Key Design Considerations of the High School Common Core Lesson Plan Templates

Because student's advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year's grade specific standards, the Common Core Lesson plan templates have been organized so that teachers can switch between the standards they are teaching at any given time. For example, as a teacher you can easily use your textbook and your own knowledge about Literature to help students meet the expectations in Literature. You can also use these lesson plan students to work collaboratively with teachers of other subjects.

To further explain how this works let's think of the popular book Holt McDougal American Literature Grade 11 and British Literature Grade 12. We can use the grade bands 11-12 in designing our curriculum because according to the CCSS teaching lessons using these bands allow flexibility in the way in which these are taught to students in both grades. The same is true for grades 9-10.

The Common Core Lesson Plan Templates for grades 11-12 contains all of the standards within drop down menus, the key to lesson planning to school districts is to match lessons/chapters from both of the books above to the corresponding standard on the template. Likewise, so does all other lesson plans for different grades and strands.

Teachers of other grades and subjects have their own set of standards that are included in the Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science & Technical Subjects Common Core Lesson Plan Templates. Using the same process, teachers from different subjects can work collaboratively to devise lessons using their own class textbooks and materials.

Key Ideas and Details

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.2 Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.3 Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).

Craft and Structure

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including words with multiple meanings or language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful. (Include Shakespeare as well as other authors.)
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.5 Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.6 Analyze a case in which grasping a point of view requires distinguishing what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant (e.g., satire, sarcasm, irony, or understatement).

Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.7 Analyze multiple interpretations of a story, drama, or poem (e.g., recorded or live production of a play or recorded novel or poetry), evaluating how each version interprets the source text. (Include at least one play by Shakespeare and one play by an American dramatist.)
• (RL.11-12.8 not applicable to literature)
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.9 Demonstrate knowledge of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century foundational works of American literature, including how two or more texts from the same period treat similar themes or topics.

Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.10 By the end of grade 11, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 11–CCR text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.