Unit 3: Culminating Tasks

Sample Performance-based/Standards-based Task(s) from GADOE Teacher Guidance Document 
ELAGSE9-10RL5: At the conclusion of reading an extended text that is told in flashback, engage students in a group discussion of how knowing the end point of the story impacted their aesthetic experience of the text. Have students, either individually or in discussion groups, identify specific instances from the text that would impact the reader much differently (emotionally, logically, or in their inferences or predictions) than it did in the context of flashback. The analysis of the impact of the literary device of flashback through this comparison and contrast will be conveyed through a brief essay.

ELAGSE9-10RI5: Using a selection of effective speeches from modern history (JFK’s inaugural address, Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Address, Winston Churchill’s “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat,”) Have students carefully read the speech at least twice, determining its main idea, message, or argument. Students will then deconstruct these speeches first by counting words, then sentences, then paragraphs. Have them note any other headings, titles, or graphics. (They may also use Microsoft Word and other internet tools to get the Lexile score of the speech and any other quantitative measures available). Have students then define the number of simple, compound, complex, and compound/complex sentences in the document. Using this quantitative information, students will write an analysis of about one page examining how structure alone impacted the rhetorical value of the speech (for example, Martin Luther King’s use of parallel structure in opening each paragraph with “I have a dream that...” in the famous speech by the same name). Note: it may take more than one draft for students to be able to narrow the focus to structure alone.