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RI.11-12.10Common CoreELAReading Informational TextGrades 11-12

RI.11-12.10: Reading the Hardest Literary Nonfiction, Essays from Bacon to Henry Adams

In plain English: RI.11-12.10 is the Common Core ELA standard that sets the level of literary nonfiction, such as essays, memoirs and criticism, that students in grades 11-12 must read in the grades 11-CCR (college and career readiness) band. By the end of grade 11 they read it proficiently, with scaffolding as needed for the hardest texts; by the end of grade 12, they read the hardest texts independently.

By the end of grade 11, read and comprehend literary nonfiction in the grades 11—CCR text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
By the end of grade 12, read and comprehend literary nonfiction at the high end of the grades 11—CCR text complexity band independently and proficiently.

Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy · Domain: Reading Standards for Informational Text · Cluster: Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity · Official standard

01

Lesson Plan

60-70 min

Overview

RI.11-12.10 sets a level rather than a single skill. By the end of grade 11, students read literary nonfiction in the grades 11-CCR band proficiently, "with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range"; by the end of grade 12, they read at the high end "independently and proficiently." At this level students can decode almost every word and still miss the meaning. This lesson names the three reasons the hardest essays lose readers (long sentences whose core is buried, a writer who does not always mean what he says, and a line of thought that digresses before it answers) and gives one question for each: spine, stance and line. Students combine the answers in a three-sentence précis.

The essays run across three centuries, and each is hard in a different way. The teacher models the questions on Francis Bacon's complete essay "Of Studies" (1625), with a full glossary. Pairs use them on Thomas De Quincey's "On the Knocking at the Gate, in Macbeth" (1823), with a short glossary. Each student then reads three paragraphs of The Education of Henry Adams (1907) with only a context note, and the homework is a paragraph by Alice Meynell (1893) with no support at all. The support shrinks from the grade 11 benchmark to the grade 12 one.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

  • Find the grammatical core of a long nonfiction sentence, including words the writer leaves for the reader to supply
  • Decide whether a sentence in an essay is a sincere claim, a concession, a digression, another person's view or irony, and explain what that choice does
  • Trace an essay's line of thought from the question it poses to the answer it reaches, including across marked omissions
  • Write and test a three-sentence précis that keeps a writer's claim, method and attitude
  • Read a passage at the high end of the grades 11-CCR band without a glossary and describe which question they used where

Prior Knowledge Required

Students should already be comfortable with:

  • Reading literary nonfiction at the high end of the grades 9-10 band independently RI.9-10.10
  • Determining a central idea and how it develops over a text RI.9-10.2
  • Using context and reference works to determine the meaning of words L.9-10.4
  • The terms clause, irony, digression and tone

Lesson Procedure

60-70 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

  1. Warm-Up5-10 minutes

    Warm-Up Prompt

    "Here is the first sentence of a chapter of a memoir published in 1918: 'Until the Great Exposition of 1900 closed its doors in November, Adams haunted it, aching to absorb knowledge, and helpless to find it.' Copy the three words that carry the whole sentence. Then answer: who is 'Adams'?"

    Take answers. Most students find "Adams haunted it" once they notice that "Until...November" is a time clause and that "aching" and "helpless" only describe him. Fewer realize that Adams is the author: Henry Adams wrote his memoir about himself in the third person. Leave open for now why a writer would do that; students will meet the question again in Independent Practice. Tell the class that at the top of the grades 11-12 band, nonfiction is hard in three ways, and today they will learn one question for each: spine (what is the core of this sentence?), stance (does the writer mean this straight?) and line (where is the thinking going?).

  2. Direct Instruction15-20 minutes

    What RI.11-12.10 asks. The standard sets a level: literary nonfiction, such as essays, memoirs, criticism, speeches and journalism, in the grades 11-CCR band, the band that ends at college and career readiness. By the end of grade 11, students read these texts proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end; by the end of grade 12, they read texts at the high end independently. At this level students usually know the words in a sentence and still lose the meaning, for three reasons that the three questions on the card answer.

    • Spine. Find the subject and verb of the main clause and what completes them, then add the branches back one at a time. Watch for words the writer leaves out because the pattern supplies them.
    • Stance. Ask whether the writer means the sentence straight. Label it: a sincere claim, a concession, a digression, someone else's view, or irony (saying one thing to mean another).
    • Line. Name the question or subject the essay is working on, and say what each paragraph or stretch does to it: poses it, digresses, concedes, answers, widens it.

    A reader who can answer all three writes a three-sentence précis: (1) the subject and the writer's claim, (2) how the writer develops it, (3) the writer's attitude and what it adds. Test the précis against the passage's last sentence.

