Journals: ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS What are some important lessons we learn as we "grow up"? What skills do you need to "grow up" successfully? What does a healthy parent-child relationship look like? An unhealthy one? What are the most important responsibilities a parent has to a child? What are the most important responsibilities a child has to a parent? How important is it for a person to "do the right thing"? and How do you know what it is? What does it mean to be an "outsider"? What does racism look like today, and how has it changed? What are the differences between boys and girls? How does being poor affect the way a person sees the world? How does it affect the way the world sees that person?
CALIFORNIA STANDARDS ADDRESSED Reading - Literature 1. Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. 2. Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text. 3. Analyze how complex characters develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme. 4. Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone. 5. Analyze how an author's choices concerning how to structure text, order events within it, and manipulate time create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise. 10. By the end of grade 9, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 9–10 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range. Writing 1. Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence. 4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. 5. Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying an new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose or audience. 6. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products. 9. Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research. 10. Write routinely over extended and shorter time frames for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences. Speaking and Listening 1. Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversaions and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others' ideas and expressing your own clearly and persuasively. 2. Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally. 3. Evaluate a speaker's point of view, reasoning, and uses of evidence and rhetoric. 6. Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and communicative tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate. Language 1/2. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar, usage, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing and/or speaking. 4. Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grades 9-10 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies. 5. Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings. 6. Acquire and use accurately general academic and domain-specific words and phrases, sufficient for reading, writing, speaking, and listening at the college and career readiness level; demonstrate independence in gathering vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression.