Politics and Public Policy in the United States

Appendix for District Standards

DC Public Schools use the Common Core State Standards for English and Language Arts/Literacy Standards in all units and lessons. This unit is Common Core aligned and geared towards PARCC readiness. Below are the standards that will be covered throughout in the unit. The unit will include reading several complex district assigned texts in addition to the anchor texts. The unit will also include daily opportunities for evidence-based writing, weekly lengthier writing tasks, and authentic performance tasks at the end of the unit that require students to write using evidence from multiple sources. The blended learning station rotation model will provide ample opportunities to cover reading and writing standards daily. I also included a 9^th grade reading standard to the unit intentionally because there are no 7^th or 8^th grade standards that address comparing and contrasting two different mediums that address the same topic, which will be done multiple times throughout the unit as students compare and contrast maps, historical documents, images, and games to concepts presented in the novel and the play.

Writing Standards Covered

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.1 Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.

Reading Standards Covered

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.8. Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.8.2 Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to supporting ideas; provide an objective summary of the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.8.3 Analyze how a text makes connections among and distinctions between individuals, ideas, or events (e.g., through comparisons, analogies, or categories).

RI Standards for Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.8.7 Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of using different mediums (e.g., print or digital text, video, multimedia) to present a particular topic or idea.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.8.8 Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is sound and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; recognize when irrelevant evidence is introduced.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.8.9 Analyze a case in which two or more texts provide conflicting information on the same topic and identify where the texts disagree on matters of fact or interpretation.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.7 Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediums (e.g., a person's life story in both print and multimedia), determining which details are emphasized in each account.