Student Focused. Regents Ready.

A classroom-ready novel with an Educator’s Guide aligned to the New York State Next Generation ELA Learning Standards for grades 9–10, with activities and assessments that develop the close reading, textual analysis, evidence-based writing, and text-to-text comparison skills students need for the NYS ELA Regents.

Aligned with the New York State Next Generation ELA Learning Standards for Grades 9–10, with opportunities to develop the skills students use on the NYS ELA Regents:

• Close Reading & Textual Evidence 
• Inference & Analysis 
• Theme & Central Ideas 
• Character Development 
• Structure & Point of View 
• Text-to-Text Connections 
• Evidence-Based Argument Writing 
• Informative/Explanatory Writing 
• Research & Academic Vocabulary 
• Collaborative Discussion & Presentation

The Valedictorian: An Origin Story Educator’s Guide is designed to support teachers, department chairs, curriculum leaders, librarians, and school administrators considering the novel for classroom or institutional use.

The downloadable guide serves three purposes: it gives teachers a ready-to-teach unit, provides departments with standards-alignment and curriculum evidence, and gives librarians the information needed for collection development, advisory, and content review.

The guide is also designed to be used selectively. Teachers do not need to use every section to build an effective unit.