English Year 7
Dear Parents and Students,
Ms. Michelle and Ms. Reem welcome you to the 2024-2025 academic year. We understand that the students’ transition from Primary to Secondary can be both a scary and exciting time, but we truly believe with your dedication, commitment and hard work we will undoubtedly provide a high quality blended learning environment and look forward to a wonderful and successful year.
The Year 7 students are following the Year 7 Cambridge Curriculum English focusing on a number of skills that are distributed through Term 1, Term 2 and Term 3. Throughout Term 1, students will be given many opportunities to demonstrate their understanding of the skills delivered via both short informal assessments, projects and formal assessments.
Success in this class is based on many aspects; the most important are a student's attendance, participation in class and following up at home. When the student is confused, please make sure you ask questions during or after a lesson via email.
Finally, kindly note that the best way to know what is happening in our English classes is to check our Year 7 English Google site or the Google classroom. For further questions or if you would like to make an appointment with your son's/daughter's teacher, please contact the Secondary school secretary to make a telephone appointment.
Thank you and we wish you the best of luck for the academic year ahead.
From all of us at Year 7 Team English.
Ms. Michelle, Ms. Reem, and Ms. Kawthar (Head of English).
Resources
Cambridge Checkpoint Stage 7 (coursebook is online and workbook is a hard copy given to students)
Holes (Louis Sachar) Class Novel
Class readers
Cambridge Secondary 1 English enables learners to communicate confidently and effectively and to develop the skills to respond to a range of information, media and texts with understanding and enjoyment. Learners who follow this framework will develop a first language competency in English based on a curriculum designed to be successful in any culture and to promote cross-cultural understanding.
The Cambridge Secondary 1 English Curriculum Framework is presented in four main content areas.
1) Reading
2) Writing
3) Speaking
4) Listening
Cambridge Lower Secondary Progression Tests
Cambridge Lower Secondary Progression Tests provide a valuable and valid internal assessment of knowledge, skills and understanding. They enable learning to be assessed each year and provide detailed information about the performance of each learner for stages 7, 8 and 9.
The results enable teachers to give structured feedback to learners and compare the strengths and weaknesses of individuals and groups, which then allows more prescribed planning for each teaching group to ensure knowledge gaps are filled.
The tests are marked internally, but the mark scheme is directly from Cambridge, and allowed standardization with cohorts from all Cambridge schools.
Expectations
Be on time and prepared with everything you need (a note book from home, stationery, a fully charged device such as a tablet or laptop ).
Have respect for yourself, others around you and the environment.
Be responsible and accountable for any work due such as homework, projects and assignments (if there is a problem, inform us in advance).
Read and practise your English skills on a daily basis, noting what your opinion in your own personal reading blog.
Ask for help and support when needed.
Pay attention, participate and give your best effort.
Term 1: Focus for the Week
Week 1 :
Classroom expectations
Setting the rules
General pastoral policies
Week 2:
Introduce a novel, its key features, and its main elements.
Week 3 :
Introduction to "Holes"
Author preview
Exploring literary devices
Week 4:
Introduce annotation techniques
Read and analyze the initial chapters of the novel.
Conduct activities to explore ideas and to answer some comprehension questions.
Week 5
Read and analyze some chapters of the novel.
Engage students with fun activities to explore new vocabulary words.
Create character sketch and write descriptive paragraphs.
Introduce students to compound sentences.
Week 6
Introduce students to advertisements.
Introduce students to the literary term "foreshadowing".
Read and analyze some chapters of the novel.
Engage students with fun activities to explore new vocabulary words and to answer comprehension questions.
Students write a character Sketch based on the novel "Holes"
Week 7
Read and analyze some chapters of the novel.
Engage students with fun activities to explore new vocabulary words and to answer comprehension questions.
Students write their own advertisements.
Students write letters using proper letter format.
Students answer questions using PEE format.
Week 8
Read and analyze some chapters of the novel.
Engage students with fun activities to explore new vocabulary words and to answer comprehension questions.
Introduce students to the structure of formal letters.
Students write formal letters.
Week 9
Read and analyze some chapters of the novel.
Engage students with fun activities to explore new vocabulary words and to answer comprehension questions.
Students answer questions using PEE format.
Students write a first draft of their own recipes.
Week 10
Read and analyze some chapters of the novel.
Engage students with fun activities to explore new vocabulary words and to answer comprehension questions.
Students write a second draft of their own recipes.
Students present their recipes.
Week 11
Read and analyze some chapters of the novel.
Students work on stations to analyze characters, plot, and themes.
Introduce students to simple, compound, complex sentences.
Week 12
Read and analyze some chapters of the novel.
Students infer and deduce to recognize and explain implicit meanings.
Introduce students to encyclopedias.
Term 2: Focus for the Week
Week 1
Read and analyze some chapters of the novel.
Students answer some comprehension questions.
Students infer and deduce to recognize and explain implicit meanings
Introduce students to dialogues and their structure.
Students analyze and compare how information is presented in a documentary versus a poem.
Week 2
Students read the final two chapters of the novel.
Students work on stations to redesign the cover page of the book, make predictions, and write a letter to one of the characters.