This list contains the Reading and Writing activities for our Grade 10 English Language Arts course.
| Type | Lesson | Reading Title | Author | Category | Subcategory |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Texts | Analyzing Word Choice and Author’s Purpose in Short Stories | “The Crab That Played with the Sea” from Just So Stories! | Rudyard Kipling | Fiction | Fable |
| Texts | Analyzing Character, Theme, and Plot in Short Stories | The Arabian Nights Entertainments | Edited by Andrew Lange | Fiction | Short Story |
| Texts | Comparing Archetypes in Literature | “The Story of a Warrior Queen” | by Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall | Fiction | Myth |
| Texts | Comparing Archetypes in Literature | “The Royal House of Thebes” | by Edith Hamilton | Fiction | Myth |
| Texts | Analyzing Idea Development in an Essay | "How the Grimm Brothers Saved the Fairy Tale” | by Jack Zipes | Nonfiction | Essay |
| Texts | Analyzing Author's Purpose and Perspective in a Travelogue | “Marco Polo: The Travels” | Marco Polo Translated by Ronald Latham | Nonfiction | Travel Log |
| Texts | Analyzing a Memoir | Night | Elie Wiesel | Nonfiction | Memior |
| Texts | Comparing Genres: Biography and Editorial | “The Children of the Drug Wars” | Sonia Nazario | Nonfiction | Editorial |
| Texts | Comparing Genres: Biography and Editorial | Enrique’s Journey | Sonia Nazario | Nonfiction | Biography |
| Texts | Sugar Changed the World, Part 1: Author’s Purpose | Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science | Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos | Nonfiction | Informational Text |
| Texts | Sugar Changed the World, Part 2: Central Ideas | Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science | Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos | Nonfiction | Informational Text |
| Texts | Sugar Changed the World, Part 3: Word Choice and Multimedia | Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science | Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos | Nonfiction | Informational Text |
| Texts | Sugar Changed the World, Part 4: Building Claims | Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science | Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos | Nonfiction | Informational Text |
| Texts | Sugar Changed the World, Part 5: Developing and Refining Ideas | Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science | Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos | Nonfiction | Informational Text |
| Texts | Recognizing Rhetorical Techniques in a Speech | “A Latina Judge’s Voice” | Sonia Sotomayor | Nonfiction | Speech |
| Texts | Analyzing an Autobiographical Essay | A Genetics of Justice” | Julia Alvarez | Nonfiction | Essay |
| Texts | Analyzing Satire in Fiction | “The Storyteller” | Saki | Fiction | Short Story |
| Texts | Comparing Ideas across Genres | "The Veil” from Persepolis | Marjane Satrapi | Nonfiction | Graphic Novel |
| Texts | Comparing Ideas across Genres | Does My Head Look Big in This? | Randa Abdel-Fattah | Fiction | Novel |
| Texts | Analyzing Different Interpretations of a Sonnet | "Sonnet 100” | William Shakespeare | Fiction | Poetry |
| Texts | Analyzing Different Interpretations of a Sonnet | “Sonnet 130” | William Shakespeare | Fiction | Poetry |
| Texts | Animal Farm, Part 1: Satire | Animal Farm | George Orwell | Fiction | Novel |
| Texts | Animal Farm, Part 2: Allegory | Animal Farm | George Orwell | Fiction | Novel |
| Texts | Animal Farm, Part 3: Central Idea Development | Animal Farm | George Orwell | Fiction | Novel |
| Texts | Animal Farm, Part 4: Conflict | Animal Farm | George Orwell | Fiction | Novel |
| Texts | Animal Farm, Part 5: Motivation and Values | Animal Farm | George Orwell | Fiction | Novel |
| Texts | Animal Farm, Part 6: Author’s Purpose | Animal Farm | George Orwell | Fiction | Novel |
| Texts | Animal Farm, Part 7: Rhetoric | Animal Farm | George Orwell | Fiction | Novel |
| Texts | Animal Farm, Part 8: Satire and Irony | Animal Farm | George Orwell | Fiction | Novel |
| Texts | Recognizing Rhetorical Techniques in a Speech | ||||
| Texts | Evaluating an Argument | ||||
| Texts | Character and Culture in Literature | “Two Kinds” | Amy Tan | Fiction | Short Story |
| Texts | Comparing Poetry and Art | “Sonnet in Primary Colors” | Rita Dove | Fiction | Poetry |
| Texts | Comparing Poetry and Art | “Monet’s ‘Waterlilies’ | Robert Hayden | Fiction | Poetry |
| Texts | Applying Critical Approaches to Literary Analysis | “Marriage Is a Private Affair” | Chinua Achebe | Fiction | Short Story |
| Texts | Analyzing Ideas, Structure, and Purpose in Machiavelli’s The Prince | The Prince | Niccolò Machiavelli | Nonfiction | Essay |
