"My students' writing is so much more inspired than ever before."
"I've been teaching for 13 years, and this curriculum has reignited my excitement about literature."
"Talk about authentic writing tasks with an audience that matters!"
Comprehensive 6-12 ELA Curriculum
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PCG's Paths to College and Career curriculum, also known as the EngageNY curriculum, provides educators with lesson-by-lesson guidance to implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for grades 6–12 English Language Arts. The curriculum is designed to flex in response to the realities of each classroom and school. Adaptation is an expectation. The curriculum empowers educators and school leaders to use and adapt the instructional resources to best support their students. It includes options for teachers to adjust pacing and adapt content to address student needs.
PCG's Paths to College and Career curriculum is available in two formats:
Click on any of the buttons below to read more about the modules in each grade level. |
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To see the curriculum in action or to learn more about how the curriculum is designed, go to our Videos page.
FREE OR PURCHASE: WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?
PCG's Paths to College and Career 6-12 ELA curriculum is available for free digital download from the EngageNY website and for purchase in bound hard copy from Jossey-Bass. The differences between the two are outlined below.
WHAT REVIEWERS ARE SAYING
Achieve/EQuIP (Reviewed January 2015)
In an effort to identify high-quality common core-aligned curriculum, Achieve established the EQuIP (Educators Evaluating the Quality of Instructional Products) rubric. EQuIP's Peer Review Panel reviewed lessons from PCG's grade 7, 8, and 11 modules. They all achieved Exemplar status. Click below to see the full reviews.
Washington State (Reviewed Spring of 2014)
The Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) compiled reviews of numerous common core-aligned curricular resources, including several units from PCG Education's curriculum. PCG Education's curriculum achieved some of the highest marks possible on both the EQUiP rubric and Achieve Open Education Resource (OER) rubrics. Click on the links below to see full reviews of select units within the curriculum.
In an effort to identify high-quality common core-aligned curriculum, Achieve established the EQuIP (Educators Evaluating the Quality of Instructional Products) rubric. EQuIP's Peer Review Panel reviewed lessons from PCG's grade 7, 8, and 11 modules. They all achieved Exemplar status. Click below to see the full reviews.
- Module 7.1: Journeys and Survival (A Long Walk to Water (Park))
- Module 8.1: Finding Home: Refugees
- Unit 11.4.1: "On the Rainy River" (O'Brien) and "Red Convertible" (Erdrich)
- Module 7.1: "This unit, as exemplified by the single lesson, is well-designed, coherent, and engaging. It clearly aligns to the CCSS and demonstrates the key shifts by having students read different types of text and read, write, and speak in the course of the lesson and unit. It would be easy to use by virtually anyone and pays special attention to using best practices in assessment and supporting the needs of diverse learners"
- Module 8.1: "There are a lot of strengths within this unit: organization and ease of use; the intentionality in the planning; specificity of the lessons; alignment to the CCSS."
- Unit 11.4.1 "The unit does an excellent job of cultivating student interest and engagement in reading, writing, and speaking about texts. Students are given the opportunity to formulate their thoughts and gather evidence before discussing the texts in class (e.g., homework assignments, independent work in class before discussions)."
Washington State (Reviewed Spring of 2014)
The Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) compiled reviews of numerous common core-aligned curricular resources, including several units from PCG Education's curriculum. PCG Education's curriculum achieved some of the highest marks possible on both the EQUiP rubric and Achieve Open Education Resource (OER) rubrics. Click on the links below to see full reviews of select units within the curriculum.
- Unit 6.1.1: Percy Jackson and the Hero's Journey
- Unit 7.4.1: Development of the Adolescent Brain
- Unit 8.1.1: War Coming Close to Home
- Unit 9.1.2: Letters to a Young Poet (Rilke); Black Swan Green (Mitchell)
- Unit 9.1.3: Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare)
- Unit 6.1.1: "This unit with the units that follow could easily be used by new and veteran teachers alike. This would be a great cross-curricular unit with a study of Greek and Roman Mythology in Social Studies. There is strong alignment with the standards and emphasis on close reading strategies. Each of the lessons instruct about or reinforce close reading and citing textual evidence to support claims throughout the unit."
- Unit 7.4.1: "The unit has a large amount of resources that students will find engaging. The links to articles, interactive web graphics, pictures, etc. are all current, relevant, and engaging for students. The unit provides graphic organizers and quality text-dependent questions and the sources pages at the end of each lesson PDF include the student and teacher versions of some thought-provoking and depth of knowledge activities."
- Unit 8.1.1: "This resource is so well developed that even inexperienced teachers could use it well. It provides substantial support throughout that any teacher could implement easily. Beautiful work! Unit is tightly aligned with standards and clearly addressed shifts throughout. Content is engaging and compelling, which helps middle school students grapple with complex texts. Work encourages meaningful, collegial discourse."
- Unit 9.1.2: "Wow! This is an ideal start-of-the-year unit for teaching students how to analyze and annotate texts, close reading strategies and text-dependent questions. The 'turn-and-talks' and 'shout outs' allow for whole classroom participation, and yet the 'quick writes' and 'informal writes' help the teacher assess individual student mastery. The juxtaposition of the two texts and the fact that one is literary and the other informational makes this unit that much more exciting. For a new teacher, this would make for a great beginning unit for LA 9; for a veteran teacher, it would be a B-12 shot to revitalize instruction"
- Unit 9.1.3: "Because of the richness of this unit in activities, film, discussions, and writing, this unit would be well suited to replace a less active in vitality or breadth of the textbook. The teacher has a great deal of help in this unit."
WHAT TEACHERS ARE SAYING
The following quotes are from actual comments PCG Education has received from teachers who are using PCG's Paths to College and Career 6-12 ELA Common Core curriculum.
- "No longer is the research and thinking teacher-led; instead the inquiry approach builds independence for students as their thinking guides them in forming their own paths... I have taken many of the protocols and strategies featured in this module [10.3] and also used them to transform the research project for my AP Literature students. No longer do I dread teaching research; now I look forward to the surprises it will bring."
- "My students' writing is so much more inspired than ever before."
- "Talk about authentic writing tasks with an audience that matters! "
- "A 10th grade teacher approached me at the beginning of the year to thank me for the writing abilities of her new 10th graders. She had never seen writing of that caliber from high school students, ever."
- "The choice of texts support my ongoing struggle with (former) colleagues that rigorous texts are accessible and necessary for all students to study, with appropriate and rich scaffolding."
- "Overall, the modules as a whole, in my opinion, are wonderful. I believe that they get to the heart of true literary and text analysis. "
- "Having a research process laid out this way, in advance, gives me the confidence that I can step back and trust the process, and trust the kids to trust the process.”