    Model on the complete essay "Of Studies" by Francis Bacon (1561-1626), a statesman and philosopher, in the final version he published in 1625. Hand out this glossary with it: ornament, display in conversation; disposition of business, arranging affairs; contemn, scorn; curiously, with close attention; conference, conversation; wit, mind; Abeunt studia in mores, Latin for "studies become habits"; the stone and reins, kidney stones and the kidneys; schoolmen, medieval philosophers known for fine distinctions; Cymini sectores, "splitters of cumin seeds," hair-splitters; receipt, remedy. Read it aloud while students follow, and think aloud through the three questions.

    Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business; for expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience; for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend: “Abeunt studia in mores;” nay, there is no stand or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies. Like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises, bowling is good for the stone and reins, shooting for the lungs and breast, gentle walking for the stomach, riding for the head and the like; so, if a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again; if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find difference, let him study the schoolmen, for they are “Cymini sectores.” If he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers’ cases; so every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.

    Francis Bacon, Of Studies (the complete essay, in its final 1625 version) (1597; this edition 1884). Public domain (published 1884). Source text.
    • Spine: supply the missing words

      Find the spine of the second sentence: "Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business."

      Result: The first clause has a full spine: "Their chief use ... is in privateness." The next two clauses drop the subject and keep only the verb, so the reader supplies "their chief use" twice: [their chief use] for ornament is in discourse; [their chief use] for ability is in the judgment of business. The sentence simply answers the first one: delight belongs to private reading, ornament to conversation, ability to managing affairs.

    • Stance: a dry joke with a serious point

      Bacon writes that "if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not." Is he recommending cunning?

      Result: No. The stance is ironic advice: the only way a man who reads little can keep up is to fake knowledge, "to seem to know that he doth not." The joke is at the non-reader's expense, and the serious claim underneath is that reading is what actually supplies knowledge. Label: irony in service of a sincere claim.

    • Line: what each stretch does

      Trace the essay's line of thought from its first sentence to its last.

      Result: It names three uses of studies ("delight," "ornament," "ability"), then the misuse of each; then studies and experience ("They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience"); then how to read different books; then what different subjects do to the mind; and it ends by treating studies as remedies: "every defect of the mind may have a special receipt." The line moves from what study is for, to how to do it, to study as a cure.

    • Précis and test

      Write a three-sentence précis of "Of Studies" and test it against the last sentence.

      Result: (1) Bacon argues that studies have three uses, pleasure, display and practical judgment, and that each is spoiled by excess. (2) He develops the claim through balanced, compressed sentences that move from the uses of study, to how to read, to what each subject does to the mind. (3) His tone is confident and practical, the voice of a statesman giving advice rather than a scholar praising learning. Test: the last sentence, "so every defect of the mind may have a special receipt," fits sentence 2's movement toward study as a remedy; a précis that said only "Bacon likes reading" would fail it.

    Teacher tip. Point out that Bacon often explains himself: after "some few to be chewed and digested" he adds "that is" and restates the metaphor in plain terms. Hard writers often supply their own gloss a clause later, so students should read on before they stop. Diagram 1 shows the two sentences that begin "Reading maketh a full man."

  3. Guided Practice15 minutes

    Give pairs this context note and the card: In 1823 the English essayist Thomas De Quincey published a short piece of criticism about one moment in Shakespeare's Macbeth: just after Macbeth murders King Duncan, a knocking is heard at the castle gate. The two cuts are marked [...]: the first leaves out a long digression, the second his explanation that a poet must make us look into the murderer's mind, where the "fiendish" has replaced the human. Short glossary: début, first public appearance; connoisseur, an expert judge of an art; dilettanti, lovers of the arts; felicity, aptness; sequestered, set apart; armistice, a truce. The paragraphs are numbered. Pairs work through the four steps; circulate and hear from each pair at least once.

    Teacher note on language and content: the passages are quoted exactly as published. Bacon and De Quincey use "man" and "men" for people in general, as writers of their times did. De Quincey's paragraph 2 jokes about real murders: in December 1811 seven people, including a baby, were killed in two attacks near Ratcliffe Highway in the East End of London. De Quincey dates them to 1812, but they took place in December 1811; the suspect, John Williams, killed himself before he could be tried. Tell students this before they read, and treat the jokes as De Quincey's irony, not as a view the class shares. "Shakspeare" and "gulph" are older spellings.

    From my boyish days I had always felt a great perplexity on one point in Macbeth. It was this: the knocking at the gate, which succeeds to the murder of Duncan, produced to my feelings an effect for which I never could account. The effect was, that it reflected back upon the murder a peculiar awfulness and a depth of solemnity; yet, however obstinately I endeavored with my understanding to comprehend this, for many years I never could see why it should produce such an effect.

