Pacing Guide for 9th/10th Grade English and Language Arts

This pacing guide can be implemented in a 9th or 10th grade English classroom and is designed for a traditional 36-week school year where classes meet 5 days a week. We’ve included grammar, writing, and literature instruction. 

• You can find every single grammar resource you need inside the English Teacher Vault membership, plus great back-to-school resources, and podcast units.
• We are adding more units each month. Some months these are added to the literature section, and some months they are added to the writing section. See details below about when each unit will be added to the English Teacher Vault.

If you follow this pacing guide and teach all these units with your 9th grade classes, and have the same students in 10th grade, stay tuned! We will be adding an updated pacing guide with new units in the summer of 2024 specifically for 10th grade students who have completed the material in this curriculum. 

Our foundational grammar curriculum breaks down the grammar instruction even further, so check out the grammar pacing calendar as well. 

Week 1

Diagnostic Tests, Writing, and Intro To Class

This week you’ll get to know your students and introduce them to grammar concepts that they’ll use throughout the year. Lessons you’ll use this week are all in the English Teacher Vault membership, and they include:

• First-day-of-school writing assignment
• Diagnostic grammar test
• Vivid verbs lesson
• Strong nouns lesson
• If you have 5 full class days this week, you may want to jump in to the grit and growth mindset unit

Week 2:

Growth Mindset and Grit Mini Unit  

All the resources for this unit can be found in the back-to-school section of the vault. This is a 5 day unit.

Week 3:

Narrative Writing Unit 

You can find all the lessons for this unit in the "Writing Units" section of the vault.

Lessons for this week include

• Elements of narrative writing
• Brainstorm your narrative and vivid verbs grammar lesson 
• Incorporating characterization 
• How to incorporate sensory details

Week 4:

Narrative Writing Unit (week 2)

Lessons this week include:

• Organizing the narrative
• Drafting and conferencing
• Using adjectives in your narrative (adjectives lesson from Foundational Grammar Curriculum)
• Revising with style in mind
• Presenting the narratives

Week 5: 

Unit: What makes a compelling story?

You can find all the lessons for this unit in the "Literature Units" section of the vault. 

Literary focus: a variety of short stories

Lessons this week include:

• Introduction to short stories
• Setting
• Characterization
• Point-of-view
• Conflict and theme

From Foundational Grammar curriculum:

• Well-placed adverbs
• Quiz: parts of speech

Week 6:

Unit: What makes a compelling story? (week 2)

Literary focus: a variety of short stories

Lessons you’ll teach this week include:

• Beginnings: foreshadowing, flashback, and exposition
• Mood and Tone
• Dialogue
• Resolutions and endings
• Suspense
• Review game and quiz for parts of speech

Week 7:

This week you have the option to extend the short-story unit one more week to include a writing element. All the no-prep lessons for this short-story writing assignment are included in the membership. If you choose not to extend the unit, skip on to the next week in the pacing guide. 

These lessons will be added to the vault in September 2023

Week 8: 

Hero’s Journey Unit: To what extent does a culture or society need heroes (EQ)? 

You can find this 5-7 day unit in the "Literature Units" section of the vault.

Week 9: 

Hero’s Journey Unit (week 2)

You can finish the hero’s journey unit and extend it by adding any readings you’d like to include or that your school requires, such as excerpts from The Odyssey. 

In the hero’s journey unit in the vault, there is a suggestion to extend the hero’s journey by listening to the entire story of Sundiata in the “Myths and Legends” podcast. 

From Foundational Grammar Curriculum, you’ll also teach this week: Subject and Predicates Lesson

Week 10

Character Analysis Writing Unit

You can find this 5-day unit in the "Writing Units" section of the vault. Students should choose a character they read about from the hero’s journey unit to focus on for their analysis. 

Lessons from Foundational Grammar Curriculum:

• Subject/Verb Agreement Lesson

Week 11 (Option To Extend)

Option to extend character analysis unit

If you’d like to extend the character analysis writing assignment, you can use our additional resources that teach essay writing. Students will write a complete 5 paragraph essay on a character. 

These lessons will be added to the vault in September 2023. 

Week 11

Unit: What is justice, and how is it achieved? 

