The Common Core State Standards mean major changes for language arts teachers, particularly the emphasis on “informational text.” How do we shift attention toward informational texts without taking away from the teaching of literature? The key is informational texts deeply connected to the literary texts you are teaching. Preparing informational texts for classroom use, however, requires time and effort. Using Informational Text to Teach Literature is designed to help. In this second volume (the first volume is on To Kill a Mockingbird), we offer informational texts connected to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. Readings range in genre (commencement address, historical and cultural analysis, government report, socioeconomic research study, and Supreme Court decision) and topic (housing discrimination past and present, abortion, the racial and cultural politics of hair, socioeconomic mobility and inequality, the violence associated with housing desegregation, and the struggle against the legacy of systemic racism). Each informational text is part of a student-friendly unit, with reading strategies and vocabulary, writing, and discussion activities. Teachers need to incorporate nonfiction in ways that enhance their teaching of literature. The Using Informational Text to Teach Literature series is an invaluable supportive tool.

Set in 1950s Chicago, 'A Raisin in the Sun' is a classic play about a black family's struggle for equality, and the first play written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway.

The Common Core State Standards initiated major changes for language arts teachers, particularly the emphasis on “informational text.” Language arts teachers were asked to shift attention toward informational texts without taking away from the teaching of literature. Teachers, however, need to incorporate nonfiction in ways that enhance rather than take away from their teaching of literature. The Using Informational Text series is designed to help. In this fourth volume (Volume 1: Using Informational Text to Teach To Kill a Mockingbird; Volume 2: Using Informational Text to Teach A Raisin in the Sun; Volume 3: Connecting Across Disciplines: Collaborating with Informational Text), we offer challenging and engaging readings to enhance your teaching of Gatsby. Texts from a wide range of genres (a TED Talk, federal legislation, economic policy material, newspaper articles, and 1920s political writing) and on a variety of topics (income inequality, nativism and immigration, anti-Semitism, the relationship between wealth and cheating, the Black Sox scandal and newspaper coverage, and prohibition) help students answer essential questions about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel. Each informational text is part of a student-friendly unit, with media links, reading strategies, vocabulary, discussion, and writing activities, and out-of-the-box class activities.

"Never before, in the entire history of the American theater, has so much of the truth of Black people's lives been seen on the stage," observed James Baldwin shortly before A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959. This edition presents the fully restored, uncut version of Hansberry's landmark work with an introduction by Robert Nemiroff. Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of Black America—and changed American theater forever. The play's title comes from a line in Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem," which warns that a dream deferred might "dry up/like a raisin in the sun." "The events of every passing year add resonance to A Raisin in the Sun," said The New York Times. "It is as if history is conspiring to make the play a classic."

This volume offers a practical model that teachers in any discipline can use to incorporate informational texts into their classrooms on their own or in collaboration with colleagues in other content areas. We also share suggestions and ideas for initiating and implementing collaboration between teachers of any discipline, even those working at the secondary level with complex schedules and curricula.

Timely, thoughtful, and comprehensive, this text directly supports pre-service and in-service teachers in developing curriculum and instruction that both addresses and exceeds the requirements of the Common Core State Standards. Adopting a critical inquiry approach, it demonstrates how the Standards’ highest and best intentions for student success can be implemented from a critical, culturally relevant perspective firmly grounded in current literacy learning theory and research. It provides specific examples of teachers using the critical inquiry curriculum framework of identifying problems and issues, adopting alternative perspectives, and entertaining change in their classrooms to illustrate how the Standards can not only be addressed but also surpassed through engaging instruction. The Second Edition provides new material on adopting a critical inquiry approach to enhance student engagement and critical thinking planning instruction to effectively implement the CCSS in the classroom fostering critical response to literary and informational texts using YA literature and literature by authors of color integrating drama activities into literature and speaking/listening instruction teaching informational, explanatory, argumentative, and narrative writing working with ELL students to address the language Standards using digital tools and apps to respond to and create digital texts employing formative assessment to provide supportive feedback preparing students for the PARCC and Smarter Balanced assessments using the book’s wiki site http://englishccss.pbworks.com for further resources