English 7 Honors

The English 7 Honors curriculum is aligned with current New York State English Language Arts standards. Throughout the year, students will work toward skill acquisition with a balanced approach of targeted instruction in reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language. For reading instruction, students will read whole- class mentor texts and small-group book club texts within various genres to build a repertoire of reading skills, such as identifying and analyzing the effect of a setting’s pressures and limitations, analyzing character development, synthesizing evidence to analyze character development and change, etc. Writing units are paired with reading units to reinforce previous skills and build new ones. Students will continue strengthening their understanding of the connection between reading and writing by crafting their own explanatory, comparison, and research-focused essays with specific language use to achieve each writing purpose. Students will continue to reinforce reading and writing skills through the development of their speaking and listening skills, with whole-class, formal public speaking/listening opportunities and small-group, informal speaking/listening activities, including speeches, socratic seminar, presentations, and book club discussions, to name a few. The students’ language development is further supported beyond these experiences with vocabulary instruction in the context of their reading and with use of a vocabulary workbook, as well as direct instruction in grammar and language use, which is reinforced through reading and writing activities.

Prerequisite: Departmental approval and Vertical English Honors Program entrance criteria.

Major Exams: Summer Reading Assessment, Midterm Exam, NYS Assessment, Final Exam (Research Paper)