed a round of work with informational texts that takes them through two waves of work: 1) a cycle of reading, discussion, and then writing about an interesting model of reportage and 2) through a writing process that culminates in the creation of their own research-based reports. All of the work in this unit is inquiry-based and places a strong emphasis on reading, rereading, writing, discussion, and collaboration as students work to read and write texts that are challenging and insightful.

CRoSS-GRADE GUIDEBookS

The Constructing an Error Journal guidebook is a practical solution to the problem of engag-ing students in regular and frequent inquiries into their unique sentence-level errors. Through this inquiry-based approach to grammar and editing, students learn to identify, track, and solve the errors that mark their writing, largely with the help of their peers and a style manual.

The Writing Text-Based Arguments guidebook is specifically designed to address the Com-mon Core State Standards’ emphasis on written argument, a cornerstone of college and career readiness.

Foundations for Inquiry studies are introductory units designed to establish the tools and practices required for inquiry-based learning. Topics include setting up literacy notebooks and establishing independent reading projects. Foundations stud-ies also feature interpretive modules that provide students with in-depth introductions to text-based argument through integrated cycles of discussion and writing that culminate in the writing of formal essays about important and engaging literature.

Dealing with Difficulty is a series of single-text modules conceived as part of Inquiry By Design’s effort to ensure that secondary students have regular and supported opportunities to work with difficult texts. Each module at each grade level is an excursion into difficulty that is important in and of itself, but that is also valuable because it provides a basis for reflection and comparison in subsequent experiences with difficult texts.


No Fake Work.


Language Matters: Essays and Arguments


Borderlands: Theories and Stories




Language Matters: Essays and Arguments asks students to read, discuss, and write about essays on the topic of “bilingualism” by three important American writers: Martín Espada, Richard Rodriguez, and Chang-Rae Lee. Work with each text moves through a cycle that begins with comprehension tasks and culminates in an interpretive writing assignment scaffolded by brief preparatory writings and small and large group discussions. At the end of the unit, students write their own extended persuasive essays in which they synthesize the arguments of the authors they’ve studied and locate themselves in the bilingualism debate using, as Lee does, stories or anecdotes to illustrate and explain their positions.

Borderlands: Theories and Stories. The work in this unit of study is built around four texts: Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, selections from Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, Toni Cade Bambara’s short story “The Lesson,” and a class compilation of “borderlands” stories written by students during the unit. Anzaldúa’s notion of “borderlands” — those places she describes as “physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other”--is the central construct of the unit, the touchstone idea that students consider and re-consider as they read and compose arguments about the texts they read and write during the unit.



The Writing Text-Based Arguments guidebook is specifically designed to address the Common Core State Standards’ emphasis on written argument, a cornerstone of college and career readiness.


Dealing with Difficulty is a series of single-text modules conceived as part of Inquiry By Design’s efforts to ensure that secondary students have regular and supported opportunities to work with difficult texts. Each module at each grade level is an excursion into difficulty that is important in and of itself, but that is also valuable because it provides a basis for reflection and comparison in subsequent experiences with difficult texts.


No Fake Work.


‘Weird Beliefs’: Models and Methods for Research


Poetry Traditions: Thinking with Literature




‘Weird Beliefs’: Models and Methods for Research. The work in this unit begins with a study of two chapters from Susan A. Clancy’s book, Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens, a model of research-based report writing that is smart, sound, sensitive, and often very funny. The unit is divided into two parts: Student work early in Part One is dedicated to making sense of the chapters; the later assignments in Part One build on those comprehension tasks and position students to develop interpretations about Clancy’s work and to analyze the methods she employs. All this scaffolds the work of Part Two where students create reports based on their own research. Toward the end of the unit, student reports are compiled, distributed, and studied as additional examples of research-based report writing.

Poetry Traditions: A “Thinking with Literature” Study. In this unit, students work with and across four clusters of poems by a contemporary rap artist, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Walt Whit-man, and Garrett Hongo. The organizing idea in this study is the notion of a poetry tradition in the United States. The work students do with Whitman, who is widely regarded as the progenitor of a uniquely American poetry, supplies a lens that students use to consider the other three poets. The work in this unit is specifically designed to provide students with practice in close reading and writing text-based arguments.



The Writing Text-Based Arguments guidebook is specifically designed to address the Common Core State Standards’ emphasis on written argument, a cornerstone of college and career readiness.


Dealing with Difficulty is a series of single-text modules conceived as part of Inquiry By Design’s efforts to ensure that sec-ondary students have regular and supported opportunities to work with difficult texts. Each module at each grade level is an excursion into difficulty that is important in and of itself, but that is also valu-able because it provides a basis for reflection and comparison in subsequent experiences with difficult texts.


scope and sequence — high school

Documents