    [...] But to return from this digression, my understanding could furnish no reason why the knocking at the gate in Macbeth should produce any effect, direct or reflected. In fact, my understanding said positively that it could not produce any effect. But I knew better; I felt that it did; and I waited and clung to the problem until further knowledge should enable me to solve it. At length, in 1812, Mr. Williams made his début on the stage of Ratcliffe Highway, and executed those unparalleled murders which have procured for him such a brilliant and undying reputation. On which murders, by the way, I must observe, that in one respect they have had an ill effect, by making the connoisseur in murder very fastidious in his taste, and dissatisfied by anything that has been since done in that line. All other murders look pale by the deep crimson of his; and, as an amateur once said to me in a querulous tone, "There has been absolutely nothing doing since his time, or nothing that's worth speaking of." But this is wrong; for it is unreasonable to expect all men to be great artists, and born with the genius of Mr. Williams. Now it will be remembered that in the first of these murders, (that of the Marrs,) the same incident (of a knocking at the door soon after the work of extermination was complete) did actually occur, which the genius of Shakspeare has invented; and all good judges, and the most eminent dilettanti, acknowledged the felicity of Shakspeare's suggestion as soon as it was actually realized. Here, then, was a fresh proof that I was right in relying on my own feeling in opposition to my understanding; and I again set myself to study the problem; at length I solved it to my own satisfaction; and my solution is this. [...]

    [...]

    [...] In order that a new world may step in, this world must for a time disappear. The murderers, and the murder, must be insulated--cut off by an immeasurable gulph from the ordinary tide and succession of human affairs--locked up and sequestered in some deep recess; we must be made sensible that the world of ordinary life is suddenly arrested--laid asleep--tranced--racked into a dread armistice: time must be annihilated; relation to things without abolished; and all must pass self-withdrawn into a deep syncope and suspension of earthly passion. Hence it is, that when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the clouds: the knocking at the gate is heard; and it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced: the human has made its reflux upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are beginning to beat again; and the re-establishment of the goings-on of the world in which we live, first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that had suspended them.

    Thomas De Quincey, On the Knocking at the Gate, in Macbeth (opening, middle and close of the argument, with two cuts marked) (1823; this edition 1851). Public domain (published 1851). Source text.
    1. Line (paragraph 1). Pairs write the essay's question in their own words. Teacher note: De Quincey says the knocking gives the murder "a peculiar awfulness and a depth of solemnity," and that he could never see "why." The italic word is the question the essay answers. Diagram 2 maps the whole passage, cuts included.
    2. Stance (paragraph 2). Pairs find the sentences that cannot be meant straight. Teacher note: De Quincey describes a real murderer in the words of theater and art criticism: "made his début on the stage," "a brilliant and undying reputation," "the connoisseur in murder," "great artists." This is irony. Ask what it does to the argument: the joke treats murder as an art, which prepares the claim that Shakespeare's art invented what the real murder later showed.
    3. Spine (paragraph 3). Pairs strip the second sentence to its core. Teacher note: "The murderers, and the murder, must be insulated"; everything after the first double dash restates that one idea ("cut off," "locked up and sequestered"), and the second half of the sentence does the same for "the world of ordinary life is suddenly arrested." Once students see the repetition, the sentence becomes a list of synonyms, not a maze.
    4. Précis. Pairs write the answer in one sentence and test it against the last clause, "the awful parenthesis that had suspended them." Teacher note: a good answer says that the knock is the first sign of ordinary life coming back, and that the return is what makes us feel how completely the murder had stopped it.

    Close with a quick check: which of the three questions did your pair need most here? Many pairs choose stance, because the irony in paragraph 2 is easy to read as a plain opinion. Tell students that the next passage comes with a two-sentence note and no glossary: this is the grade 12 target, reading at the top of the band on their own.

  4. Independent Practice15 minutes

    Each student reads alone with the card and no glossary. Context note: Henry Adams (1838-1918), an American historian, wrote his autobiography in the third person, so "Adams" and "he" are the author himself. In 1900 he spent months at the Paris Exposition, a world's fair, guided by the American scientist Samuel Pierpont Langley; a dynamo is an electric generator. Students mark each place they stopped and write S, T or L for the question that got them going again, then draft a three-sentence précis. Collect the précis; they show who is ready to read at this level without support. Quiz questions 1-11, 15-18 and 20 use this passage.

    Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts. Adams had looked at most of the accumulations of art in the storehouses called Art Museums; yet he did not know how to look at the art exhibits of 1900. He had studied Karl Marx and his doctrines of history with profound attention, yet he could not apply them at Paris. Langley, with the ease of a great master of experiment, threw out of the field every exhibit that did not reveal a new application of force, and naturally threw out, to begin with, almost the whole art exhibit. Equally, he ignored almost the whole industrial exhibit. He led his pupil directly to the forces. His chief interest was in new motors to make his airship feasible, and he taught Adams the astonishing complexities of the new Daimler motor, and of the automobile, which, since 1893, had become a nightmare at a hundred kilometres an hour, almost as destructive as the electric tram which was only ten years older; and threatening to become as terrible as the locomotive steam-engine itself, which was almost exactly Adams's own age.

