Grade 9 · Christian · NGSS/CCSS-aligned
This is a full year of 9th grade English: short stories, a novel, a Shakespeare play, nonfiction and persuasive writing, a research paper, and a final project pulling it all together. Your child learns to read closely and ask "who's telling me this and should I believe them," to argue with real evidence instead of just volume, and to write narrative and persuasive pieces of their own. By June they should be able to pick apart a messy argument, defend a claim with sources that actually hold up, and talk about a book like they've thought about it, not just read it.
The whole year, in plain English. Tap any unit to see every skill inside, nothing is hidden.
Short stories, read closely, to build vocabulary for talking about narrators: who's telling the story, what they're hiding, and whether to trust them. This is the toolkit the rest of the year reuses.
Given a short story excerpt, identify whether the narration is first-person, third-person limited, or third-person omniscient by locating pronoun and knowledge-access evidence in the text.
Given a new short story not used in instruction, classify its point of view and locate the specific sentence(s) that provide the classifying evidence.
Explain how a specific gap between what a first-person narrator tells the reader and what other characters' reported actions or dialogue show reveals a limit on that narrator's reliability.
Compare two narrators from different short stories studied in this unit on the specific textual signals (self-contradiction, other characters' reactions, narrator's stated motive) that cue their reliability, and explain which signal is strongest evidence in each case.
Distinguish the tone a narrator takes toward events from the mood a passage creates in the reader, using word-choice evidence from a passage where the two diverge.
Infer an unstated motive or bias of a first-person narrator in a short story never discussed in class, using only textual gaps as evidence, and justify the inference in writing.
Construct a paragraph-length claim about a narrator's reliability in a short story not covered in class, supported by at least two pieces of textual evidence and an explanation of how each piece supports the claim.
Generalize the reliability-judgment routine built in this unit to a non-narrative context (e.g., a first-person opinion column or a witness account) and explain what changes and what stays the same when the 'narrator' is a real person rather than a fictional construct.
One full novel, read over several weeks, with a reading log tracking evidence as they go. The question is whether the Unit 1 tools still work when the story is long and the proof is scattered across chapters instead of sitting in one paragraph.
Given a chapter excerpt, record a motif appearance in a tracking chart by noting the image/detail, page location, and surrounding context, without yet stating what it means.
Distinguish a chapter's topic (what it is about, e.g. 'a fight breaks out') from a candidate theme statement (a claim about people/life the chapter's events support), given three chapters' worth of tracked evidence.
Explain how a specific character's response to a new event in the second half of the novel differs from their response to a structurally similar event in the first half, citing both passages.
Argue, using at least three tracked instances, whether a recurring image functions as a single stable symbol or shifts meaning across its appearances.
Explain how the author's ordering of events (e.g., withheld information, flashback, foreshadowing) in a specific chapter creates tension or surprise, rather than simply reporting what happens in chronological order.
Given a novel the student has never read or discussed in class, identify whether a described recurring detail is functioning as a motif and justify the judgment using the criteria (repetition + accumulating significance) developed in this unit.
Compose a thesis-driven essay tracing one motif or one character's arc across the entire novel, synthesizing evidence from at least three different sections of the text into a single connected argument.
Given a novel-length narrative in an unfamiliar genre (e.g. a graphic novel or verse novel) that the student has not previously encountered, judge whether the character-change and motif-tracking methods from this unit still apply, and if not, explain what about the new form breaks the method.
One full Shakespeare play, tragedy by default, read as a puzzle to reconstruct rather than a foreign language to translate. Adds dramatic vocabulary — soliloquy, dramatic irony, blank verse — and asks what the original audience knew that we don't.
Given an unmarked passage of dialogue, correctly identify whether it is written in blank verse or prose and state one textual feature (line breaks, capitalization at line start, meter regularity) that signals the choice.
Explain why Shakespeare shifts a specific character from verse to prose (or vice versa) at a given moment in the play, connecting the shift to that character's social status, emotional state, or relationship to another character in the scene.
Given a soliloquy the class has not annotated together, distinguish which lines state a character's stated belief versus which lines the audience alone knows to be false or incomplete, and explain the resulting dramatic irony.
