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Language Arts - Secondary Curriculum English Language Arts Grades 9-10 (2023)
Lesson Plans

Speaking and Listening (9-10.SL)

Students will learn to collaborate, express and listen to ideas, integrate and evaluate information from various sources, use media and visual displays as well as language and grammar strategically to help achieve communicative purposes, and adapt to context and task.

Standard 9-10.SL.1:

Participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations on topics, texts, and issues.
  • Analyzing Informational Text
    Students use the Informational Text Analysis Tool to deconstruct the essential elements of informational text.
  • Book Reports
    This lesson plan meets the secondary requirements for The Engish Language Arts Standard Reading: Literature Grades 7-12 with the option of meeting the additional standard of Speaking and Listening. This lesson offers specific details with flexibility for implementation in the classroom. Students can work independently or in groups and be able to create their final book project using technology. 
  • Choose, Select, Opt, or Settle: Exploring Word Choice in Poetry
    Students investigate the effects of word choice in Robert Frost's "Choose Something Like a Star" to construct a more sophisticated understanding of speaker, subject, and tone.
  • Digital Citizenship Online Communcation
    This lesson will help students learn from four different scholastic scope articles about digital citizenship.  Students will learn one article and teach others about it so then by the end they will understand all four articles.  They will present the information by doing a choice board with their group to decide how they want to present the information.   
  • Does Science Fiction Predict the Future? Inquiry Based Media Literacy Unit
    Students will learn the potential costs and benefits of social media, digital consumption, and our relationship with technology as a society in the three-week lesson. This inquiry based unit of study will answer the following questions: Essential Question: How can we use science fiction?s ability to predict the future to help humanity? Supportive Questions 1: What predictions of future development has science fiction accurately made in the past? This can include technology, privacy, medicine, social justice, political, environmental, education, and economic. Supportive Question 2: What predictions for future development in contemporary science fiction are positive for the future of humanity? What factors need to begin in your lifetime to make these predictions reality? Supportive Question 3: What predictions for future development in contemporary science fiction are negative for the future of humanity? What factors need to begin in your lifetime to stop these negative outcomes? (Thumbnail is a screenshot of the OER Commons lesson page, taken 7/26/2022 by Christina Nelson.)
  • Dr. Cannon Goes to Washington: Utah Statues in National Statuary Hall
    Students will engage with primary source documents to explore the reasons behind memorializing people in public art. Students will craft written or oral statements to support an argument in favor of installing a statue of Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon, Philo T. Farnsworth, or Brigham Young in National Statuary Hall.
  • Elizabethan England & Shakespearean Context Lesson Plan
    Students will dive into research on different aspect of Elizabethan England in order to gain context and background knowlege on William Shakespeare's time prior to a Shakespeare unit in ELA.
  • Poems that Tell a Story: Narrative and Persona in the Poetry of Robert Frost
    Behind many of the apparently simple stories of Robert Frost's poems are unexpected questions and mysteries. In this lesson, students analyze what speakers include or omit from their narrative accounts, make inferences about speakers' motivations, and find evidence for their inferences in the words of the poem.
  • Research and Develop a Topic
    Students learn how to research and develop a topic for a student choice project.
  • S is for Shoes Off in the House | ABC's of AAPIs
    This lesson plan encourages classroom discussions and reflections on cultural norms, mores, and folkways and uses the coloring sheet and poem: "S is for Shoes Off in the House" to propel critical thinking about students' own cultures in relation to others and how we can show respect, tolerance, and acceptance.
  • Team Working Session #2: Interview Prep and Scripting
    Students prepare for interviews by reviewing what they know about the sources, conducting pre-interviews, creating a list of questions for the recorded interviews, and making a shot list. They will also identify locations for the interviews and decide which members of the group will conduct the interviews.
  • The Life and Poetry of Phillis Wheatley
    Phillis Wheatley was born around the year 1753 in West Africa before she was kidnapped and brought to the West Indies where she was enslaved. In 1773, the same year she became free from enslavement, she became the first African American and first enslaved person in American history to publish a book of poems. In this lesson, students imagine that a possible meeting between George Washington and Wheatley in 1776 actually occurred and compose questions for them both. Access to this resource requires a free educator login.
  • Write an If-Then Adventure Story
    Student learn to create an if-then adventure story using Google Applied Digital Skills


UEN logo http://www.uen.org - in partnership with Utah State Board of Education (USBE) and Utah System of Higher Education (USHE).  Send questions or comments to USBE Specialist - Naomi  Watkins and see the Language Arts - Secondary website. For general questions about Utah's Core Standards contact the Director - Jennifer  Throndsen.

These materials have been produced by and for the teachers of the State of Utah. Copies of these materials may be freely reproduced for teacher and classroom use. When distributing these materials, credit should be given to Utah State Board of Education. These materials may not be published, in whole or part, or in any other format, without the written permission of the Utah State Board of Education, 250 East 500 South, PO Box 144200, Salt Lake City, Utah 84114-4200.