Course Description
Mr. Norton's 7th-grade Language Arts class includes a unique blend of contemporary and classic literature that combines rigorous reading and writing routines to instruct students toward mastery dynamically. Students will actively think, write, and communicate their thoughts about the themes related to the literary selections. The unit themes examine the following, sequential, essential questions: When do differences become conflicts? What makes a dream worth pursuing? How can one event change everything? What do we learn from love and loss? Why do we still read myths and folktales? How do we stand out from a crowd?
Habits of Scholarship
In Mr. Norton's 7th-grade 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 collaboration are essential for success in school and in life. To support the development of these skills, Mr. Norton evaluates the following habits of scholarship regularly (The associated scoring rubric for habits of scholarship can be found in Infinite Campus):
Perseverance
All students can choose to put forth effort towards learning despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.
Responsibility
All students can choose to be prepared for learning and bring the required materials to class.*
Collaboration
All students can choose to participate by asking questions or making comments during class.†
*Students are expected to bring a planner and a charged, working device to class on a daily basis.
†Students are expected to actively engage in their learning by asking questions and participating in classroom discussions on a weekly basis.
Curriculum Program
Mr. Norton utilizes StudySync, a complete ELA curriculum designed to meet the rigorous academic needs of today’s classroom. StudySync is designed to engage every student, because every student deserves the same opportunity and access in the classroom, regardless of his or her native language, learning level, or physical, social, and emotional ability. To view the complete scope and sequence of the curriculum program, select this link.
Academic Content
Reading
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. Close Reading is the cornerstone of StudySync’s instructional approach. The practice employs Science of Reading-based strategies throughout that help guide students as they engage in the process of analytical reading.
Skills Lessons
StudySync provides a data-driven assessment suite that helps gauge progress and inform instruction as students prepare for high-stakes testing. Self, peer, and teacher evaluations are embedded in every unit lesson to provide teachers with a wide variety of short and longer-cycle formative assessment options. Common district-wide, end-of-unit summative assessments combine progress monitoring tools and targeted lessons for re-teaching and remediation to meet the needs of all learners.
Grading Practices
All teachers at Cresthill Middle School utilize standards-based reporting practices. Instead of the all-or-nothing, percentages-and-letter-grades system, a standards-based approach considers evidence of learning and the data it produces. In traditional grading, students are primarily measured by the percentage of work completed. The assumption is that higher completion rates reflect greater mastery, and earn higher grades (e.g. 90% achieves an A, 80% a B, etc.). Standards-based grading is very different because it is based on demonstration of content mastery. You can find out more about Cresthill Middle School grading practices by selecting this link.
Infinite Campus is the application that Mr. Norton uses to communicate information regarding a student’s academic achievement and engagement. Students and parents can utilize this application to monitor scores, missing coursework, and in-progress letter grades, too. The specific, associated scoring rubrics for habits of scholarship, paragraph assessments, reading assessments, vocabulary assessments, and essay assessments can be found in Infinite Campus.
Advanced Language Arts Class
Students in Mr. Norton's 7th-grade Advanced Language Arts class will experience a different pace, depth, and complexity of instruction. Students will read additional texts to help them develop fluency and comprehension, deepen their knowledge of literary genres, and rethink events and issues that impact everyone. This is a rigorous class requiring students to think analytically while expressing ideas clearly and the material presented will challenge students to a higher level of thinking. The critical thinking tools employed in this class help students dig deeper into a concept and understand that concept with greater complexity.
Contact Information
Robert Norton, MA Ed.
English Teacher
Cresthill Middle School
rnorton@dcsdk12.org