| Texts | Analyzing Rhetorical Techniques in Machiavelli’s The Prince | The Prince | Niccolò Machiavelli | Nonfiction | Essay |
| Texts | Analyzing Rhetorical Strategies in Presidential Speeches | “Tear Down This Wall” | Ronald Reagan | Nonfiction | Speech |
| Texts | The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Part 1: Applying Reading Strategies | The Tragedy of Julius Caesar | William Shakespeare | Fiction | Drama |
| Texts | The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Part 2: Causal Relationships | The Tragedy of Julius Caesar | William Shakespeare | Fiction | Drama |
| Texts | The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Part 3: Drawing Conclusions | The Tragedy of Julius Caesar | William Shakespeare | Fiction | Drama |
| Texts | The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Part 4: Monologues | The Tragedy of Julius Caesar | William Shakespeare | Fiction | Drama |
| Texts | The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Part 5: Developing Central Ideas | The Tragedy of Julius Caesar | William Shakespeare | Fiction | Drama |
| Texts | The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Part 6: Word Choice and Motif | The Tragedy of Julius Caesar | William Shakespeare | Fiction | Drama |
| Texts | The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Part 7: Thematic Development | The Tragedy of Julius Caesar | William Shakespeare | Fiction | Drama |
| Texts | "By the Waters of Babylon," Part 1: Analyzing Setting | "By the Waters of Babylon” | Stephen Vincent Benét | Fiction | Short Story |
| Texts | "By the Waters of Babylon," Part 2: Analyzing Theme | "By the Waters of Babylon” | Stephen Vincent Benét | Fiction | Short Story |
| Texts | A Doll’s House, Part 1: Dramatic Elements and Characterization | A Doll's House | Henrik Ibsen | Fiction | Drama |
| Texts | A Doll’s House, Part 2: Suspense and Irony | A Doll's House | Henrik Ibsen | Fiction | Drama |
| Texts | A Doll’s House, Part 3: Theme and Society | A Doll's House | Henrik Ibsen | Fiction | Drama |
| Texts | Analyzing Word Choice and Theme in a Play | A Raisin in the Sun | Lorraine Hansberry | Fiction | Drama |
| Texts | Analyzing and Evaluating Arguments | "The Role of Social Media in the Arab Uprisings” | Heather Brown, Emily Guskin, and Amy Mitchell | Nonfiction | Essay |
| Essay Prompts | Writing a Narrative Essay about Being Judged | Martin Luther King Jr. often spoke of a day in the future when he hoped that his children would be judged not by their skin color but instead by their character. Write a narrative essay about a moment in your life when you were judged by something other than the content of your character. Use narrative techniques to develop experiences, events, and characters. | |||
| Essay Prompts | Writing a Research-Based Informative Essay about the Benefits of Humor | Research suggests that laughter improves people’s emotional and physical well-being. Write a research-based essay to inform the reader about the positive effects of laughter on emotional and physical health. Properly cite research evidence to inform the audience about the topic. | |||
| Essay Prompts | Writing an Argumentative Essay about the Nobel Prize in Literature | Write an essay to present an argument that either supports or opposes the decision to award a singer-songwriter the Nobel Prize in Literature. Your argument should include a clear claim, logical reasons, and evidence that is relevant and sufficient. | |||
| Essay Prompts | Writing a Research-Based Argumentative Essay about a Debatable Topic | Many people disagree about the appropriate age to allow children and young adults to use social media. Write an essay that argues your viewpoint about the issue. Develop your claim with reasons and evidence, and form a rebuttal to argue against a counterclaim. | |||
| Essay Prompts | Writing an Essay to Compare the Presentation of Ideas across Genres | Award-winning author Sonia Nazario is best known for her Pulitzer Prize–winning biography Enrique’s Journey. The book brings to life the very real and dangerous journey of a Honduran boy fleeing his home in hopes of finding his mother in America. In addition to the biography, Nazario has written countless articles informing readers of the dangers children like Enrique face. While the biography and the articles serve the same purpose and present the same ideas, they do so in different ways. You will be comparing and contrasting how Nazario informs her audience through a biography and an editorial. You may access the editorial here and the biography here. Write a comparative essay in which you compare and contrast the way Sonia Nazario presents similar ideas in a biography and an editorial. Support your comparison with well-chosen, relevant, and sufficient evidence from both texts. Apply MLA guidelines to properly cite the evidence used in your essay. Be sure your essay uses formal and objective language. | |||
