📚 9th grade English Language Arts

Units

1. Unit 1

   🔍Close Reading

   Reading original short passages and answering questions about theme, tone, word choice, structure and the author's purpose, using evidence from the text.

   Learning standard: RL.9-10.1; RL.9-10.2 · inference, theme and the author's craft

2. Unit 2

   🎭Literary Elements

   Recognizing devices such as irony, symbolism, motif, allusion and foils in short excerpts, and describing tone and mood.

   Learning standard: RL.9-10.4; RL.9-10.5 · irony, motif, tone and mood

3. Unit 3

   ✏️Grammar & Style

   Semicolons, colons, dashes, commas and apostrophes, subject-verb agreement, pronoun case, misplaced modifiers, run-ons and fragments, and choosing a formal or informal register.

   Learning standard: L.9-10.1; L.9-10.2; L.9-10.3 · punctuation, agreement and register

4. Unit 4

   🧩Word Detective

   Using prefixes, suffixes and Latin and Greek bases to work out new words, choosing a meaning from the sentence around a word, and subject words like product, mass and scale.

   Learning standard: L.9-10.4 · roots, prefixes and meaning in context

5. Unit 5

   🎬Literary Devices

   Spotting allusion (a reference to something well known), analogy, juxtaposition (contrasts side by side) and flashback in short original excerpts, and explaining why a writer chooses them.

   Learning standard: RL.9-10.5; L.9-10.5 · allusion, analogy, juxtaposition and flashback

6. Unit 6

   🔒Digital Smarts

   Telling misinformation from disinformation, checking sources before trusting them, managing passwords and privacy, spotting phishing, and citing and using other people's work respectfully.

   Learning standard: W.9-10.6; W.9-10.8 · credible sources, technology-made content and privacy

7. Unit 7

   📰Forms & Features

   Knowing what each text form does, how features such as an index, footnote or caption help readers, how signal words show a text's pattern, and how images, color and design shape meaning.

   Learning standard: RI.9-10.5; RI.9-10.7 · text patterns, visuals and media features

8. Unit 8

   📝Summarizing Texts

   Practices summarizing: grouping related ideas, separating important from less important information, paraphrasing and keeping the author's message.

   Learning standard: RI.9-10.2 · finding central ideas and summarizing in your own words

9. Unit 9

   ✍️Form & Composing

   Practices choosing a form for purpose and audience, tone, organization, transitions, text features and design choices when composing and publishing.

   Learning standard: W.9-10.4; L.9-10.3 · choosing a form and tone for the audience

10. Unit 10

    🔬Research & Credibility

    Students practice effective research questions, peer review, conflicting sources, sampling, lateral reading, checking AI output for invented sources, and citing and synthesizing evidence honestly.

    Learning standard: W.9-10.7; W.9-10.8 · research questions, conflicting sources, credibility and citing

11. Unit 11

    🔎Proofreading

    Students practice proofreading in US spelling: commonly misspelled words and confusing pairs such as affect and effect, accept and except, principle and principal.

    Learning standard: L.9-10.2; W.9-10.5 · editing writing for correct spelling and word choice

12. Unit 12

    🎙️Media Analysis

    Students analyze the purposes and techniques of media messages (rhetorical appeals, framing, propaganda, sponsored content, deepfakes) and how beliefs and algorithms shape interpretation.

    Learning standard: RI.9-10.7; SL.9-10.2 · analyzing how media messages use appeals, framing and other techniques