California English Content Standards
Writing Standards (Grade 9-10) 9: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
Reading Standards for Literature (Grade 9-10) 3: Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.
Speaking and Listening Standards (Grade 9-10) 5: Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest.
Reading Standards for Literature (Grade 9-10) 3: Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.
Speaking and Listening Standards (Grade 9-10) 5: Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest.
California ELD Standards
Interpretive 8 (Expanding): Explain how a writer’s or speaker’s choice of phrasing or specific words (e.g., using figurative language or words with multiple meanings to describe an event or character) produces nuances and different effects on the audience.
Productive 10a (Expanding): Write longer literary and informational texts (e.g., an argument about water rights) collaboratively (e.g., with peers) and independently using appropriate text organization and growing understanding of register.
Productive 10a (Expanding): Write longer literary and informational texts (e.g., an argument about water rights) collaboratively (e.g., with peers) and independently using appropriate text organization and growing understanding of register.
Enduring Understandings
- I would like my students to understand and perceive censorship and its many forms.
- Students should also understand how essential access to knowledge is in a functioning and well-off society. Once knowledge is traded for ignorance or apathy, our reality may reveal itself as more dystopian than we could have previously imagined.
- Another concept I'd like my students to become familiar with is hysterical and passive distractions. Mass media news can be hysterical concerning politics and drive people into a frenzy and distract them from what truly matters in their lives. Passive distractions can be someone obsessed with mindless television shows, checking their social media, etc. and gets people distracted from big issues and eventually pulls them away from their family and what is important in the end.
Summative Assessment
Final Project:
Students will create a 'complexity wheel' for the novel and answer all high-order thinking questions onto graphic organizers that will be stapled together. Each question requires evidence citations from the text. The following areas are covered by the wheel: Understanding, Recall, Creation, Evaluation, Analysis, and Application.
Below are examples of questions for each area that will be covered:
Understanding: How would you compare and contrast the protagonist and antagonist of Fahrenheit 451?
Recall: What is the setting of the novel?
Creation: Design a PSA poster to address a lesson we learned from reading the novel.
Evaluation: Would you change the ending (resolution) of the novel? Why or why not?
Analysis: What conclusions can you draw about the deeper meaning of the novel?
Application: If you were in the protagonist's situation, how would you have handled things and why?
Students will create a 'complexity wheel' for the novel and answer all high-order thinking questions onto graphic organizers that will be stapled together. Each question requires evidence citations from the text. The following areas are covered by the wheel: Understanding, Recall, Creation, Evaluation, Analysis, and Application.
Below are examples of questions for each area that will be covered:
Understanding: How would you compare and contrast the protagonist and antagonist of Fahrenheit 451?
Recall: What is the setting of the novel?
Creation: Design a PSA poster to address a lesson we learned from reading the novel.
Evaluation: Would you change the ending (resolution) of the novel? Why or why not?
Analysis: What conclusions can you draw about the deeper meaning of the novel?
Application: If you were in the protagonist's situation, how would you have handled things and why?