| Essay Prompts | Writing an Interpretive Literary Analysis | Write an interpretive essay that analyzes literature from the perspective of a quotation. In your essay, interpret the quotation and explain how it applies to literature you have read. Support your viewpoint with evidence from a variety of literary texts that you have read. Include precise language and literary terms. ""That's what literature is. It’s the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them!"" | |||
| Projects | Writing a Research-Based Informative Essay about the Benefits of Humor | Research suggests that laughter improves people’s emotional and physical well-being. Create a multimedia presentation to inform the audience about the positive effects of laughter on emotional and physical health. | |||
| Projects | Evaluating News Reporting | For this assignment, you will use a graphic organizer to monitor and analyze multiple global news outlets across a period of time. Once you have completed your organizer, you will answer key questions about the media’s coverage of a story and how this coverage changed and developed over time. | |||
| Projects | Enhancing a Presentation with Multimedia | The purpose of this assignment is to create a multimedia presentation to convince a group of your peers to join you in taking a stand on an important global issue that impacts the future. | |||
| Projects | Evaluating Propaganda Techniques | In this assignment, you will create a propaganda poster that expresses support for or opposition to a current social or political topic. Your teacher will approve your proposed topic. Your poster should contain text, images, and/or symbols. It should be neat, free from errors in content or grammar, and clearly organized. This propaganda poster should motivate the general public to support your point of view. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Analyzing Character, Theme, and Plot in Short Stories | Write 3 to 4 sentences describing how the huntsman’s motivations advance the plot in "Little Red Riding Hood.” | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Analyzing Idea Development in an Essay | Write one paragraph that evaluates the effectiveness of Jack Zipes’s essay. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Comparing Genres: Biography and Editorial | Write one paragraph to compare and contrast how the two texts by Sonia Nazario present similar ideas but in different genres. Include techniques used by Nazario in each text that support her purpose. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Sugar Changed the World, Part 1: Author’s Purpose | Think about the prologue of Sugar Changed the World. Write 3 to 4 sentences that explain the primary purpose of the prologue. Provide examples from the text to support your conclusion. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Sugar Changed the World, Part 2: Central Ideas | Write 2 to 3 sentences summarizing the passage you just read. Be sure to restate the central idea in your own words, include key details, and use objective language. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Sugar Changed the World, Part 5: Developing and Refining Ideas | In a well-structured paragraph, state the claim of the previous passage and evaluate the effectiveness of the evidence the authors present to support it. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Comparing Ideas across Genres | Write two paragraphs to compare and contrast the narrators’ schools and explain how their schools shape their perspectives toward the hijab. Cite evidence from the text to support your ideas. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Analyzing Different Interpretations of a Sonnet | Write a sonnet using the traditional Shakespearean sonnet form. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Analyzing Satire in Editorial Cartoons | As you analyze the editorial cartoon, look carefully at the literary devices and elements used in the cartoon. Apply the strategy to evaluate the effectiveness of the cartoon. Explain your evaluation and include details about the cartoon as support. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Animal Farm, Part 1: Satire | Write three to four sentences presenting your prediction about the main conflict in the novel based on how the characters feel about their lives. Include evidence to support your prediction. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Animal Farm, Part 2: Allegory | Read the passage carefully. Then use evidence from the text to write a well-structured paragraph that compares and contrasts the ideas of Karl Marx and Old Major. