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Institute for Learning

Narrating Women's Lives (Grades 11-12)

Narrating Women's Lives (Grades 11-12)

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Students read and analyze the unit texts for the ideas they reveal about women’s lives and about the characteristics, affordances, and limitations of the different genres of short fiction, poetry, and essay. This unit culminates in a performance task in which students are asked to imagine three of the authors reading each other’s texts and to write an analysis of how those writers would respond to one another with regard to the ideas, meaning, diction, structure, and figurative language.
  • Five literary texts
  • 4-6 weeks instruction
  • Explanation writing

What is this unit about?

This unit is about analyzing narrative texts for the ideas they reveal about women’s lives. Through engaging in the unit, students learn to analyze how these writers convey their ideas about women’s lives and roles through structure, characters, and literary techniques. Students also deepen their understanding about thinking through complex ideas by writing essays that analyze the challenges of narrating women’s lives and imagining how an author might respond to the ideas and writing techniques of other authors.

This unit is also about genre. Throughout the course of this unit, students will deepen their understanding of the short story, poem, and essay genres and learn how to analyze how authors develop features of a genre to convey their ideas. In the process, they learn more about the affordances and limitations of each genre.

In this unit, students will read, write about, and discuss one short story, two poems, and two literary essays to deepen their understanding of the following big questions:

  • What important understandings of women’s lives and societal roles do the authors of these narratives offer?
  • How does each author use her chosen genre to develop her ideas?

For their final assessment, students imagine one of the authors reading the texts of the other authors. Students write an essay that explains the possible points of agreement and disagreement among the authors, including an analysis of meaning, diction, structure, and figurative language.

What content will students learn?

Students will expand their knowledge base about:

  • how authors use their writing to reveal their perspectives about women’s lives and roles.
  • how various authors use structure to advance their ideas.
  • how various authors use figurative language to develop characters, themes, and arguments.
  • features of the genre of the short story, free verse poem, pantoum poem, and literary nonfiction essay.

In this examination, students will consider what each genre allows and limits, and why authors may choose to write in particular genres.

How will students develop their skills and habits of reading, writing,and speaking?

The unit provides teaching approaches and questions that guide an inquiry approach to teaching. Students engage as problem solvers and sense makers as they read, write, talk, and think about the texts they are reading.

Each task in which students engage includes an inquiry for them to answer and/or pursue.

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