What To Teach In 9th-Grade ELA (Full Curriculum Map)

Let’s talk about 9th 9th-grade English curriculum. Whether you are a seasoned teacher who has been assigned a new prep or you are brand new to teaching 9th-grade ELA, your situation is the same: you need a plan for what you’ll teach this year, stat.

Fortunately for you, I love teaching 9th-grade ELA, and I’ve been doing it for nearly 20 years. I’ve taught at big urban high schools and small independent schools. I’ve done lots of tweaking, and I want to offer you what I’ve found works the best for this age.

If you’re short on time, click here to access the free PDF of my curriculum map.

In this blog post I’ll share with you my favorite essential questions, novels and unit plans, how I weave in grammar and writing, and the general philosophy behind all of these choices. Let’s get to it.

My favorite EQs for 9th-Grade ELA

A strong EQ is incredibly important in tying together your 9the ELA Curriculum because without this, your students will feel like each unit is separate from all the other units, and without cohesions, you’ll likely get push back.

Because many 9th-ELA classes are essentially an intro to all the genres (short stories, narratives, plays, Shakespeare, poetry, etc.) the course can feel disconnected without a guiding question that connects multiple texts and units.

One of my favorite EQs for 9th ELA is this question:

Can Courage Be a Contagious Force Inspiring Others To Take Action?

I love this EQ because it is an easy way to connect so many texts that are typically read in 9th grade. From short stories to Romeo and Juliet, you will find characters who act bravely as well as those who are cowards.

This EQ also works incredibly well because at this stage in students’ lives, their own courage is something worth examining. They will be asked many times throughout high school to stand up or step down in difficult situations, so this question easily connects to them and their lives. This is a key component of buy-in: make sure the EQs connect with students’ lives.

Once I’ve decided on my year-long EQ, I think about each unit and formulate an EQ that in some way connects with the year-long EQ. This is how you can make poetry and nonfiction narratives connect easily. Students will see that even though the genre is different, the big life questions are similar which allows them to see the relevance and deepens the learning experience all around.

Here are a few of my favorite EQs to use with other units that connect with the year-long EQ:

What does the Holocaust teach us about courage?
What is the relationship between honesty and courage?
How can a person act courageously when they are outnumbered?
What is the relationship between love and courage?

I do have a few other EQs that don’t directly mention courage, but these units still allow us to easily engage with the year-long concept of courage.

If you’re wondering if students get tired of talking about one main concept all year, the answer is no, they don’t.

The reason it doesn’t get tired is because we examine different aspects of the big concept, and we are constantly looking at different texts and even different genres as we consider the topic of courage.

My favorite texts and units for 9th Grade ELA

There are so many fun novels to teach in 9th grade, and nearly any novel can work great to teach the skills that 9th graders need to know this year. A few novels I’ve found great success with for both struggling readers/writers and advanced students are the following:

12 Angry Men
Dystopian Literature (book clubs work great)
The Holocaust (Elie Weisel’s Night or book clubs)
Romeo and Juliet (watch it, don’t read the whole thing)
“My Honest Poem” (works great as an anchor text for a mini poetry unit)

I have many more go-to short stories, podcasts, and narratives, but these are a few of my favorites. If you’d like to see how I pair these novels with EQs and skills, click here to get the full curriculum map.

How I Teach Grammar

I have way too much to say on this topic, and this blog post is already getting long. So, I’ll sum it up quickly:

Yes, your students need direct instruction on grammar concepts.
You must integrate grammar instruction into writing process
One of the best methods I’ve found to do all of this is through using mentor sentences from great literature paired with fun writing prompts and exercises
You have to follow-up grammar instruction with low-stakes writing assignments or it won’t stick.

There, I just summarized my last 10 years of research and experience into 4 bullet points. But seriously, those bullet points are so incredibly important if you want your students to become better writers.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about with any of those ideas, please grab my FREE GRAMMAR UNIT where I give you seven free lessons that include slideshows, handouts, writing prompts for follow-up, and even a couple of hands-on games!

Writing Units for 9th ELA

The thing about teaching writing in 9th grade is that you can’t cover it all. You need to decide what specific aspects of writing you want students to master and then know that the rest of their high school experience will provide opportunities for them to develop their writing skills more and more.

The writing I think are important to focus on in 9th ELA are narrative writing and literary analysis. Some years I’ll have time to do an intro to persuasive writing, but in many schools students will do this in 10th grade, so I’d rather spend my time with students really giving them a strong grasp on narrative writing and literary analysis.

For narrative writing we study several narrative pieces and then we break down the components of a strong narrative. Students will brainstorm and draft each part and then get feedback on their ideas before moving on. In recent years I have moved to a mastery-based approach to many writing assignments where students are getting feedback on specific skills during the writing process rather than simply a few comments on a draft and then a final grade.

For literary analysis we really break down each concept before moving on because for many students this is a new form of writing. We spend a decent amount of time on:

Topics sentences (sometimes called claim sentences)
Evidence (sometimes called concrete details)
Analysis (sometimes called commentary)
Concluding sentences (sometimes called links)

I’ll devote several class periods to each of these concepts where students get to practice these skills through many low-stakes writing assignments. If you’re curious about how to get started teaching literary analysis for 9th graders, check out this blog post: How To Teach the Difference Between Plot Summary and Analysis.

Then, we will put it all together in a paragraph. Yep. Just a paragraph. We will do several paragraphs throughout the first semester before we ever start talking about an essay. Usually we won’t even do a full essay until second semester.

If you need more support with teaching writing, I strongly recommend you join the English Teacher Vault. In the vault I give you full units for instruction on all of these concepts. They are super easy to follow for you and students, and you’ll find your students actively engaged and having fun during the writing process.

Takeaways

In this blog we have addressed the following:

Teaching 9th grade ELA can be awesome, but you have to connect the content with a strong EQ
Be sure to create EQs for each unit that tie back to your year-long EQ
Teaching grammar matters. Teach grammar through mentor sentences, short writing prompts, and follow-up games and more writing.
When it comes to writing instruction, you can’t cover every single type of writing. I like to focus most of my instructional time on narrative writing and literary analysis so they have a strong foundation for the rest of high school.

If you are new to teaching high school English or just new to teaching 9th ELA, you can join us inside the English Teacher Vault to get access to hundreds of resources and access to hundreds of other English teachers like you who want to better and deepen their teaching craft. Click below to find out more.