Read and comprehend complex literature and literary nonfiction in the grades 9-10 band, building background knowledge and making connections

Learning goal: By the end of grade 9, read and comprehend literature (stories, dramas and poems) and literary nonfiction in the grades 9-10 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range; by the end of grade 10, read and comprehend such texts at the high end of the band independently and proficiently, building background knowledge and activating prior knowledge in order to make personal, historical and cultural connections that deepen understanding of complex text.

What makes a text complex. Text complexity is not only a matter of long words. Educators usually weigh several kinds of demand together. Language: unfamiliar or archaic vocabulary, figurative language, long or unusual sentences. Structure: flashbacks, parallel plots, shifts in speaker, a speech's sections, an argument's hidden steps. Levels of meaning: a story whose theme is implied, irony, symbols, a poem whose tone shifts. Knowledge demands: references to history, other texts or cultures that the reader must know or learn. Measurable features such as sentence and word length also matter, but they miss meaning: a short poem with plain words can be far more complex than a long manual. Finally, complexity depends on the reader and task: the same text is harder to analyze for its rhetoric than to summarize.

What "proficiently," "with scaffolding" and "independently" mean. Reading proficiently means comprehending both what the text says and what it implies, well enough to analyze it with evidence. Scaffolding is temporary support: a teacher's background introduction, a glossary, a guided first reading, discussion questions, a model analysis. The standard expects that in grade 9 you may need such support for the hardest texts in the band. By the end of grade 10 the goal is to read texts at the high end independently, meaning you supply your own supports: you look up what you need, monitor your own understanding, and reread strategically.

Building background knowledge and activating prior knowledge. Activating prior knowledge means deliberately recalling what you already know that bears on a text before and while reading. Building background knowledge means learning what you do not yet know. Consider the drama scene below. It is short, but its knowledge demands are real.

Original drama scene — Lock Nineteen

Written for this lesson. The characters and the lock are invented. Setting: a lock tender's house beside a canal in Ohio in the 1850s, when railroads were beginning to compete with the canals built in earlier decades. Night. A lantern, a table, a horn on a peg.

(ABIGAIL, sixteen, is mending a towline. Her father, SILAS, stands at the window. A knock. Enter MR. CROWE, a railroad surveyor, rain on his coat.)

CROWE: Your pardon. The tavern's full, and I was told the lock tender keeps a dry floor.

SILAS: (not turning) The lock tender keeps a lock. The floor comes with it. Sit.

CROWE: (sitting, setting down a long leather case) You'll have heard why I'm on the towpath.

SILAS: I've heard. The whole valley's heard. Iron road, straight as a rule, from the lake to the river. Faster than any boat.

CROWE: Faster than any boat by a day and a half. I'll not pretend otherwise.

ABIGAIL: And the canal?

CROWE: (gently) Canals don't close in a year, miss. They grow quiet.

(SILAS takes the horn from its peg and turns it in his hands.)

SILAS: Twenty-five years, boats have blown for this lock at every hour God sends. I know them by their horns. The Mary Ellen blows flat. The Pruitt boat blows twice, because old Pruitt is deaf in one ear and thinks nobody heard the first time. (Beat.) Tell me, Mr. Crowe. What does a train blow, when it wants a man to open for it?

CROWE: It doesn't want anyone to open for it. That's rather the point.

(Silence. ABIGAIL sets down the towline.)

ABIGAIL: Then what will you be, Father? When nobody blows?

SILAS: (after a long moment, hanging the horn back on its peg) The man who remembers what they sounded like. Somebody ought to.

(A horn sounds, far off, flat. SILAS and ABIGAIL look at each other. He reaches for the lantern.)

SILAS: The Mary Ellen. Late, as ever. (To CROWE) You'll excuse me. There's still a lock to keep.

(He goes out. ABIGAIL looks at CROWE's leather case, then at the horn. Lights down.)

Making connections that deepen understanding. A historical connection links the text to its time: knowing that Ohio built canals in earlier decades and that railroads began competing with them in the 1850s explains Crowe's "Faster than any boat" and his line "Canals don't close in a year... They grow quiet." A cultural connection links the text to a community's practices: the horns that Silas recognizes one by one are part of a working culture that the railroad will not need. A personal connection links the text to your own experience: perhaps a store, a job or a routine in your family has been replaced by something faster. Connections deepen understanding only when they return you to the text. "My grandfather lost his job to a machine" is a start; "so I understand why Silas takes down the horn and turns it in his hands before he speaks; the object holds a whole working life" is a connection that deepens reading.

The misconception: a connection is anything the text reminds you of. Loose associations can pull you away from the text. Test every connection by asking what it helps you notice in specific words.

