In this module, students engage with literature and nonfiction texts that develop central ideas of guilt, obsession, and madness, among others. Building on work with evidence-based analysis and debate in Module 1, students will produce evidence-based claims to analyze the development of central ideas and text structure. Students will develop and strengthen their writing by revising and editing, and refine their speaking and listening skills through discussion-based assessments.

Students further develop close reading skills as they
examine Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The
tragedy of Hamlet develops many
central ideas, including revenge, mortality, madness, and the tension between
action and inaction. Students analyze the play through the close study of
Hamlet’s soliloquies and other key scenes to determine how Shakespeare’s
language and choices about how to structure the play impact character
development and central ideas. The showing of a filmed version of the play in
select lessons supplements students’ understanding of plot and background
points and encourages them to consider actors’ interpretations of the text.

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After reading The Odyssey, students will write their own hero's journey narrative using Joseph Campbell's twelve steps of the hero's journey. Although students may choose to write a story set in Greek mythology, they can choose any setting for their story. Before writing, the students will discuss the hero journey in the Odyssey and popular books and movies. Then they will write their own hero's journey story with an original character and plot. Students will be assessed on development of their introduction, plot, and conclusion as well as character development, setting, and theme (lesson learned.) They will also be assessed on their organization (structure and transitions), style, voice, and mechanics. This unit was created for a classroom of tier two and tier three students who often struggle with organizing their thoughts for writing.

This resource contains a link to a visually pleasant Prezi and several notesheets that reflect scaffolded learning from asking the students to choose the most important information themselves to guiding the students to specific types of topic sentences only.