📚 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: ELA.9-10.R.5 · 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: ELA.9-10.R.5 · irony, motif, tone and mood

3. Unit 3

   🎬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: ELA.9-10.L.4 · allusion, analogy, juxtaposition and flashback

4. Unit 4

   📝Summarizing Texts

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

   Learning standard: ELA.9-10.R.4 · finding main ideas and summarizing in your own words

5. Unit 5

   📰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: ELA.9-10.R.1 · text patterns, visuals and media features

6. Unit 6

   🧩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: ELA.9-10.L.3 · roots, prefixes and meaning in context

7. Unit 7

   ✏️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: ELA.9-10.L.2 · punctuation, agreement and register

8. Unit 8

   ✍️Form & Composing

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

   Learning standard: ELA.9-10.W.4; ELA.9-10.L.1 · choosing a form and tone for the audience

9. Unit 9

   🔒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: ELA.9-10.RML.4; ELA.9-10.RML.5 · credible sources, technology-made content and privacy

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: ELA.9-10.RML.1; ELA.9-10.RML.4; ELA.9-10.RML.5 · research and inquiry, accurate information and the credibility of people and technology behind it

11. Unit 11

    🎙️Media Analysis

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

    Learning standard: ELA.9-10.RML.2; ELA.9-10.RML.3 · how reactions to and interpretations of media are affected, and the purposes and techniques of media messages

12. Unit 12

    🔎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: ELA.9-10.W.5 · editing writing for correct spelling and word choice