Question-Answer relationship (QAR) is a strategy to be used after students have read. QAR teaches students how to decipher what types of questions they are being asked and where to find the answers to them. Four types of questions are examined in the QAR.
Reading Guides help students navigate reading material, especially difficult textbook chapters or technical reading. Students respond to a teacher-created written guide of prompts as they read an assigned text. Reading Guides help students to comprehend the main points of the reading and understand the organizational structure of a text.
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.
In this lesson, students read the story of Rip Van Winkle and use Venn diagrams to compare his old life and his new life.
In this lesson, students read the novel "Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry" and participate in an Oprah Winfrey-style show to review the events in the novel and gain a more in-depth understanding of them.
Students will use music lyrics to identify vocabulary, imagery, analysis, and interpret poetry. Students will work collaboratively to develop the meaning of poetry. Specifcally, this lesson highlights Langston Hughes' poetry and the Harlem Renaissance.
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.
This teachers guide for Searching for Silverheels by Jeannie Mobley includes a prereading activity, discussion questions, and writing and research activities for after reading.
A Seed Discussion is a two-part strategy used to teach students how to engage in discussions about assigned readings. In the first part, students read selected text and identify "seeds" or key concepts of a passage which may need additional explanation. In the second part, students work in small groups to present their "seeds" to one another. Each "seed" should be thoroughly discussed before moving on to the next.
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.
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.
In this lesson, students write a short article for an imaginary music magazine in which they interpret the lyrics of a popular song.
In this lesson, students demonstrate their knowledge of the book "The Hundred Dresses" by Eleanor Estes by illustrating and paraphrasing each chapter to create a graphic organizer.