Grade 7 ELA
Unit — Fiction
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
Essential Questions
How does great literature reflect life?
How is patience important for gaining wisdom and experience in any journey (be it physical or metaphysical)? -How does this relate to passing from innocence to experience?
How do people give value to their lives through achievement and failure?
What is the cost of giving in to impulse, temptation, and recklessness?
Guiding Questions
How is the narrator's experience representative of the wider human experience?
What does the story suggest about human experience?
Text/Materials
Core Texts:
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
Choice Texts:
My Brother Sam Is Dead by Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier
Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
Fifth of March by Ann Rinaldi
An Enemy among Them by Deborah H. DeFord
Spitfire by Evan Balkan
Poems by the following authors:
Judith Viorst
Walter Dean Myers
Skills Taught
Students will:
identify central ideas.
interpret and explain the impact of the chosen quote in the context of the text.
make use of vivid word choice, imagery, figurative language, transitional statements, and varying sentence structures.
identify characters’ motivations.
identify the significance of particular allusions.
identify themes in text and analyze how the theme is shaped and refined by the character’s transformation.
identify various literary elements in the text and analyze the use of the element through the text and how it contributes to the development of the theme.
highlight words and phrases that reveal the author’s attitude toward the subject of the text.
Reading: 7R1, 7R2, 7R3, 7R4, 7R6, 7R7, 7R9
Writing: 7W1, 7W2, 7W3, 7W4, 7W5
Speaking/Listening: 7SL1, 7SL2, 7SL3, 7SL4, 7SL5, 7SL6
Language: 7L1, 7L2, 7L3, 7L4, 7L5, 7L6
Unit — Tolerance
Essential Questions
What is friendship?
What is loyalty? Can one impact the other?
Does knowledge contribute to or inhibit true happiness?
Guiding Questions
Has the value of reading changed over time? How and why has it?
How do the characters in the text symbolize the theme?
Text/Materials
Choice Texts:
The Misfits by James Howe
My Name is Brain/Brian by Jeanne Betancourt
The Graduation of Jake Moon by Barbara Park
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick
Pay It Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
Skills Taught
Students will:
summarize text.
identify central ideas.
interpret and explain the impact of the chosen quote in the context of the text.
make use of vivid word choice, imagery, figurative language, transitional statements, and varying sentence structures.
identify characters’ motivations.
identify the significance of particular allusions.
identify themes in text and analyze how the theme is shaped and refined by the character’s transformation.
identify various literary elements in the text and analyze the use of the element through the text and how it contributes to the development of the theme.
highlight words and phrases that reveal the author’s attitude toward the subject of the text.
Reading: 7R1, 7R2, 7R3, 7R4, 7R6, 7R7, 7R9
Writing: 7W1, 7W2, 7W3, 7W4, 7W5
Speaking/Listening: 7SL1, 7SL2, 7SL3, 7SL4, 7SL5, 7SL6
Language: 7L1, 7L2, 7L3, 7L4, 7L5, 7L6
Unit — Non-fiction Research
Essential Questions
How can we explore topics by generating inquiry questions, research different areas of a topic, build on new knowledge, make connections, and finally develop an evidence-based perspective?
How does the inquiry process assist in the innocence to experience process?
What do I find interesting?
What do I want to learn more about?
How…?
What impact…?
What effect/affect…?
Why…?
If...then…?
Where did it originate? -What is its history? -What are its major aspects?
What are its causes and implications?
What other things is it connected to or associated with?
What are its important places, things, people, and experts?
What is the purpose for this piece?
Guiding Questions
Does the question have an appropriate scope or purpose? (Does it focus on an important aspect of the research question/problem?
Is the question useful? Will it lead to meaningful inquiry?
Is the question understandable or clear?
Is the question answerable through research?
Does the question require multiple answers and possibly more questions?
Is your question’s answer unknown to you?
Is the research question one that is of interest to the researcher and potentially to others? Is it a new issue or problem that needs to be solved or is it attempting to shed light on previously researched topic.
Consider the available time frame and the required resources. Is the methodology to conduct the research feasible?
Is the research question measureable and will the process produce data that can be supported or contradicted?
Is the research question too broad or too narrow?
Text/Materials
Choice Texts:
Students choose texts for research based on their individual research question/problem.
Evaluation Checklist
Specific Inquiry Questions
Checklist
Skills Taught
Students will:
read closely for textual details.
annotate texts to support comprehension and analysis.
engage in productive evidence based discussions about text.
collect and organize evidence from texts to support analysis in writing.
analyze text and multimedia.
make claims about the development and refinement of central ideas in a text.
use vocabulary strategies to define unknown words.
identify potential topics for research within a text.
generate, select, and refine inquiry questions to explore topics.
develop 2–3 areas of investigation from the topic exploration.
develop inquiry questions about areas of investigation.
generate specific inquiry questions for the research question/problem.
plan for searches by determining keywords/phrases and finding credible and relevant sources.
assess sources for credibility, relevance, and accessibility.
annotate sources and record notes that will help answer the inquiry questions.
conduct searches with modeling and support as well as independently.
review and synthesize the research to develop a written evidence-based perspective.
decipher between fact and opinion.
learn what plagarism is and how to paraphrase.
Reading: 7R1, 7R2, 7R3, 7R5, 7R7, 7R8, 7R9
Writing: 7W1, 7W2, 7W3, 7W4, 7W5, 7W6, 7W7
Speaking/Listening: 7SL1, 7SL2, 7SL3, 7SL4, 7SL5, 7SL6
Language: 7L1, 7L2, 7L3, 7L4, 7L5, 7L6
Unit — Poetry
Essential Questions
What can we learn about ourselves and our world through the reading and writing of poetry?
Guiding Questions
How does a reader analyze a poem for understanding and meaning?
How are themes illustrated through poetry? (especially themes of innocence and experience)
How does a poet develop theme throughout the course of the work?
How does a poet use structure and form to contribute to meaning?
How does a poet employ poetic devices to establish and develop meaning?
Texts /Materials
Titles may include:
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost
“My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke
"What My Name Means" by Jennifer Dignan
"I Am the Only Me I've Got" by Anonymous
"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost
The Things That Haven't Been Done" by Edgar Guest
"How to Eat a Poem" by Eve Merriam
"Concord Hymn" by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The City"
"Words" by Anne Sexton
Skills Taught
Students will:
explicate poems.
identify figurative language and imagery.
perform quick writes analyzing poems and locating particular poetic elements.
discuss how poetic elements add to the effectiveness of poem.
write analysis of sonnets.
perform translation from figurative to literal language.
write original poems of various kinds.
Reading: 7R1, 7R2, 7R3, 7R4, 7R5, 7R6, 7R7, 7R9
Writing: 7W1, 7W2, 7W3, 7W4, 7W5
Speaking/Listening: 7SL1, 7SL2, 7SL3, 7SL4, 7SL5, 7SL6
Language: 7L1, 7L2, 7L3, 7L4, 7L5, 7L6