Mr. Norton's 7th-grade English Language Arts class includes a unique blend of contemporary and classic literature that combines rigorous reading and writing routines to instruct students toward mastery. In this class, students actively think, write, and communicate their thoughts about the themes related to the literary selections. Here is an overview of each unit's genre and the associated essential question:
When do differences become conflicts?
What do we learn from love and loss?
What makes a dream worth pursuing?
How can one event change everything?
Why do we still read myths and folktales?
How do we stand out from a crowd?
In Mr. Norton's 7th-grade English Language Arts class, students’ character development is equally important as developing vocabulary knowledge and mastering reading and writing skills. Throughout their educational journey, students are working to become effective learners, ethical people, and contributors to a better world. Perseverance, responsibility, and self-advocacy are essential for success in school and life. To support the development of these skills, Mr. Norton evaluates the following habits of scholarship regularly (The associated scoring rubric can be found in Infinite Campus):
All students can choose to put forth effort towards learning despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.
All students can choose to be prepared for learning and bring the required materials to class.*
All students can speak up for themselves and effectively communicate their needs.
*Students are expected to bring their school planner, and a charged, working device to class daily.
Mr. Norton utilizes StudySync, a complete ELA curriculum designed to meet the rigorous academic needs of today’s classroom. This ELA curriculum is designed to engage every student because every student deserves the same opportunity and access in the classroom, regardless of their native language, learning level, or physical, social, and emotional ability.
StudySync provides an unparalleled selection of culturally diverse literature and nonfiction texts, ensuring students see themselves in the literature they’re reading, as well as learn about others. Not only will students be excited to read, but these high-interest contemporary works serve as access points into more complex, canonical texts. At the foundation of the instruction is high-quality, complex text and the practice of close reading. Achieved through repeated reading, annotation, teacher-facilitated, analytical questioning, and discussion, close reading helps students unlock meaning in any complex text. This program uses First Read, Close Read, and Independent Read lessons to support this practice. To learn more about StudySync, select this link.
Students can access the curriculum for Mr. Norton's class via the McGraw Hill application located on their school district Clever dashboard. Coursework can be accessed via the StudySync application. Completed assignments, including writing feedback, can be viewed by going to the “Binder" tab. Scores for the coursework, as well as the associated rubrics, can be found in Infinite Campus.
In addition to the online curriculum, students In addition to the online curriculum, students will read two complete, paperback novels: Touching Spirit Bear and The Outsiders. This novel reading will enhance their empathy and imagination, and improve their focus, concentration, and memory, while reading for a sustained time.
Students in Mr. Norton's 7th-grade Advanced English Language Arts class will experience a different depth and complexity of instruction. This class requires students to think analytically while expressing ideas clearly. The independent novel studies will challenge students to a higher level of thinking and help students build stamina as they dig deeper into the concepts related to the associated unit and understand that concept with greater complexity.
Mr. Norton utilizes a standards-based grading system that assesses students on their mastery of specific learning standards, rather than on points earned for individual assignments. Standards-based grading focuses on what students know and how they are progressing toward their learning goals. This grading method provides students with multiple opportunities to demonstrate success or receive enrichment and builds in time for redos of formative assessments and reassessment of standards. Standards-based grading separately assesses the influence of work habits on student learning. This method of grading helps Mr. Norton better measure student learning, and it can also help parents understand what is expected of students. You can find out more about Cresthill Middle School grading practices by selecting this link.
Robert Norton, MA Ed.
English Teacher
Cresthill Middle School
rnorton@dcsdk12.org