text set overview
Audience
11th grade students
anchor text
enduring understandings
- The American Dream represents a social, economic, and literary ideal suggesting that success and happiness can be attained by anyone through dedication, persistence, and hard work.
- The presence of the American Dream today is diverse, multi-faceted, and paradoxical.
formats
fiction novel, non fiction essays and articles, poetry, audio interviews, non fiction news video, website
texts
The american dreamThis nonfiction text from Gale Student Resources in Context provides background information on the concept and origins of the American Dream. Classified by Gale as a Basic level text at 1100L-1200L, the text also makes connections to current events and statistics.
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American Dream Faces Harsh New RealityIn this non-fiction article from 2012, three years after the economic recession, Ari Shapiro of NPR's Morning Edition interviews Americans about their feelings regarding the American Dream. 1070L
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The mix: the sound of your american dreamFrom the summer of 2012, this NPR Special Series explores the state of the American Dream today through music. On the following playlist, links to audio essays by writers describe the sound of their American Dream.
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I Hear america singingPublished in Walt Whitman's 1860 edition of his epic collection Leaves of Grass, the poem speaks to the theme of American pride. It falls in the 7th-8th grade level band.
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HarlemWritten in 1951, by Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, the poem questions, "What happens to a dream deferred?" It falls in the 7th-8th grade level band.
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americaClaude McKay was a Jamaican-American novelist and poet of the Harlem Renaissance. The sonnet's speaker shares her feelings about America. It falls in the 9th-10th grade level band.
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Melted away - the
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IN CLEVELAND THE AMERICAN DREAM MELTS AWAYIn this video feature from the New Yorker, passersby speak of what the American Dream means to them in front of a four-thousand-pound ice sculpture, spelling out The American Dream.
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time lapse video: the american dream project
Curated by Kimberly Tahsuda Nelson