Kittle Cohort Unit Projection
Genre/What are students MAKING?
A literary criticism (gender criticism) essay
Standards
RL.11-12.1-3
RL.11-12.5-6
RL.11-12.10
W.11-12.1
Unit Summary
The students will read the play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell. We will study feminist criticism through research and
then apply that lens to the play. The students will create a claim and then support it with evidence from the text.
Long Term Targets
Students will learn how to read for a specific purpose and use a criticism “lens” to find evidence for support of an
idea.
I can read a text with a specific purpose in mind.
I can write a claim.
I can find evidence that supports my claim.
I can make inferences about the text.
I can connect my inferences to the essential questions of gender criticism.
Essential Questions
What is gender criticism?
How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?
How are male and female roles defined?
How do characters embody these traits?
Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this change others’ reactions to them?
What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically) of
patriarchy?
What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy?
Teacher Goals/Shifts
I will do multiple writing conferences with every student, and we will use mentor texts to unpack the craft of literary
criticism.
Dates
Teaching Points
Weekly/Daily Learning Targets
See above
Mentor Texts/Additional
Resources
Gender Criticism on Emily Dickinson’s poem #280
Late April into early May
http://parkrose.orvsd.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=8880
Formative Assessment
Options
Give students the poem “Her Kind”
by Anne Sexton and practice writing a
gender criticism paragraph.