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Animal Farm, Part 4: Conflict | Write a paragraph to provide an example of how Animal Farm is an allegory for the Russian Revolution. Consider the characters and events that George Orwell includes in his novel, as well as people, philosophies, events, and organizations from history. Include evidence from the story as you make your comparisons. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Animal Farm, Part 5: Motivation and Values | Write a paragraph contrasting the values of the working animals and the values of Napoleon and the pigs. Use evidence from the story so far to support your ideas. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Evaluating Propaganda Techniques | In three to four sentences, evaluate the effectiveness of this piece of propaganda from World War II. Consider the motive and appeal of the persuasive techniques and visual elements. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Recognizing Rhetorical Techniques in a Speech | Write a paragraph summarizing the central idea of Sotomayor’s speech. Include key details that Sotomayor uses to support her idea. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Evaluating an Argument | Read about recycled wastewater here. Write one paragraph that presents your evaluation of the writer’s argument. The evaluation should include a thesis statement, a summary of the writer’s claim, an evaluation of the writer’s reasoning and evidence, and a concluding statement. Be sure to include examples from the text that support your evaluation. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Analyzing an Autobiographical Essay | Write one paragraph comparing the memoir and the article. Compare how the writers present similar ideas to the reader. Include evidence from the text to support your comparison. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Character and Culture in Literature | Write a paragraph describing the main conflict in the story and explaining how it demonstrates different cultural perspectives. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Applying Critical Approaches to Literary Analysis | Read the passage from both the feminist and historical perspectives. In one paragraph, explain what each perspective reveals about the passage. Compare and contrast the similarities and differences of both the perspectives. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Analyzing Rhetorical Techniques in Machiavelli’s The Prince | In a well-structured paragraph, evaluate the argument in the previous passage. State whether the argument is effective or not, and determine the effectiveness of the reasoning, evidence, and diction. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Analyzing Rhetorical Strategies in Presidential Speeches | Write one paragraph evaluating the effectiveness of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Cite examples from the speech to support your evaluation. Read the full speech here. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Part 4: Monologues | Now that you have read act 3, scene 2, it is important to compare the central ideas that Brutus and Antony convey to the audience at Caesar’s funeral. In a well-structured paragraph, state the topic of the funeral orations of Brutus and Antony. Then state how the speeches are similar, and end your paragraph outlining the differences between the speeches. Use transition words to connect supporting details. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | "By the Waters of Babylon," Part 2: Analyzing Theme | Think about the topics in the story, including coming of age and knowledge. What messages is the author conveying about these two topics? In a well-structured paragraph, explain how two themes are connected within the text. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Analyzing and Evaluating Arguments | Write a well-structured paragraph that evaluates the argument in "The Role of Social Media in the Arab Uprisings.” State the claim and evaluate the argument by discussing whether the evidence is verifiable and relevant. Include any examples of fallacious reasoning. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Comparing Arguments from Diverse Perspectives | Consider these two arguments about immigration. In a well-structured paragraph, compare the rhetorical devices used by President Obama and President Trump. Consider these two arguments about immigration. In a well-structured paragraph, compare the rhetorical devices used by President Obama and President Trump. | |||
| Short-Response Prompts | Evaluating The Power of Mass Media and Social Media | In a well-written paragraph, explain how modern-day public service ads compare to older public service ads. Think about multimodal media and the use of technology |