This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 7th Grade English Language Arts.
This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 7th Grade ELA.
The main character, Esperanza, desperately wants to eat in the lunchroom at school, with the other boys and girls who do not go home for lunch break. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.
A mongoose, Rikki-tikki-tavi, comes to live with an English family in their bungalow in colonial India. Two cobras—Nag and Nagaina—live in the garden surrounding the bungalow and threaten the lives of Rikki-tikki’s human family. Through a series of battles, Rikki-tikki-tavi kills Nag and Nagaina, protecting his human family and winning their trust and affection. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.
A young girl, Sarah Stout, despite her father’s request, chooses not to take out the garbage, and soon realizes that there are serious and far-reaching consequences to her choices. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.
Students will use scaffolding to research and organize information for writing a research paper. A research paper scaffold provides students with clear support for writing expository papers that include a question (problem), literature review, analysis, methodology for original research, results, conclusion, and references. Students examine informational text, use an inquiry-based approach, and practice genre-specific strategies for expository writing.
This teachers guide for Searching for Silverheels by Jeannie Mobley includes a prereading activity, discussion questions, and writing and research activities for after reading.
Selective Highlighting/Underlining is used to help students organize what they have read by selecting what is important. This strategy teaches students to highlight/underline ONLY the key words, phrases, vocabulary, and ideas that are central to understanding the reading.
On the first day of seventh grade, Victor and his friend Michael try to hide their insecurities and impress the girls in their class. In turn they learn that teachers can be kind, that girls are approachable, and that taking a risk to fit in can pay off. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.
Did she walk, skip, amble, dance? In this minilesson, students examine the simple sentence, "She walked into the room." Volunteers act out ways that the student in the sentence might enter the room, and the teacher models revising the sample sentence accordingly. Students then suggest other replacements for the verb in the sentence to increase the specificity of the word and explore connotation. Students follow this demonstration by selecting words with powerful connotations for their own writing.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a legend about King Arthur’s court and the Knights of the Round Table. During a New Years celebration, a strange man, only referred to as the Green Knight, enters the court and challenges the knights to a game. He will allow whoever accepts the challenge to strike him with his own ax. There is one condition, the challenger must return in one year for the Green Knight to return the same blow. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.
This lesson encourages students to evaluate how the setting influences the characters interactions and how that motivation propels the plot in Rudyard Kipling's, Rikki-tiki-tavi. Students will also evaluate the effectiveness of Kipling's use of personification. During this lesson, students will annotate the text through coding, create trading cards for the characters, compose an exposition, and produce a brochure based on a focused research assignment.
This fantasy takes place on the planet Pern, an imaginary world where dragons help protect the inhabitants from the dangerous Red Star, which rains deadly plant spores every 200 years. These spores can devour every living thing if they land on the planet. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.
This teachers guide for Somewhere There is Still a Sun by Michael Gruenbaum with Todd Hasak-Lowy includes discussion questions and prompts for interpretation for each part of the book, assignments and worksheets, ideas to integrate visual media, and writing assignment ideas.
Summarizing teaches students how to take a large selection of text and reduce it to the main points for more concise understanding. Upon reading a passage, summarizing helps students learn to determine essential ideas and consolidate important details that support them. It is a technique that enables students to focus on key words and phrases of an assigned text that are worth noting and remembering.
In this lesson, students will learn strategies and activities for learning about economics, civics and government, and U.S. history text through reading, taking notes, and composing a response about capitalism through a claims and evidence based approach.
Many factors contributed to the eventual success of the American colonies as they revolted against British rule. American leadership, the timely support of international allies, and international respect and recognition played major roles in the struggle for independence. Several documents and engravings held by the National Archives help to illustrate these important factors that led to the founding of the United States.
This lesson focuses on the American Revolution, which encouraged the founding fathers' desire to create a government that would, as stated in the Preamble, insure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense.
Students are invited to explore the cultural offerings around them "” from architecture to books, dance, fashion, film, food, music, theater, TV and video games "” and write reviews about what they experience. The New York Times models along with advice from current Times critics to help them through the process.
Almost every culture has a traditional tale about a character who is granted three wishes. Two are usually used unwisely, and then the third wish is needed to undo one or both of the first two wishes. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.
Megan’s Great-grandmother Breckenridge has lived in three centuries. She was born in 1899 and now it is 2001. On the first day of 2001, Megan is annoyed that she and her mother are going to visit Great-grandmother Breckenridge in an Elder Care Facility. By the end of her visit, Megan’s feelings and opinions about Great-grandmother Breckenridge have changed from distaste and avoidance to eagerness to know her better. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.