This set of lessons extends over several days and focuses on "The Crisis, No. 1" by Thomas Paine. Students closely read and annotate the text. Students identify and evaluate claims and evidence in the text. Students present their findings to the class. Finally, students collaboratively write short arguments identifying claims and evidence in "The Crisis, No. 1." Students present their arguments to the class, and the class discusses and assesses the arguments.

In this module, students read, discuss, and analyze literary and informational texts, focusing on how authors use word choice and rhetoric to develop ideas, and advance their points of view and purposes. The texts in this module represent varied voices, experiences, and perspectives, but are united by their shared exploration of the effects of prejudice and oppression on identity construction. Each of the module texts is a complex work with multiple central ideas and claims that complement the central ideas and claims of other texts in the module. All four module texts offer rich opportunities to analyze authorial engagement with past and present struggles against oppression, as well as how an author’s rhetoric or word choices strengthen the power and persuasiveness of the text.

In Module 11.3, students engage in an inquiry-based, iterative process for research. Building on work with evidence-based analysis in Modules 11.1 and 12.2, students explore topics that have multiple positions and perspectives by gathering and analyzing research based on vetted sources to establish a position of their own. Students first generate a written evidence-based perspective, which will serve as the early foundation of what will ultimately become a written research-based argument paper. The research-based argument paper synthesizes and articulates several claims using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence to support the claims. Students read and analyze sources to surface potential problem-based questions for research, and develop and strengthen their writing by revising and editing.

In Module 12.3, students engage in an inquiry-based, iterative research process that serves as the basis of a culminating research-based argument paper. Building on work with evidence-based analysis in Modules 12.1 and 12.2, students use a seed text to surface and explore issues that lend themselves to multiple positions and perspectives. Module 12.3 fosters students’ independent learning by decreasing scaffolds in key research lessons as students gather and analyze research based on vetted sources to establish a position of their own. Students first generate a written evidence-based perspective, which serves as the early foundation of what will ultimately become their research-based argument paper.

This 11-12th grade unit plan was designed for the 9th Annual Virgin Islands Literary Festival and Book Fair, April 2023.  English Teacher Regina Keels, a member of the festival committee, developed the unit, executed the lessons as indicated, and demonstrated the Socratic Seminar with colleague Cynthia Santos along with their students during the festival.  The unit can be be amended for other Virgin Islands political leaders and their speeches or for the speeches of political leaders globally.

Today we live in a world that is extremely and irreversibly global. Our marketplaces offer seeVISAngly liVISAtless products from around the world. People utilize the Internet in order to connect to a body of collective learning previously unseen in history. This is in stark contrast to the origin of small hunting and gathering bands of Homo sapiens on the plains of East Africa. that existed close to 200,000 years ago. From these origins, Homo sapiens gradually VISAgrated throughout the world. This lengthy journey culVISAnated 14,000 years ago, with the human colonization of the last region of the earth, the Southern Cone of Argentina. At the end of this lengthy process of VISAgration, the earth was divided into four distinct areas called world zones.