Reading this scene proficiently. Explicitly, a surveyor seeks shelter and discusses the railroad. Implicitly, the scene dramatizes a way of life facing obsolescence. The key exchange turns on the horn: Silas asks what a train blows "when it wants a man to open for it," and Crowe answers that "It doesn't want anyone to open for it." The literal answer carries the theme: the railroad has no need of a lock tender, which is the role Silas holds. His reply, "The man who remembers what they sounded like. Somebody ought to," shows how he will make meaning of the loss, and the final horn, "Late, as ever," lets him keep his work for one more night. The stage direction in which Abigail looks from Crowe's case to the horn places her between two eras.

Literary nonfiction. RI.9-10.10 asks for the same range and independence with literary nonfiction: speeches, essays, memoirs, letters, historical documents crafted as literature. The Gettysburg Address, Roosevelt's Four Freedoms message and "Letter from Birmingham Jail" are examples; so are the original speech and article in this unit, though short originals do not by themselves show reading range. Complex nonfiction demands background (the Civil War, 1941, the Birmingham campaign), attention to structure (a speech's sections, an argument's order) and awareness of rhetoric.

A self-scaffolding routine for independent reading. (1) Preview: title, author, date, form; what do I already know? (2) First read for the gist: what happens or what is argued? (3) Mark trouble spots: unknown words, confusing sentences, references I do not recognize. (4) Build knowledge: look up only what blocks meaning. (5) Reread the hardest passage slowly, paraphrasing sentence by sentence. (6) Connect: one personal, one historical, one cultural connection, each tied to specific words. (7) Check: can I state the theme or central idea and cite evidence?

Worked example 1 (applying the routine to the scene): Preview: an original drama set in 1850s Ohio. Prior knowledge: I know trains replaced many older forms of transport. Trouble spots: "towline" and "towpath" (on canals, animals walking on a path beside the water pulled boats by a rope, the towline); "iron road" (a railroad). Gist: a surveyor tells a lock tender the railroad is coming. Reread: "What does a train blow, when it wants a man to open for it?" Paraphrase: how does a train signal for a man to open the way for it? Beneath the literal question is an implied one: will the railroad need me? Crowe's answer means the railroad will not need the work he does now, opening a lock for boats; the scene does not say what else he might do. Connection (historical): canals lost traffic to railroads in this period, which explains "They grow quiet." Theme: people whose work is made obsolete can still give meaning to what is lost.

Worked example 2 (a connection that deepens versus one that distracts): Distracting: "This reminds me of a movie about trains." It names a similarity but does not return to the text. Deepening: "Like anyone who has lost a familiar routine, Silas reaches for an object before he finds words: he 'takes the horn from its peg and turns it in his hands.' The stage direction suggests that his grief is too large to put straight into words." The second ties the connection to specific words and adds understanding.

Worked example 3 (planning a year's reading range): A grade 10 reader lists a year's texts by type: stories (The Line at Halloran's Orchard, Gate Four, "The Cabuliwallah"), dramas (Lock Nineteen; a full-length play such as A Midsummer Night's Dream), poems (Notice to Residents; a poetry collection), literary nonfiction (the Gettysburg Address, the Four Freedoms message, "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in an authorized edition, a memoir). The reader marks which texts required scaffolding (the Shakespeare play, with a glossary and viewing a production) and sets a goal to read the next comparable text independently, using the self-scaffolding routine.

Reading log (representation task): Keep a log for the rest of the term. For each text record: title, author, form (story, drama, poem, literary nonfiction), what made it complex (language, structure, meaning, knowledge demands), what scaffolding you used (glossary, discussion, background reading, teacher support) or whether you read it independently, and one personal, historical or cultural connection tied to a quotation. By the end of the term the log must include at least one story, one drama, one poem and one work of literary nonfiction; for each, give one sentence justifying why it sits in or at the high end of the grades 9-10 band, and one piece of comprehension evidence (a summary with the theme or central idea and two supporting quotations). Include texts from several centuries and cultures. This lesson and log are one contribution to a year-long standard; RL.9-10.10 and RI.9-10.10 are met across a year of reading, not in a single lesson.

Independent performance: Choose a complex text at the high end of the grades 9-10 band that you have not studied in class (a full-length play, a poetry collection, a memoir, a seminal speech or essay), with your teacher's approval. Read it independently using the self-scaffolding routine. If the text you choose is literature, choose a work of literary nonfiction for the log's next entry, and the reverse, so that both strands are practiced independently. Then write a 600-800-word reflective analysis. Success criteria: (1) state the theme or central idea and support it with at least four quotations; (2) identify two features that made the text complex and explain how you worked through each; (3) describe the background knowledge you built and where you found it; (4) make one personal, one historical and one cultural connection, each tied to specific words and each explained as deepening understanding; (5) assess honestly which parts you understood independently and which would still benefit from scaffolding, and set one specific goal for your next text.

Performance reading: In groups of three, perform Lock Nineteen. Before rehearsing, decide how Silas should say "Somebody ought to" and justify the choice with evidence from the scene.