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English 9 · Unit 01 · Week 03 · Day 14 of 15

Synthesis: Build a New Understanding

Use both original texts to develop your own new conclusion, distinguishing paraphrase from quotation and attributing ideas.

Checking learner records…

Connect & Build · Prior Learning

Week 1 · Careful rereading; Week 2 · Integrated quotations, precise reasoning, and revision.

1 · Recall

Retrieve your Week 2 quotation-integration checklist: introduce, cite or attribute, and explain. Recall one example of a sentence that became clearer after revision.

2 · Apply

Read Text A and Text B separately, then connect a detail from A to an attributed idea from B. Show whether the relationship reinforces, qualifies, or complicates your claim.

3 · Reflect

Which part of your conclusion is new because you considered both texts? Revise one sentence to make that relationship more precise.

Revisit: Week 2 · Integrate Evidence · Week 2 · Precision Revision

Bring forward a skill, not a memorized answer. Use your writing studio below to preserve the original thinking you produce.

Day 4 · Original short-short story

Three Descriptions

One report called the square crowded; another called it lively; a third counted thirty stalls. The writer realized that the count was an observation, while the other words expressed perspectives that needed context.

Evidence question: Distinguish descriptive tone from measurable evidence.

Identify two supporting details and save a response in your existing lesson portfolio.

Day 14SynthesisRI.9-10.1W.9-10.9

Synthesis: Build a New Understanding

Today’s Question: How is synthesis different from simply putting two summaries next to each other?

Learning Target

I can combine ideas from a literary text and an informational text to form a new conclusion that is supported by both.

Launch · Summary or Synthesis?

Summary: Text A shows Jonah exchanging notes with another reader. Text B explains that disagreement can improve thinking.

Synthesis: Together, the texts suggest that disagreement becomes intellectually useful when a person replaces the urge to win with a willingness to ask for evidence while still taking responsibility for a final judgment.

The synthesis says something new about the relationship between the sources.

I Do · The Synthesis Bridge
  1. What does Source A contribute?
  2. What does Source B contribute?
  3. Where do they reinforce, complicate, or qualify one another?
  4. What conclusion can I draw because I considered them together?
We Do

Complete a two-source note: one idea from Text A, one idea from Text B, and one relationship word: reinforces, complicates, qualifies, extends, contrasts. Turn that relationship into one synthesis sentence.

You Do

Write a 250–350 word synthesis response to this question: What do Text A and Text B together suggest about the relationship between disagreement and intellectual responsibility? Use evidence from both texts and explain the relationship between them.

Academic Integrity Lab · Paraphrase, Summary & Attribution

Paraphrase restates a specific idea in genuinely new wording and structure. Summary compresses a larger section to its central idea. Attribution makes the source of an idea visible. Copying distinctive wording while changing only a few words is patchwriting, not responsible paraphrase.

Practice: paraphrase one sentence from Text B without looking at it while drafting. Then compare your version to the original and revise any borrowed structure or distinctive wording. Attribute the idea: Text B argues that…

Required source texts · A and B

Original Course Text · Used Days 11–14

Text A · The Note in the Window Seat

Jonah chose the same library seat every lunch period because the window beside it made the fluorescent lights easier to ignore. On Monday, a paperback novel was already there. A square of notebook paper stuck out from the final chapter. In careful blue ink someone had written, “I think the ending is wrong.”

Jonah had read the book twice. He did not think the ending was wrong. He turned the note over and wrote, “It makes perfect sense if you paid attention to the brother.” Then he stared at the sentence until the words felt louder than he intended. He crossed them out.

Under the black line, he wrote a different question: “Which part makes you think that?” He left the note in the book and returned it to the same place on the shelf.

On Tuesday the book was back on the window seat. Three page numbers appeared beneath his question. Jonah opened to the first. Then the second. At the third, he paused over a sentence he remembered but had never connected to the ending. He still disagreed with the note’s first claim, but now his disagreement had become harder to explain in one sentence.

Before lunch ended, Jonah added two page numbers of his own. Beneath them he wrote, “I still read it differently. I see why you don’t.” He closed the book, but instead of shelving it, he left it on the window seat.

Original Informational Text · Used Day 14

Text B · What Disagreement Can Do

Disagreement is often treated as a sign that thinking has failed. In serious inquiry, disagreement can do the opposite. A competing explanation forces a claim to reveal what supports it, what it assumes, and what evidence could change it.

This works only when the purpose of disagreement is examination rather than victory. If a reader listens only long enough to prepare a reply, the other interpretation becomes a target instead of information. Productive disagreement requires a person to represent another view accurately before criticizing it.

A strong thinker is therefore not someone who changes position every time another person objects. Nor is a strong thinker someone who refuses to change. The important question is whether the change—or the refusal to change—can be explained by evidence and reasoning.

In this sense, intellectual independence does not mean thinking alone. It means remaining responsible for your own judgment even while allowing other people’s questions, evidence, and interpretations to test it.

Two-Source Reasoning Check

Five formative questions. Four correct answers meet practice readiness, not written mastery.

Two-Source Synthesis Bridge

Compose the intellectual work yourself. Preview before choosing whether to append to the original lesson response.

Day 14 Evidence