Reconstruct one piece of historical or cultural knowledge (e.g., beliefs about fate, social rank, gender roles, honor codes) that the original audience would have brought to a scene, using textual evidence plus a provided historical source, and state what a modern reader misses without it.
Produce a line-by-line paraphrase of an unfamiliar passage that preserves denotative meaning, then separately produce an interpretation of the same passage that accounts for what the paraphrase necessarily lost (tone, ambiguity, wordplay, meter).
Compare a filmed or staged version of a scene to the printed text, identifying at least two directorial choices (cutting, staging, casting, delivery) and evaluating what each choice emphasizes or suppresses relative to the text.
Given a scene and formal choice the student has NOT discussed in class (a different scene from the one used in guided practice, featuring a soliloquy or verse/prose shift not covered), construct an original argument for why that choice matters to the scene's meaning, using evidence from the text and citing at least one piece of reconstructed historical context.
Given two scenes from unrelated plays or eras (one studied in this unit, one entirely new, e.g., a modern film script excerpt) that both use a knowledge gap between audience and character, generalize a claim about why dramatists across eras use audience-superior-knowledge structures, independent of which specific play is involved.
Recall the definitions of soliloquy, dramatic irony, and blank verse using precise academic language when prompted with an example from the play.
Switches from fiction to nonfiction argument. Teaches claim, warrant, evidence, the three classical appeals (ethos, pathos, logos), and common logical fallacies — and the core problem that a confident-sounding argument isn't automatically a well-supported one.
Given a short argumentative paragraph, identify the claim and underline the specific sentence(s) that state it.
Given a claim and a piece of evidence offered for it, state the unstated warrant that would have to be true to connect them.
Classify a persuasive move in a nonfiction passage as primarily an appeal to ethos, pathos, or logos, and justify the classification by pointing to the specific textual feature that signals it.
Given two arguments for the same position, one built mainly on emotional appeal with thin evidence and one built on relevant, sufficient evidence with modest appeal, determine which is better supported and explain the difference using claim/warrant/evidence vocabulary.
Name the specific logical fallacy at work in a short reasoning example (from a bank including ad hominem, straw man, false dilemma, slippery slope, hasty generalization) and explain what a valid version of that reasoning would need.
Using the historical-context reconstruction skill from Unit 3, infer what the original audience of a historical speech would have known or assumed that a present-day reader does not, and explain how that gap affects which parts of the argument would have needed less evidence for that audience.
Given a nonfiction text structured by problem/solution, comparison, or cause/effect, explain how that structural choice serves the author's argument rather than merely naming the structure.
Given an unfamiliar op-ed on a topic never discussed in this unit, produce a written rhetorical analysis that identifies the claim structure, evaluates the sufficiency of the evidence, and names the dominant appeal(s) used, with no scaffold naming which of these three moves to make where.
Recall the definitions of claim, warrant, evidence, ethos, pathos, logos, and bias when given the term.
Given a persuasive passage with an identifiable bias (e.g., an author with a stated financial or political interest), attribute specific rhetorical choices in the text to that underlying bias or purpose.
Moves from judging one argument to weighing two credible arguments against each other on the same question. Introduces credibility criteria (authority, evidence base, motive, currency) and the idea that credible sources can disagree without either being a liar.
State the four criteria the class uses to judge a source's credibility (authority, evidence base, purpose/motive, currency) and identify which criterion a given piece of evidence about a source speaks to.
Given a completed corroboration/contradiction map for a paired-text set already used in class instruction (set A or B), correctly label each row as corroborating, contradicting, or unrelated, using the exact map and texts shown during the worked example.
Classify a given statement from a text as evidence of bias (motivated distortion) versus evidence of perspective (a legitimate, undistorted standpoint shaped by the author's position).
Explain why two sources that meet credibility criteria can still reach different conclusions on the same question, citing differences in evidence base, scope, or values as the mechanism rather than error or dishonesty.
