NYS Grades 9-12 Text Selections
These modules include authentic reading materials. Authentic reading materials include published works that are typically encountered by students in daily life,
such as in magazines, books or newspapers. The use of authentic reading material may mean that some material is emotionally charged or may use language
outside of a student's particular cultural experience.
As always, curriculum decisions are made at the local level.
Grade 9
Module 1
Module 2
Module 3
Module 4
Mitchell, Black Swan Green
Poe, “Tell-Tale Heart”
Matthews,“A Poetry Reading At West
Sophocles, Oedipus the King
Russell, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls
Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
Point”
Plutarch, “Consolation to his Wife”
Raised by Wolves”
Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress
Wayman, “Did I Miss Anything”
Marquez, Chronicle of a Death
McCarthy, Memoirs of a Catholic
Doyle, “A Scandal in Bohemia”
Chopin, The Awakening
Foretold
Girlhood
King, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice
Camus, The Stranger
Kafka, Metamorphosis
Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet,
Haddon, The Curious Incident of the
Isben, A Doll’s House
Hemingway, “The Short Happy Life of
Letters1, 4, 7-8
Dog in the Night
Lessing, “To Room 19”
Francis Macomber”
Li Po, “A Poem of Changgan”
Sacks, “The Man Who Mistook His
Cullen, “The Depressive and the
1 Samuel 17
Pound, “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A
Wife for a Hat”
Psychopath”2
Emerson, “Self Reliance”
Letter”
Levitt, “What Do Sumo Wrestlers and
Kincaid, “Girl”
Great Conversation Documents: FDR3
Alexie, “Every Little Hurricane”
Schoolteachers Have In Common?” 1
Grandin, Animals in Translation
Neruda, “You’re the Result of
McCollough, Mornings on Horseback
Harr, The Lost Painting
White, “Death of a Pig”
Yourself”
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Auden, "Musee des Beaux Arts"
Lawrence, “Snake”
Johnson, “Lift Every Voice and Sing”
Bishop, "One Art," " In the Waiting
Bishop, “The Fish”
Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Room
OrwelI, 1984
Hurston. Their Eyes Were Watching
Frost, "The Wood Pile"
God
1
From his bookFreakonomics
2http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/assessment/2004/04/the_depressive_and_the_psychopath.html
3
IncludingFDR’s First Inaugural, first fireside chat, and his “Day of Infamy” speech
NYS Grades 9-12 Text Selections
These modules include authentic reading materials. Authentic reading materials include published works that are typically encountered by students in daily life,
such as in magazines, books or newspapers. The use of authentic reading material may mean that some material is emotionally charged or may use language
outside of a student's particular cultural experience.
As always, curriculum decisions are made at the local level.
Grade 10
Module 1
Module 2
Module 3
Module 4
Canin, “The Palace Thief”
Kipling, “White Man’s Burden”
Zusak, The Book Thief
Zogby, What Arabs Think
Tan, The Joy Luck Club
King, “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
Roach, Stiff: The Curious Life of
Wilson, Fences
Malamud, The Natural
Great Conversation Documents: 19th
Human Cadavers
Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory
Bissinger, Friday Night Lights
Century Women’s Rights4
Greene, “The Destructors”
Orwell, Animal Farm
Colton, Counting Coup
Hurston, “How It Feels to Be Colored
Golding, Lord of the Flies
Marx, The Communist Manifesto
Twain, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog
Me”
Spiegelman, Maus
Menken, “On Being an American”
of Calaveras County”
Morrison, Song of Solomon
Silko, Ceremony
O’Connor,“Good Country People”
McPhee, “The Search for Marvin
Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta
Dickinson, “Because I could not stop
Lewis, Screwtape Letters, Letter #1
Gardens”
Lacks
for Death”
Updike, “A & P”
Du Bois, “The Talented Tenth”
Soyinka, “Telephone Conversation”
Browning, “Porphyria’s Lover”
Mansfield, “The Garden Party”
Watson, The Double Helix
Fugard, “Master Harold… and the
Frost, “Home Burial”
Leopold, “Thinking Like a Mountain”
Card, “Ender’s Game”
Boys”
Woolf, “The Death of the Moth”
6
Genesis 37-45
Roy, The God of Small Things
Stanford Prison Experiment
Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd
Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars
to his Love”
Friedan, “The Problem that Has No
Shakespeare, Macbeth
Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
Bradstreet, "The Author to her Book"
Raleigh, “The Nymph’s Reply to the
Name”5
Shepherd”
Bronte, Jane Eyre
4
Includes here the Seneca Falls Declaration and Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman”
Chapter 1 of The Feminine Mystique
6
http://www.prisonexp.org/
5
Eliot, "The Lovesong of J. Alfred
Prufrock"
Beavan, No Impact Man
cummings, “I sing of Olaf glad and
big”
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
NYS Grades 9-12 Text Selections
These modules include authentic reading materials. Authentic reading materials include published works that are typically encountered by students in daily life,
such as in magazines, books or newspapers. The use of authentic reading material may mean that some material is emotionally charged or may use language
outside of a student's particular cultural experience.
As always, curriculum decisions are made at the local level.
