7th Grade
Curriculum
An Overview
Students dive deeply into classic literature. In doing so we learn to describe and connect essential ideas, arguments, and perspectives in the literature of world cultures from the medieval to the early modern era.
Students will read 5 Classic Novels together in class and 4 novels outside of class. The independent novels are chosen by the students but are linked by a commonality - theme, genre, or period of history.
We will be exploring text that coincides with our units in Social Studies including Medieval Europe and the Middle East, West Africa, Imperial China & Japan, The Americas, The Renaissance, the Age of Exploration, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment. Titles may vary from year to year but each novel is notable, award-winning, and worth its salt. They stand up to the test of time and in doing so become a Socratic Exploration, the premise of each activity being:
If you are answering questions - that is an assignment
If you are questioning answers - that is literature.
Literature is a deep dive - asking questions that do not have simple answers. The canned response of searching for "the right answer" or what the teacher thinks is not authentic learning.
Written Response: All essays are written in Google Docs and submitted on the appropriate classroom page unless otherwise noted by Mrs. Mancini
A written response must include an MCS formal 5-part heading
MLA citations are required
Acceptable format is double-spaced, 12 pt font, and Arial, Georgia, or Times New Roman Font.
Submission should be via google classroom using Docs, or blue or black pen
Speaking/Listening: Students will have multiple opportunities to deliver information as a team as well as independently. Active participation in Socratic Seminar, drawing inferences, and making logical correlations will be integrated into all oral presentations. We will focus our active class participation using shared inquiry as we read with care and perception, and take part intelligently in discussion of literature.
Shared InQuiry Method and Authentic Response:
Reading Classic Literature requires a working knowledge of universally understood literary terms: character, plot, foreshadowing, conflict, denouement, hubris, protagonist, theme, climax, tragic flaw, mood, tone, and a classic vocabulary using our Latin and Greek roots. These are the tools of the trade but there is so much more. Each novel is unique and we must respond to it individually with an authentic response because the deepest scholarship is the most human scholarship.
The REader's Non-Taxonomy
Literature is not simply terms and devices - it is a social/emotional experience. It is a balance of process and content.
In order to address this balance we are using a list of thinking/feeling skills created by Michael Clay Thompson who was influenced by Barbara Clark's research on developing student potential and then synthesized with Bloom's Taxonomy of human cognition:
Memory: Recall
Cognition: Comprehension
Reason: Avoiding logical errors
Synthesis: Combining or connecting ideas
Divergence: Thinking of alternatives
Convergence: Choosing one idea
Evaluation: Deciding value by criteria
Ethics: Deciding moral value
Analysis: Studying components
Application: Using ideas
Intuition: Ideas from the blue
Imagination: Seeing mental images
Emotion: Feelings
Aesthetics: Artistic/sensory feelings
Dissassumption: Escaping false assumptions
Teaching students to use these cognitive processes we are able to dive deeper into literature and students become stronger critical thinkers.