• Literary focus for this unit: Just Mercy excerpts and movie

Lessons from Foundational Grammar Curriculum:

• Pronoun/Antecedent Agreement Lesson

Week 12

Unit: What Is justice and How is It achieved? (week 2)

From Foundational Grammar Curriculum:

• Agreement hands-on game
• Agreement quiz

Week 13

Unit: What is justice and how is It achieved? (week 3)

Week 14

Theme Analysis Mini Writing Unit

 Week 15

Creative Nonfiction Unit: Why do individual’s stories matter?  

You can find this unit in the "Podcasts Units" section of the vault. 

• Literary Focus: Imagined Life podcast

Lessons for this week:

• Clues and guesses for Imagined Life episode “The Daydreamer”
• Characterization in Imagined Life
• Purpose, Audience, Style, and Tone
• What is creative nonfiction

Week 16

Creative Nonfiction Unit: Why do individual’s stories matter? 

• Narrative hooks
• Turning quotes into stories

Week 17

Use this week to catch up if you need to or to allow your students extra time with any of the units or to catch up with grammar instruction if you need to. If you’re tracking with this pace, you could extend the Imagined Life unit plan and allow your students to actually produce their Imagined Life episodes by recording them. We include instructions for how to do this in the Imagined Life unit plan. 

Week 18

Use this week to give students some “brain breaks,” review for midterms and take midterms. Our membership includes multiple review activities you can use this week. 

• Fill-in-the-blank grammar review activities
• End-of-semester grammar and literature review with short films

Semester Two

Week 19

Persuasive Writing Unit Week 1

You can find this two-week unit in the "Writing Units" section of the vault.

 From Foundational Grammar Curriculum:

• Teach independent and subordinate clauses

Week 20

Persuasive Writing Unit Week 2

You can find this two-week unit in the "Writing Units" section of the vault.

Week 22

Intro To Poetry One Week Unit

You can find this unit in "Writing Units" section in the vault. 

 From Foundational Grammar Curriculum:

• Teach sentence types

Week 23

Unit: How does judgment and prejudice affect individuals and a society?

Anchor Text: Romeo and Juliet Unit (3 week unit)

This unit will be added to the vault in January 2024

Week 24

 Unit: Romeo and Juliet Week 2

 From Foundational Grammar Curriculum:

Do sentence types review game and quiz

Week 25

Unit: Romeo and Juliet Week 3

This unit will be added to the vault in January 2024.

Week 26

Unit: What is the relationship between courage and grit?

• Literary focus: Choose from one of our 4 literary options for this unit
• This literature unit will be added to the membership in February of 2024

Week 27

Unit: What is the relationship between courage and grit? (Week 2)

• Literary focus: Choose from one of our 4 literary options for this unit
• This literature unit will be added to the membership in February of 2024

From Foundational Grammar Curriculum:

• Teach fragments lesson

Week 28

Unit: What is the relationship between courage and grit?

• Literary focus: Choose from one of our 4 literary options for this unit
• This literature unit will be added to the membership in February of 2024

From Foundational Grammar Curriculum:

• Give fragments quiz

Week 29

Writing Unit: Writing a Review

• Use podcast as mentor text: This Movie Changed Me

From Foundational Grammar Curriculum:

• Give active and passive voice lesson

Week 30

Writing Unit: Writing a Review

• Use podcast as mentor text: This Movie Changed Me

From Foundational Grammar Curriculum:

• Give active and passive voice quiz

Week 31

Unit: What are the effects of power, and does it always corrupt? 

• Literary focus: Lord of the Flies

This unit will be added to the membership winter of 2024

Week 32

Unit: What are the effects of power, and does it always corrupt? (week 2)

• Literary focus: Lord of the Flies

From Foundational Grammar Curriculum:

• Do possession and apostrophes lesson

Week 33

Unit: What are the effects of power, and does it always corrupt? 

• Literary focus: Lord of the Flies

From Foundational Grammar Curriculum:

• Give possession and apostrophes quiz

Week 34

Unit: How are justice, heroism, power and prejudice connected? 

• Literary Focus: 12 Angry Men

This unit will be added to the membership in spring of 2024

Week 35

Finish unit: How are justice, heroism, power and prejudice connected? 

Assign synthesis project to showcase learning, and use the week for students to complete these projects

This project assignment will be added to the vault in winter of 2024

Week 36

Finish and present synthesis projects

Review and exams