    Then he showed his scholar the great hall of dynamos, and explained how little he knew about electricity or force of any kind, even of his own special sun, which spouted heat in inconceivable volume, but which, as far as he knew, might spout less or more, at any time, for all the certainty he felt in it. To him, the dynamo itself was but an ingenious channel for conveying somewhere the heat latent in a few tons of poor coal hidden in a dirty engine-house carefully kept out of sight; but to Adams the dynamo became a symbol of infinity. As he grew accustomed to the great gallery of machines, he began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the early Christians felt the Cross. The planet itself seemed less impressive, in its old-fashioned, deliberate, annual or daily revolution, than this huge wheel, revolving within arm's length at some vertiginous speed, and barely murmuring--scarcely humming an audible warning to stand a hair's-breadth further for respect of power--while it would not wake the baby lying close against its frame. Before the end, one began to pray to it; inherited instinct taught the natural expression of man before silent and infinite force. Among the thousand symbols of ultimate energy the dynamo was not so human as some, but it was the most expressive.

    Yet the dynamo, next to the steam-engine, was the most familiar of exhibits. For Adams's objects its value lay chiefly in its occult mechanism. Between the dynamo in the gallery of machines and the engine-house outside, the break of continuity amounted to abysmal fracture for a historian's objects. No more relation could he discover between the steam and the electric current than between the Cross and the cathedral. The forces were interchangeable if not reversible, but he could see only an absolute fiat in electricity as in faith. Langley could not help him. Indeed, Langley seemed to be worried by the same trouble, for he constantly repeated that the new forces were anarchical, and especially that he was not responsible for the new rays, that were little short of parricidal in their wicked spirit towards science. His own rays, with which he had doubled the solar spectrum, were altogether harmless and beneficent; but Radium denied its God--or, what was to Langley the same thing, denied the truths of his Science. The force was wholly new.

    Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, from Chapter XXV, "The Dynamo and the Virgin (1900)" (1907; this edition 1918). Public domain (published 1918). Source text.
  5. Closure10 minutes

    Exit ticket: (1) Copy the sentence in Adams's passage that was hardest for you and write its spine underneath. (2) Name one support you did not need today that you would have needed at the start of grade 11.

    For homework: students read the paragraph below on their own, with no card and no glossary. The only context is its author and date: Alice Meynell (1847-1922), an English poet and essayist, published it in 1893 as the opening of an essay.

    If life is not always poetical, it is at least metrical. Periodicity rules over the mental experience of man, according to the path of the orbit of his thoughts. Distances are not gauged, ellipses not measured, velocities not ascertained, times not known. Nevertheless, the recurrence is sure. What the mind suffered last week, or last year, it does not suffer now; but it will suffer again next week or next year. Happiness is not a matter of events; it depends upon the tides of the mind. Disease is metrical, closing in at shorter and shorter periods towards death, sweeping abroad at longer and longer intervals towards recovery. Sorrow for one cause was intolerable yesterday, and will be intolerable tomorrow; today it is easy to bear, but the cause has not passed. Even the burden of a spiritual distress unsolved is bound to leave the heart to a temporary peace; and remorse itself does not remain--it returns. Gaiety takes us by a dear surprise. If we had made a course of notes of its visits, we might have been on the watch, and would have had an expectation instead of a discovery. No one makes such observations; in all the diaries of students of the interior world, there have never come to light the records of the Kepler of such cycles. But Thomas a Kempis knew of the recurrences, if he did not measure them. In his cell alone with the elements--'What wouldst thou more than these? for out of these were all things made'--he learnt the stay to be found in the depth of the hour of bitterness, and the remembrance that restrains the soul at the coming of the moment of delight, giving it a more conscious welcome, but presaging for it an inexorable flight. And 'rarely, rarely comest thou,' sighed Shelley, not to Delight merely, but to the Spirit of Delight. Delight can be compelled beforehand, called, and constrained to our service--Ariel can be bound to a daily task; but such artificial violence throws life out of metre, and it is not the spirit that is thus compelled. That flits upon an orbit elliptically or parabolically or hyperbolically curved, keeping no man knows what trysts with Time.

    Alice Meynell, The Rhythm of Life, the first paragraph of the essay (1893). Public domain (published 1893). Source text.

