📚 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.

   Benchmark: 9.1.4.1; 9.1.4.2 · strong textual evidence, and how themes emerge and are shaped

2. Unit 2

   🎭Literary Elements

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

   Benchmark: 9.1.5.1; 9.1.8.1 · literary elements and style choices, and their effect on meaning and tone

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.

   Benchmark: 9.2.1.3; 9.2.1.1 · grammar, mechanics and style

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.

   Benchmark: 9.1.8.2 · word origins and domain-specific vocabulary

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.

   Benchmark: 9.1.5.1; 9.1.8.1 · literary devices and the structure of a text

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.

   Benchmark: 9.1.9.2; 9.1.6.2 · judging sources for bias and credibility, and how a publishing date affects a text

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.

   Benchmark: 9.1.5.2; 9.1.5.3 · informational text structures and the use of graphics and media

8. Unit 8

   📝Summarizing Texts

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

   Benchmark: 9.1.4.2 · central ideas and how they develop

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.

   Benchmark: 9.3.2.1; 9.2.3.2 · adapting writing to its audience and context

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.

    Benchmark: 9.2.7.2; 9.1.9.2 · research from many sources and judging their credibility

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.

    Benchmark: 9.2.1.1; 9.2.1.3 · editing writing for correct grammar and mechanics

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.

    Benchmark: 9.1.6.3; 9.1.5.3 · delineating arguments and analyzing media