Grade 11
Module 1
Module 2
Module 3
Module 4
Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily”
Swift, “A Modest Proposal”
Lincoln, “Gettysburg Address”
Sandel, “The Moral Side of Murder”8
Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted
Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of
Obama, “A More Perfect Union”
Hersey, Hiroshima
Melville, “Bartleby the Scriviner”
the Life of OlaudahEquiano, “The
Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues”
Jin, “The Emperor”
Haslett, “Notes to my Biographer”
Middle Passage”
Jones, The Known World
Gordimer, “The Moment Before the
Dostoyevsky, Notes From
Douglass, 1852 Speech at Rochester
Wilder, “Our Town”
Gun Went Off”
Underground
Turkel, Working
7
Auden, “Funeral Blues”
Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard
Gogol, “The Nose”
Brecht, “A Worker Reads History”
Shakespeare, Sonnet 29
Schlink, The Reader
Hawthorne, “The Minister’s Black
Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed
Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and
Great Conversation Documents:
Veil”
Miller, “Tragedy and the Common
You Fall Down
Segregation9
Smart, “Jubilate Agno (For I Will
Man”
Lahiri, “Interpreter of Maladies”
Branch, “The Montgomery Bus
Consider My Cat Jeoffry)”
Chief Joseph, “I Will Fight No More
Chief Seattle 1854 Speech
Boycott”10
Rosetti, “Goblin Market”
Forever”
Egan, The Worst Hard Time
Ogletree, All Deliberate Speed
Borges, “The Garden of Forking
Boo, Beyond the Beautiful Forevers
Carson, Silent Spring, Chapter 1
Kozol, Savage Inequalities
Paths”
Greely, Anatomy of a Face
McKibbon, “New Math”
O’Brien, “On The Rainy River”
Shakespeare, Hamlet
Douglass, Narrative of the Life of
Swift, Gulliver's Travels
Erdrich, “The Red Convertible”
Browning, "My Last Duchess"
Frederick Douglass
Brooks, A Bronzeville Mother
Hayden, “[American Journal]”
Coleridge. "Rime of the Ancient
Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile,
Kafka, The Trial
Mariner"
a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon
7Interviews
with Acuna, Salerno, Schmidt, Hoellen, Page, and/or Rogers
8http://www.justiceharvard.org/2011/03/episode-01/#watch
9
Includes herePlessy v. Ferguson (including Harlan’s dissent)and Brown v. Board of Education
From his book Parting the Waters
10
Dante, " Inferno"
NYS Grades 9-12 Text Selections
These modules include authentic reading materials. Authentic reading materials include published works that are typically encountered by students in daily life,
such as in magazines, books or newspapers. The use of authentic reading material may mean that some material is emotionally charged or may use language
outside of a student's particular cultural experience.
As always, curriculum decisions are made at the local level.
Grade 12
Module 1
Module 2
Module 3
Module 4
Shelley, Frankenstein
Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an
Shakespeare, Much Ado About
Wallace, This is Water
Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Angry God”
Nothing
Walker, “Everyday Use”
Nest
Larkin, “Church Going”
Bradstreet, “To My Dear and Loving
Morrison, Nobel Prize Lecture
Shakespeare, Richard III
Collins, “Questions about Angels”
Husband”
Thoreau, “Where I Lived, & What I
Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter 15
DeGrasse Tyson, "The Perimeter of
Shakespeare, Sonnet 138
Lived For”16
Sun Tsu, The Art of War, Chapter 3
Ignorance"
Halberstam, Fifties, Chapters 21 &39
Dillard, “Living Like Weasels”
Diamond, “Collision at Cajamarca”11
Salzman, Lying Awake
Proulx, “Brokeback Mountain”
Jewett, “A White Heron”
Great Conversation Documents:
Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
1 Corinthians 13
Joyce, “The Dead”
Revolutionary Era12
King, “I Have a Dream”
Carver, “What We Talk About When
Whitman, “This Compost”
Malcolm X, Autobiography
Lincoln, Second Inaugural
We Talk About Love”
Chesterton, “The Fallacy of Success”
Haidt, “The moral roots of liberals
Book of Ruth
Cheever, “Goodbye, My Brother”
Hitchcock, Rear Window
and conservatives”13
Qur’an, Sura 37 (As-Saaffat): 83-112
Diaz, “The Three Heartbreaks of
McCann, Let The Great World Spin
Tolan, “The Lemon Tree”14
Clough, “The Latest Decalogue”
Belicia Cabral”15
McEwan, Atonement
Fitzgerald, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”
Haught, “God Says Yes To Me”
Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
Dennis, “The God Who Loves You”
Plath, “Lady Lazarus”
Arnold, “Dover Beach”
Ackerman, A Natural History of Love
Chaucer, "The Canterbury Tales"
Shakespeare, King Lear
Aeschylus, Oresteia
Osbourne, “What If God Was One of
Duras, “The Atlantic Man”
Us”
Dacey, “Jill, Afterwards”
11
From his Guns, Germs, and Steel
Includes the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights
13http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html
14http://www.homelands.org/inc/player.php?track=the_lemon_tree.mp3&tracktitle=The%20Lemon%20Tree
15 From his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
16
Chapter 2 of Walden
12
NYS Grades 9-12 Text Selections
These modules include authentic reading materials. Authentic reading materials include published works that are typically encountered by students in daily life,
such as in magazines, books or newspapers. The use of authentic reading material may mean that some material is emotionally charged or may use language
outside of a student's particular cultural experience.
As always, curriculum decisions are made at the local level.
Shange, "For Colored Girls Who Have
Considered Suicide When the
Rainbow Is Enuf"