Differentiation Strategies

For Struggling Students

  • Give the De Quincey glossary again for the Adams passage, plus three words of Adams's choosing (inert, occult, fiat), and fade it on the homework instead
  • Before independent reading, underline the spine of the first sentence of each Adams paragraph so the student starts each paragraph on firm ground
  • Let students write a one-sentence précis per paragraph first, then combine them into three sentences
  • Read paragraph 2 of the Adams passage aloud with the student, pausing at each dash and semicolon to ask what the sentence has said so far

For Advanced Students

  • Read the whole of De Quincey's essay, including the parts the lesson cuts, and decide whether the cuts changed his argument
  • Compare the three writers' sentence habits: Bacon compresses, De Quincey piles up restatements, Adams sets two views side by side. Write a paragraph in each style about today's class
  • Read the rest of Adams's chapter and explain the title, "The Dynamo and the Virgin," in a précis of the whole chapter

Assessment Guidance

What to Look For

Look past right answers to how students get unstuck. Strong readers can say which question they used and where ("paragraph 3, I found the spine and the rest was a list"). Good précis keep the writer's attitude and method as well as the claim; a précis that reports only topics ("Adams talks about dynamos") has not followed the line. Watch for students who read irony as plain opinion, who take the third-person "Adams" for someone else, and who treat a digression as the main point. By the end of grade 11, a student may still need a glossary or a context note on the hardest passage; by the end of grade 12, the target is the same quality of reading on the Meynell paragraph with no support.

02

Classroom Activities

3 Activities

1

Spine Surgery

15 minPairs

Pairs strip six long sentences from other parts of the same four works to their spines, then add the branches back one at a time. The sentences are not in the printed passages, so students practice on fresh prose by the same writers.

The Six Strips

  1. "Ask of any person whatsoever, who is not previously prepared for the demand by a knowledge of perspective, to draw in the rudest way the commonest appearance which depends upon the laws of that science; as for instance, to represent the effect of two walls standing at right angles to each other, or the appearance of the houses on each side of a street, as seen by a person looking down the street from one extremity." (De Quincey)
  2. "All action in any direction is best expounded, measured, and made apprehensible, by reaction." (De Quincey)
  3. "He wrapped himself in vibrations and rays which were new, and he would have hugged Marconi and Branly had he met them, as he hugged the dynamo; while he lost his arithmetic in trying to figure out the equation between the discoveries and the economies of force." (Adams)
  4. "Certainly it is heaven upon earth, to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth." (Bacon, "Of Truth")
  5. "To live in constant efforts after an equal life, whether the equality be sought in mental production, or in spiritual sweetness, or in the joy of the senses, is to live without either rest or full activity." (Meynell)
  6. "Juliet will not receive a vow spoken in invocation of the moon; but Juliet did not live to know that love itself has tidal times--lapses and ebbs which are due to the metrical rule of the interior heart, but which the lover vainly and unkindly attributes to some outward alteration in the beloved." (Meynell)

Procedure

  • Pairs copy the spine of each strip in no more than ten words, in one color
  • In the second color, they add back one branch at a time and write what each branch adds: a time, a condition, an example, a contrast
  • Two pairs compare spines; where they differ, they test each spine by asking whether it could stand alone as a sentence

Answer Key for the Teacher

1: "Ask any person to draw the commonest appearance"; the "as for instance" branch gives two examples. 2: "All action is best expounded by reaction"; "measured" and "made apprehensible" are two more verbs on the same spine. 3: "He wrapped himself in vibrations and rays"; then "he would have hugged Marconi and Branly"; the "while" clause adds a contrast. 4: "It is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity"; "it" stands in for the infinitive phrase, which is the real subject. 5: "To live in constant efforts after an equal life is to live without rest"; the "whether" clause lists three kinds of equality. 6: two spines joined by "but": "Juliet will not receive a vow" and "Juliet did not live to know that love has tidal times"; the dash introduces a definition. Accept any spine that keeps the main subject and verb.

Discussion Questions

  • In strips 4 and 5 the grammatical subject is a whole phrase. Why do such sentences feel hard even when every word is easy?
  • Which writer builds the longest branches, and what do the branches usually do: explain, qualify or decorate?
2

Does He Mean It?

15 minGroups of 3-4

Groups sort six stance cards into five piles: sincere claim, concession, digression, someone else's view, and irony. At the top of the band, writers shift stance without warning, and a reader who takes every sentence straight will get the argument backwards.

