The 11th grade learning experience consists of 7 mostly month-long units aligned to the Common Core State Standards, with available course material for teachers and students easily accessible online. Over the course of the year there is a steady progression in text complexity levels, sophistication of writing tasks, speaking and listening activities, and increased opportunities for independent and collaborative work. Rubrics and student models accompany many writing assignments.Throughout the 11th grade year, in addition to the Common Read texts that the whole class reads together, students each select an Independent Reading book and engage with peers in group Book Talks. Students move from learning the class rituals and routines and genre features of argument writing in Unit 11.1 to learning about narrative and informational genres in Unit 11.2: The American Short Story. Teacher resources provide additional materials to support each unit.

In this 5-day unit, students will explore the topic of cheating. Cheating seems to be ever-present in today’s society. Whether we are talking about athletes being busted for using steroids or students “sharing” answers and plagiarizing on final exams, one thing is clear—there’s a whole lot of cheating going on. In this unit, students will take a look at some contemporary instances of cheating and argue whether under certain situations cheating is not only excusable, but also justifiable.

In this lesson, students will take a survey on cheating and discuss it with the class. Then they will read and annotate “Stuyvesant Students Describe the How and the Why of Cheating,” noting the claims, counterclaims, reasons, and evidence in the article.

In this short unit, students will spend three lessons exploring the importance of themes and main ideas in fiction and informational texts.  Now would be a good time to have them take an assessment of their reading and writing skills. They'll explore theme through O. Henry's classic short story  "The Gift of the Magi" and consider how this piece compares to the main idea in the article "The Proven Power of Giving, Not Getting."

Over the next two lessons, you will complete the culminating assessment for this unit. You'll read text and answer questions that will reflect your reading comprehension.Over the next two lessons, students will complete the culminating assessment for this unit.In this lesson, students will read text and answer questions that reflect their reading comprehension. Some questions will ask students to select from a group of answers supplied. Other questions will ask students to construct their own answers and write them in the space provided.

The audio narrated and interactive tutorial introduces what the concept of plagiarism is. It explains how plagiarism can be recognised and includes real-life examples of the impact of plagiarism inside and outside of academia. Strategies on how and why plagiarism is avoided are covered. The tutorial includes a number of self assessment interspersed throughout. This tutorial was adapted from the "Avoid Plagiarism" tutorial developed by IT Tallaght Library, Dublin, Ireland. This resource was created using Articulate Storyline. The resource contains the source file for the online resource found at: http://www.ucd.ie/library/elearning/plagiarism/story.html