Humanities

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Class overview

7th Grade Course Description

Humanities is a blend of Social Studies and English Language Arts.  In this course we will blend many of the necessary skills of Language Arts in Social Studies and many literary topics from Social Studies to English Language Arts. Our work has meaning and purpose and is standards-based while also being curriculum-rich.  We are in the technological age, and while students need to learn digital proficiency, we also will be working in a traditional pencil-to-paper manner.  The class will be a variety of digital and physical work.  Access to necessary resources will be provided in a digital format, to the degree possible, through the teacher's website or Google Classroom.

Students will examine world cultures and turning points in history from the end of the Roman Empire through the Middle Ages and up to and including the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment. Students will utilize practical applications of the writing process. Planning, instruction, and lessons in this course are based on the California History-Social Science Content Standards and the Common Core State Standards. Themes in 7th Grade History-Social Science include world religions, geography, economics, government, and achievements. Skills emphasized include critical thinking, reading, writing, outlining, note-taking, writing composition, and collaborative learning.

By the end of the year, students will read and comprehend literary nonfiction and literature; including stories, dramas, and poems; in the grades 6–8 text complexity band proficiently.  In their writing, students should demonstrate increasing sophistication in all aspects of language use, from vocabulary and syntax to the development and organization of ideas, and they should address increasingly demanding content and sources.  Students will write arguments, informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic, and narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events.  Students will practice the Listening and Speaking standards through presentations of their ideas, collaborative work, and other various oral formats.  Through all of this, students will regularly practice grammar, spelling, vocabulary development; to use knowledge of language and its conventions when writing, speaking, reading, or listening.