The Six Stance Cards

  1. "Here I pause for one moment, to exhort the reader never to pay any attention to his understanding when it stands in opposition to any other faculty of his mind." (De Quincey, the sentence that opens the digression the passage cuts)
  2. "It seems almost ludicrous to guard and explain my use of a word in a situation where it would naturally explain itself." (De Quincey, from his footnote on the word sympathy)
  3. "A historian who asked only to learn enough to be as futile as Langley or Kelvin, made rapid progress under this teaching, and mixed himself up in the tangle of ideas until he achieved a sort of Paradise of ignorance vastly consoling to his fatigued senses." (Adams)
  4. "A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure." (Bacon, "Of Truth")
  5. "Few poets have fully recognised the metrical absence of their Muse." (Meynell)
  6. "Langley seemed prepared for anything, even for an indeterminable number of universes interfused--physics stark mad in metaphysics." (Adams)

Procedure

  • Groups place each card on a pile in eight minutes and underline the word that decided it
  • For every card placed on the irony pile, the group writes what the writer really means in one plain sentence
  • Groups compare with one other group and settle one disagreement by pointing to a word

Answer Key for the Teacher

1: digression ("Here I pause" announces it), though its content is a sincere claim. 2: concession: De Quincey admits the note looks unnecessary before defending it. 3: irony and self-mockery: "rapid progress" toward a "Paradise of ignorance" means Adams learned how little he could understand; "futile" is a joke about two great scientists. 4: sincere claim, stated as a plain observation about people; Bacon then explains it. 5: sincere claim. 6: someone else's view reported with irony: the view is Langley's openness, and "physics stark mad in metaphysics" is Adams's comic judgment of it. Accept a defended second label for cards 1, 3 and 6.

Discussion Questions

  • Which card was hardest to place, and what would a reader get wrong by taking it straight?
  • Adams mocks himself more than he mocks anyone else. What does self-mockery let a writer do that plain statement does not?
3

Does Learning Teach Its Own Use?

20 minWhole class, fishbowl seminar

A seminar on three sentences that speak to one another across three centuries. Adams names Bacon in the paragraph just before the lesson's passage, and De Quincey writes about trusting what the mind knows against what it feels. Students must first say exactly what each sentence claims before they may agree or disagree with it.

The Three Quotations

  1. Bacon: studies "teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation." ("Of Studies")
  2. Adams: "Yet Langley said nothing new, and taught nothing that one might not have learned from Lord Bacon, three hundred years before; but though one should have known the "Advancement of Science" as well as one knew the "Comedy of Errors," the literary knowledge counted for nothing until some teacher should show how to apply it." (The Education of Henry Adams, the chapter's first paragraph)
  3. De Quincey: "But I knew better; I felt that it did; and I waited and clung to the problem until further knowledge should enable me to solve it." (paragraph 2 of the guided passage)

Procedure

  • Six students sit in the inner circle; each first restates one quotation in plain words, and the outer circle checks the restatement against the words before discussion starts
  • The inner circle discusses the question in the title for eight minutes; outer-circle students track which quotation each speaker uses
  • The circles swap, and the new inner circle must begin by answering one point the first circle left open

Teacher Notes

Bacon says study does not teach how to apply itself; that judgment comes from outside it, by observation. Adams agrees and adds that a teacher, Langley, supplied what his reading could not. De Quincey adds a third source, feeling, which kept him on a problem his reasoning could not yet solve. Adams writes "Advancement of Science"; the title of Bacon's 1605 book is The Advancement of Learning, so point out the slip if a student looks it up.

Discussion Questions

  • Do Bacon and Adams mean the same thing by "use," or is Adams asking for more?
  • Which of today's supports (the glossary, the note, the card) worked like Langley for you, and which could you now do without?

03

Diagrams & Visual Aids

2 diagrams

Diagram 1: Two Balanced Sentences in "Of Studies"

Bacon names three activities, then reverses their order Sentence A: what each one makes Sentence B: what its absence demands Reading maketh a full man conference [maketh] a ready man writing [maketh] an exact man if a man write little he had need have a great memory if he confer little he had need have a present wit if he read little he had need have much cunning [maketh] = the verb Bacon leaves out and the reader supplies
Bacon's sentence "Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man" states the verb once and leaves the reader to supply it twice (shown as [maketh]). The next sentence takes the same three activities in the reverse order, writing, conference, reading, and says what a person who does little of each must make up for. The crossing lines show the reversal.

Diagram 2: De Quincey's Question, Detour and Answer

De Quincey's line of thought, with the cuts shown Paragraph 1 The question: why does the knocking make the murder feel so awful? Cut [...] A digression: untrained people cannot draw a street in perspective Paragraph 2 Understanding says no effect; feeling says yes; the 1811 murders back the feeling Aside Irony inside paragraph 2: a murderer praised as an artist Cut [...] The poet makes us look into the murderer; the fiendish replaces the human Paragraph 3 The answer: the knock is ordinary life starting again, which shows how far it had stopped
A map of the guided passage (T2). Solid boxes are the printed paragraphs, dashed boxes are the parts the lesson cuts, and the indented box is the ironic aside inside paragraph 2. The line of thought runs from the question in paragraph 1 to the answer in paragraph 3; the digression and the irony are detours, not the argument.

