BIG Ideas for the 10

th
Grade Literature Magnet Course Team
Riverwood International Charter School
Course Team Members: Mattie Pritchett, Mary Schmidt, Diana Dame, and Portia Shaw
______________________________________________________________________________

Big Ideas are phrasings of standards language. The phrasings represent key, crucial, salient,
and foundational skills that students should master. Teachers should ask which key skills,
concepts, and process must be mastered at a certain level and think through the lens of
readiness, leverage, and endurance. The standards-based skills, concepts, and processes that
meet these criteria will be phrased into those Big Ideas.
Readiness: Students should have an opportunity to master skills, concepts, and processes that
will provide the necessary foundation for being successful in their studies.
Leverage: Students should study skills, concepts, and processes that have wide applicability to
other areas of study.
Endurance: Students should study skills, concepts, and processes that they will likely draw on
throughout their lives.
. BIG Ideas
By the end of our students 10
th
grade year, they should be able to:
1. Cite strong textual evidence to support student opinions, understanding, and learning.

2. Independently read and comprehend themes and major points of academic literature and informational text
presented in the 10
th
Lit Magnet course.

3. Create, analyze, and evaluate rhetorical, persuasive devices in personal writing, academic literature and
informational texts.

4. Write clear, coherent, concise and well-developed arguments using each step of the writing process.
5. Analyze the usage and effect of literary devices in a variety of texts.

6. Address an audience, verbally or in writing, using appropriate diction, tone, grammar, and spelling mechanics.
7. Differentiate between reliable and unreliable informational sources and correctly format a works cited page using
MLA.