Compare two paired texts on the same issue by identifying where their evidence corroborates (supports the same fact) and where it contradicts (conflicts on a fact or its interpretation), producing a two-column corroboration/contradiction map.
Given two unfamiliar credible-seeming texts arguing opposite positions on a question never discussed in class, judge which argument is better supported and justify the judgment using the credibility criteria and the corroboration/contradiction method taught in the unit.
Given a claim about which of two sources is more credible, identify the unstated assumption the claim depends on (e.g., that peer review guarantees accuracy, or that a personal account is automatically biased).
Organize evidence from a corroboration/contradiction map into a comparative essay structure (point-by-point across texts rather than text-by-text summary) that argues which source is better supported.
Generalize the corroboration/contradiction comparison method to a non-text domain (e.g., comparing two data-based reports, or two eyewitness accounts of an event) never used as an instructional example.
The student now makes the narrative choices they've only analyzed so far — point of view and pacing — while writing an original short story. Two full drafts are required, because revision is taught as fixing where the story confuses a reader, not tidying typos.
Given the same short scene rewritten in first-person, third-limited, and third-omniscient POV, the student identifies what information each version makes available to the reader and what it withholds.
Given a short passage of narrative text, the student correctly labels it as first-person, third-limited, or third-omniscient using the pronoun and knowledge-access cues taught on Day 2, applying the same labeling routine practiced in class.
The student selects a point of view for an original short story and states, in one sentence, what that choice gains the reader and what it costs them.
The student distinguishes 'showing' from 'telling' in sample sentences by identifying which sentences state a character's internal state directly versus which render it through action, dialogue, or sensory detail.
The student rewrites three of their own 'telling' sentences from their story draft into 'showing' sentences that preserve the same underlying information.
Given two worked examples of a scene told at full scene-speed and the same events compressed into summary, the student explains why a writer would choose one pacing strategy over the other at a given story moment.
The student plans a scene-by-scene pacing map for their own short story, marking which moments will be full scene and which will be compressed summary, before drafting.
The student drafts a complete original short story of at least 800 words applying the chosen POV consistently and following the planned pacing map.
Given the app's automated rubric feedback and the parent-teacher's conference notes on the same draft, the student identifies at least two specific places where a first-time reader would be confused, and states what information is missing at each place.
The student revises the full draft, addressing at least three identified confusion points, and writes a reflective note explaining what changed and why the change serves the reader rather than the writer's own sense of completeness.
The student edits the final draft for command of standard English grammar and usage, correcting at least the error types flagged in the unit's grammar diagnostic (e.g., pronoun-antecedent agreement, comma splices, verb tense consistency within a narrative).
Given an unfamiliar short story opening the student has never seen analyzed, the student predicts what POV and pacing choices a different writer might have made differently and what effect that would have produced, without being told which craft element to examine.
The student builds an argument instead of analyzing someone else's. The real new skill is representing an opposing view fairly enough that rebutting it actually means something — not just stating a position and moving on.
Given a claim of the student's choosing, write a counterclaim paragraph that states the opposing position in terms its holder would accept as a fair characterization, before any rebuttal is introduced.
Recall the definitions of claim, counterclaim, warrant, evidence, and rebuttal as used in argument writing.
Execute the claim-evidence-explanation integration pattern (signal phrase, quoted or paraphrased evidence, explanation of how the evidence supports the claim) in a body paragraph.
Differentiate a counterclaim that is fairly represented from one that is a straw man, given two contrasting sample paragraphs on an unfamiliar topic.
Given a full draft argumentative paragraph containing a logical gap (an unsupported leap from evidence to claim), infer what missing warrant or evidence would close the gap.
Given a completed argumentative essay draft on any topic (including one on a topic never discussed in this unit), critique the essay's counterclaim-rebuttal section for fairness and logical sufficiency and produce specific revision guidance.
Plan an argumentative essay's structure (claim, three-point organization, placement of counterclaim/rebuttal) for a self-selected issue before drafting.
Given feedback identifying a specific weak transition or unclear pronoun reference, apply Language conventions (L.9-10.1, L.9-10.2) to revise sentence-level clarity in the student's own draft.