04

Homework Assignment

~30 min

RI.11-12.10 Homework: Reading Meynell on Your Own

Directions: Read Alice Meynell's paragraph (T4) at the end of the lesson plan, in Closure, with no card and no glossary; use a dictionary only after you have tried context. Quote exactly and name the sentence you quote by its first words. Answer in complete sentences.

Part 1: Spine and Stance (Problems 1-2)

  1. Write the spine of this sentence and say what each of its two long branches adds: "Disease is metrical, closing in at shorter and shorter periods towards death, sweeping abroad at longer and longer intervals towards recovery." Then do the same for the sentence that begins "Delight can be compelled beforehand."
  2. The first sentence is "If life is not always poetical, it is at least metrical." Explain what "at least" concedes and what it claims. Then decide whether Meynell agrees or disagrees with the two writers she quotes, Thomas a Kempis and Shelley, and quote the words that show it.

Part 2: References and Line (Problems 3-4)

  1. Meynell writes that "there have never come to light the records of the Kepler of such cycles." Johannes Kepler was the astronomer who worked out the laws of the planets' orbits. Explain what the phrase means and how it connects to the words "orbit," "ellipses" and "velocities" earlier in the paragraph. Then name one other reference in the paragraph that a reader could skip without losing the point, and explain why.
  2. Divide the paragraph into four or five stages and label what each does (for example, claims, gives examples, concedes, names an exception, warns). Quote the first words of each stage.

Part 3: Précis and Support Audit (Problems 5-6)

  1. Write a three-sentence précis of the paragraph (claim, method, attitude), then test it against the last sentence, the one that begins "That flits upon an orbit." Explain what "That" refers to.
  2. Support audit: Meynell's paragraph came with no card and no glossary. Choose the one sentence you would gloss for a grade 11 classmate, quote its first words, and write that gloss in no more than 20 words. Then, in 3-4 sentences, say which of the three questions (spine, stance or line) you used on that sentence and what you would still need, if anything, to read a paragraph like this one on your own.

Rubric

CriterionFull Credit (2 pts)Partial Credit (1 pt)No Credit (0 pts)
Accurate UnderstandingMeynell's claim, examples and warning all stated correctlyClaim stated, but the warning about compelling delight missed or distortedMisreads the claim
Use of the Three QuestionsSpines correct; stance labeled with a reason; stages of the line namedQuestions named but not carried out on the textNo sign of the questions
EvidenceExact quotations that support each point, located by first wordsQuotations without locations, or one misquotationNo textual evidence
Self-AssessmentAccurate gloss of a quoted hard sentence, with the question used and an honest account of the support still neededGloss or account thin, or the question not namedMissing

05

Quiz: 20 Questions

Interactive, with answers

Instructions

Questions 1-11, 15-18 and 20 use Henry Adams's passage (T3, in Independent Practice), questions 12 and 19 use Bacon's "Of Studies" (T1, in Direct Instruction), and question 13 uses De Quincey's passage (T2, in Guided Practice); the paragraphs are numbered. Question 14 needs no passage. Your score updates as you answer, and Reset quiz clears everything.

Multiple choice: pick an option to check it. Short answer: write your answer, then reveal the model answer.

0 of 20 answered · 0 correct

  1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Adams's passage begins: "Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts." What does the sentence mean?

  2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Why does Adams mention the Art Museums and Karl Marx in paragraph 1?

  3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In paragraph 1, Langley "threw out of the field every exhibit that did not reveal a new application of force." What does "threw out of the field" mean here?

  4. Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Paragraph 1 ends by calling the locomotive steam-engine "almost exactly Adams's own age." Why does Adams mention his own age?

  5. Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Paragraph 2 says that to Langley the dynamo "was but an ingenious channel for conveying somewhere the heat latent in a few tons of poor coal," "but to Adams the dynamo became a symbol of infinity." What does the contrast show?

  6. Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Adams "began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the early Christians felt the Cross." What does the comparison suggest?

  7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    What is the spine of this sentence from paragraph 2: "The planet itself seemed less impressive, in its old-fashioned, deliberate, annual or daily revolution, than this huge wheel, revolving within arm's length at some vertiginous speed, and barely murmuring ... while it would not wake the baby lying close against its frame"?

  8. Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Paragraph 2 says, "Before the end, one began to pray to it; inherited instinct taught the natural expression of man before silent and infinite force." What is Adams doing here?

  9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In paragraph 3, "For Adams's objects its value lay chiefly in its occult mechanism." Using context, what does "occult" mean here?

  10. Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Paragraph 3 says that "the break of continuity amounted to abysmal fracture for a historian's objects." What problem is Adams describing?

