A Careful Balance of Structure and Flexibility

As we worked to develop this resource for teachers of 10th grade ELA, we constantly asked ourselves how to balance providing a helpful guided structure that saves planning time, with allowing enough flexibility that teachers can make strategic choices to suit their interests and needs. Based on extensive customer feedback and with input from our Content Advisory Board, in this edition we’ve provided an even clearer structure and more guidance on how to create units, while still preserving a good deal of flexibility.

Fresh New Voices

This edition features dozens of new and engaging texts, including nonfiction by DeRay McKesson, Dolores Huerta, Yuval Noah Harari, Steven Hawking, and Toni Morrison, and literature by Lesley Nneka Arimah, Oliver De La Paz, Richard Blanco, Ha Jin, Li-Young Lee, N. K. Jemisin, Joy Harjo, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.

Activity-Driven Opening Skill-Building Chapters

These introductory chapters introduce the basic building blocks of success by introducing fundamental skills, modeling those skills, and practicing with brief accessible texts.

• Chapter 1 Making Meaning introduces students to the basic tools of reading for understanding, interpretation, and style.
• Chapter 2 Understanding Literature looks at the essential elements of fiction, poetry, and drama, and how they help authors deliver their message.
• Chapter 3 Understanding Argument and Rhetoric takes students through the elements of argument and rhetoric, and how they’re used to persuade an audience.
• Chapter 4 Understanding Inquiry and Evidence-Based Argument takes students step-by-step through the process of investigating an issue, informing an opinion, and summoning evidence to support a claim.

In a thematic book, you have the benefit of being able to hop between nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and more without leaving the theme behind. That’s exciting, but at this level there is something to be said for clarity and simplicity. With that in mind, each thematic chapter now focuses strictly on either literature or nonfiction. This makes things simpler for students and teachers. For those looking to cross-pollinate, we have include one text that breaks the mold, in a section we call Exploring Other Genres.

Skill-Focus in Thematic Chapters

The simplified thematic chapter structure allowed us to emphasize a particular skill in each thematic chapter, helping to spiral instruction throughout the year. Every chapter has a skill it focuses on developing in the following ways:

• The Skill Workshop dives more deeply into a key academic skill, modeling with a brief approachable text, and guiding students through a series of skill-building activities and winding up with a formative assessment.
• Accompanying each text in the chapter are Skill Focus questions that ask students to practice the skill and apply it in a variety of contexts.
• The Writing Workshop takes students step-by-step through the process of writing an academic essay or persuasive argument as a culminating assessment. Each step is modeled using the chapter’s Central Text.

• Each thematic chapter now includes three Leveled Text Sections of increasing complexity. This allows teachers to differentiate texts for all levels of students, while still teaching the same theme and Skill Focus.

• Extending Beyond the Text features accompanying most readings ask students to make connections to real-world issues, other texts, and their own lives. This feature can be used to challenge well-prepared students, or engage reluctant readers by showing the real-world relevance of the texts.

• Key Context notes accompanying most texts help young readers navigate unfamiliar contexts that come with global literature and literature from other time periods. This support is key for lower-level readers and English Language Learners.

• Vocabulary in Context questions with each text highlight not just challenging words, but words that are pivotal diction choices in the text, giving students experience with a wide variety of words and insight into how they can be used for effect.

In-Depth Questions and Prompts

The Understanding and Interpreting; Analyzing Language, Style, and Structure; and Topics for Composing questions following each piece are the unsung hero of this book. Compare them to a "normal" 10^th grade book, and see the difference that probing, thoughtful, text-based analysis questions make. These questions don’t just lead to better analysis, they inspire students to think critically and write better.