Unit 1 | In Pursuit

Essential Question: Why drives us to undertake a mission?

Is it to pursue a goal regardless of the risks? And is achieving that goal as important as what we learn on the mission to accomplish it?

In this Grade 7 unit, your students will be reading short stories, poetry, memoirs, and several nonfiction narratives to explore the missions some people or characters have pursued to achieve their goals. The first two excerpts in the unit, from Ernesto Galarza’s autobiography Barrio Boy and Farah Ahmedi’s memoir The Other Side of the Sky, draw students into this topic with their remarkable storylines of survival in a new environment. These two excerpts pay testament to the strength of the human spirit against great odds. Other selections in the unit include journeys into the Yukon, into nineteenth-century colonial India, and even into outer space during the perilous Apollo 13 mission. This unit also includes works from some of the world’s best-known modern authors: William Butler Yeats, John Steinbeck, and Maya Angelou--all with one purpose in mind: to discover what drives us to undertake a mission regardless of the risks or human cost.

Novel Study: Call of the Wild

Call of the Wild StudySync Full Novel (Click Here)
Call of the Wild StudySync Student Guide (Click Here)
Call of the Wild | Peterson's Study Guide (Click Here)
Call of the Wild | FlipGrid Response Directions (Click Here)
Call of the Wild | Vocabulary Words (Click Here)
Call of the Wild | Background Knowledge (Click Here)
Themes: Discovery & Exploration, Society & the Individual, Man vs. Nature
About the Author: Jack London (1876—1916) wrote many novels, short stories, poems, and essays in his brief but prolific career. The Klondike Gold Rush was a favorite setting of his, as can be seen in his classic novels The Call of the Wild and White Fang, as well as numerous short stories. He was one of the most famous authors of the early 20th century, and his works have been translated into as many as 70 different languages.

The Call of the Wild is Jack London’s classic 1903 novella about a dog named Buck who is kidnapped from his home in California and shipped north to serve as a sled dog in the Klondike Gold Rush. Over three years, from 1896 to 1899, the real-life Klondike Gold Rush attracted more than a hundred thousand prospectors to the region, all of them seeking their weight in gold. Drawn from London’s own experiences in Alaska during this time, The Call of the Wild traces Buck’s adventures in his harsh and often violent new home. As he adjusts to life in the Klondike under a number of different masters, Buck must fight to survive, and in doing so, he discovers within himself the strength and ferocity of his natural wild state.

"The Song of Wandering Aengus" is a lyric poem. It's told in the first person(through the perspective of Aengus). Lyrics, as our wonderful lit glossary tells us, are usually written in the first person, and they give us an insight into the speaker's thoughts and emotions. Here, Aengus' first-person perspective gives us a glimpse into his experiences and his love for the "glimmering girl."

Story of Wondering Aengus

The late Irish poet William Butler Yeats needs no introduction. He is probably Ireland's most famous poet, and is acknowledged as a significant figure in literary modernism and twentieth-century European letters. One of his poems, the Song of Wandering Aengus, examines briefly some of its mythical and symbolic importance.

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