  11. Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Adams reports that Langley "was not responsible for the new rays, that were little short of parricidal in their wicked spirit towards science." How should this be read?

  12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Bacon writes that "Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments and the meaner sort of books." What does he mean?

  13. Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In paragraph 3 of De Quincey's passage, all must "pass self-withdrawn into a deep syncope and suspension of earthly passion." Using context, what does "syncope" mean?

  14. Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In May of grade 12, a student gets a new essay at the high end of the grades 11-CCR band and asks for a glossary and a summary before reading a word. Under RI.11-12.10, what is the best response?

  15. Question 15 of 20 · Short Answer

    Restate this sentence from paragraph 3 of Adams's passage in plain words, keeping every part: "The forces were interchangeable if not reversible, but he could see only an absolute fiat in electricity as in faith."

  16. Question 16 of 20 · Short Answer

    Write a three-sentence précis of Adams's passage (claim, method, attitude).

  17. Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer

    Paragraph 3 begins with "Yet." How does this word change the direction of the passage, and what does paragraph 3 add to paragraph 2?

  18. Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer

    Which of the three questions (spine, stance or line) did you need most on Adams's passage? Name the paragraph, quote the place, and explain how the question got you going again.

  19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    In "Of Studies," Bacon writes: "Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider." Find the spine, restate the sentence in plain words, and explain which of the three uses in Bacon's first sentence the last phrase serves.

  20. Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer

    Adams writes about himself in the third person. Using paragraph 1, explain what the third person lets him do that "I" would not.

0 of 20 answered · 0 correct

06

Frequently Asked Questions

10 Questions

What does RI.11-12.10 mean?

It means students in grades 11-12 must read and understand literary nonfiction as complex as the grades 11-CCR band allows. By the end of grade 11 they read it proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the band; by the end of grade 12 they read texts at the high end independently. It sets a level of reading rather than naming one analytic skill.

What does 11-CCR mean in RI.11-12.10?

It is the text complexity band that runs from grade 11 to college and career readiness (CCR), the level of reading students need after high school. Appendix A of the Common Core judges complexity in three ways: quantitative measures such as sentence length and word frequency, qualitative features such as purpose, structure, language and knowledge demands, and the match between reader and task.

How is RI.11-12.10 different from RI.9-10.10?

The structure of the two standards is the same, but the band is higher: grades 11-CCR instead of 9-10. In practice the texts at the top of the higher band ask more of a reader's own judgment: longer sentences whose core is buried, irony and self-mockery, digressions and allusions that the writer does not explain. This lesson's spine, stance and line questions target those demands.

What is the difference between grade 11 and grade 12 in this standard?

The support. Both years read in the same band. A grade 11 student may still use scaffolding, such as a glossary, a context note or a partner, for the hardest texts; a grade 12 student reads the hardest texts in the band independently. In this lesson the support shrinks from passage to passage for that reason.

What counts as literary nonfiction?

True writing about real ideas, people and events, written with a writer's craft: essays, memoirs and autobiographies, biographies, criticism, speeches and literary journalism. This lesson uses a moral essay (Bacon), literary criticism (De Quincey), an autobiography (Adams) and a reflective essay (Meynell).

Why use essays from 1625, 1823, 1907 and 1893 instead of modern ones?

Each is hard in a different, teachable way: Bacon compresses, De Quincey digresses and uses irony, Adams sets views side by side and mocks himself, and Meynell leans on allusions and metaphor. They are also in the public domain, so the page can print them in full. Pair them with modern high-end nonfiction your course already uses; the three questions work the same way on recent prose.

What is a précis, and why ask for one?

A précis is a short, exact summary that keeps a writer's claim, method and attitude, not just the topic. Asking for three fixed sentences forces students to answer all three of the lesson's questions: a précis that names only topics shows the student has not followed the line of thought.

How do I scaffold without doing the reading for students?

Give support that students can remove later: a glossary of a few words, a two-sentence context note, a question card. Avoid summaries in advance, which replace the reading. Then take one layer away with each new text and ask students to say which support they missed. By the end of grade 12 the goal is no support on a text at the high end.

What should I do when a student cannot get through the Adams passage?

Find out which question failed. If the student cannot find the spine of the long sentences in paragraph 2, work one sentence together. If the student reads the prayer and the "parricidal" rays literally, the problem is stance. If the student can explain each sentence but not the passage, work on the line. Then give that student the De Quincey glossary back for the homework and remove it on the next text.

How is RI.11-12.10 assessed?

Usually indirectly: reading tests measure it through how well students answer questions on complex passages, not through questions about complexity itself. In class, the clearest evidence is a student's reading of a new passage at the high end of the band with little or no support, which is what the homework and the quiz passage ask for.