Prairie River Academy

English Language Arts

Grade 11Unit 1Lesson 2

Ideas in American letters

Identify Productive Tensions

Today: Analyze how an American argument holds competing ideals in tension.

A

Begin

Warm-up

  1. 1.Name the first value.

  2. 2.Name the countervalue.

B

Learn

Identify Productive Tensions

Public writing often gains force from tensions—liberty and order, individual conscience and communal obligation, opportunity and inequality.

Name each value accurately, locate language supporting both, and resist resolving the tension before the writer does.

Study the model

Value A ↔ value B → writer's proposed relation

C

Read

Original PRA passage

Conscience must remain free, yet freedom that refuses every duty soon asks others to bear its cost.
ELA-11-01-02-01Original Prairie River Academy curriculumELA-11-01-02-01

Prairie River Academy

Identify Productive Tensions

Grade 11Practice and apply
D

Practice

Read, think, and respond

  1. 1.What concession appears? ELA-11-01-02-Q1

  2. 2.What warning follows? ELA-11-01-02-Q2

  3. 3.Does the sentence reject freedom? ELA-11-01-02-Q3

  4. 4.State the tension neutrally. ELA-11-01-02-Q4

E

Apply

Use the lesson

Write a thesis explaining how the sentence relates liberty and duty.

ELA-11-01-02-02Original Prairie River Academy curriculumELA-11-01-02-02