Given an issue in a domain never discussed in class (e.g., a local zoning dispute or a school policy the student has never analyzed), generate an original claim and a genuinely fair counterclaim without a model paragraph to imitate.
A short research paper built from real judgment calls: pick a question, sort through sources of mixed quality (some look authoritative and aren't), and write a claim-driven paper from what actually holds up. Teaches lateral reading — checking who's behind a source before trusting its content.
Given a broad topic, narrow it to a research question that is answerable within an 18-day, source-based paper (neither a yes/no fact lookup nor an unanswerably broad question).
Explain why checking who is behind a source (lateral reading) is a more reliable credibility check than evaluating the source's own content, appearance, or self-description.
Apply lateral reading to judge whether an unfamiliar website, given only its homepage and a five-minute open-search window, is credible enough to cite in a research paper.
Distinguish an acceptable paraphrase (same idea, own sentence structure and words, cited) from plagiarism-adjacent paraphrase (word-swapped but same sentence structure) and from an unnecessary direct quotation.
Execute in-text (parenthetical) citation and a matching Works Cited/reference entry for a website, a print article, and a database article in a standard format (MLA).
Given three sources that address the same research question but partially disagree, construct a claim that accounts for where the sources agree, where they conflict, and which source's conflicting claim is better supported.
Recall the definition of plagiarism and identify which of several given scenarios (uncited quote, uncited paraphrase, common knowledge, cited paraphrase) constitute it.
Given a completed source list, evaluate which two sources are weakest for this specific research question and justify replacing them, even though both would pass a generic credibility checklist.
Generalize the lateral-reading strategy to a non-website context (a documentary clip and a social-media infographic) that was not the medium used during instruction.
A capstone: a new novel, read mostly outside lesson time, analyzed by choosing which lens — narrator reliability, theme/motif, historical context, or rhetorical/source evaluation — fits a given passage, then a portfolio: a literary essay, an argumentative piece, and an oral defense pulling in the whole year.
Given an unannotated passage from the synthesis novel, the student identifies which of the four lenses (narrator reliability, theme/motif, historical context, rhetorical/source evaluation) is most productive for that passage and states one textual reason for the choice.
The student recalls the definitions of narrator, reliability, theme, motif, historical context, claim, warrant, evidence, appeal, bias, and credibility without reference support.
The student explains how the second novel's narrator's reliability affects which theme claims the reader can trust as the author's, connecting narration technique to thematic development.
The student drafts a literary analysis essay claim about the synthesis novel that is arguable, specific to the text, and supported by textual evidence selected using at least two lenses.
The student evaluates a source proposed for the argumentative portfolio piece for credibility and relevance, applying the source-evaluation criteria built in Unit 8 to a source outside any text used in that unit.
The student revises a full draft of the literary analysis essay toward a reader's likely points of confusion, identified from a peer/parent read-aloud, rather than toward the student's own sense of completeness.
In the oral defense, the student justifies why a particular lens combination (not a single lens) best accounts for a portfolio claim, when questioned about an alternative lens the questioner proposes.
The student generalizes a statement of which lens or lens-combination tends to matter most for which kind of text feature (e.g., unreliable first-person narration cues the narrator lens; archaic diction cues the historical-context lens), applicable to a novel not read this year.
The student classifies portfolio-relevant textual evidence by which lens it best supports before drafting either piece.
From the parent guide
This is a full year of 9th grade English: short stories, a novel, a Shakespeare play, nonfiction and persuasive writing, a research paper, and a final project pulling it all together. Your child learns to read closely and ask "who's telling me this and should I believe them," to argue with real evidence instead of just volume, and to write narrative and persuasive pieces of their own. By June they should be able to pick apart a messy argument, defend a claim with sources that actually hold up, and talk about a book like they've thought about it, not just read it.
Unit 1 · what to expect
Short stories, read closely, to build vocabulary for talking about narrators: who's telling the story, what they're hiding, and whether to trust them. This is the toolkit the rest of the year reuses.
The full guide covers all 9 units: where kids get stuck, what to say, and how to tell it's working. Included with the course.
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