This resource accompanies our Rethink 7th Grade ELA course. It includes ideas for use, ways to support exceptional children, ways to extend learning, digital resources and tools, tips for supporting English Language Learners and students with visual and hearing impairments. There are also ideas for offline learning. 

This parent guide supports parents in helping their child at home with the 7th grade ELA content.

In this activity, students will complete a close reading of the Gettysburg address by using the strategy called SOAPSTONE.

This lesson was designed to help students gain social studies/history content knowledge by using textual evidence to answer text-dependent questions.In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this history through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

In this lesson, students will analyze written documents for position of writer and content. They will then synthesize a historical position based upon document analysis and connect historical struggles for equality with current movements.

This inquiry provides students with an opportunity to explore how words affect public opinion through an examination of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Students will investigate historical sources related to the novel and reactions of people in the North and South in order to address the compelling question "Can words lead to war?" The final summative assessment asks the to make an argument about the impact of the words in Uncle Tom's Cabin.

In this lesson, students examine India's caste system. Students then work in small groups to explore the economic, social, and political "rules" of the different classes in the Indian caste system.

In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this history through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

Created through a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress, Chronicling America offers visitors the ability to search and view newspaper pages from 1690-1963 and to find information about American newspapers published between 1690"“present using the National Digital Newspaper Program.

This lesson aligns with the 7th grade Social Studies curriculum and works best when integrated into an interdisciplinary unit, such as Reliving the Middle Ages Across Lliterary Genres. Interdisciplinary Units are effective when teachers from two different content areas collaborate to plan lessons, assessments, activities and projects that support their content skills and standards. The content being taught in one course supports the content in another and students approach difficult, content-specific texts with more familiarity and gain better comprehension.  Students read two nonfiction articles about the Middle Ages, which lasted from about A.D. 500 to A.D. 1500. Both texts examine one of the most significant events of this time period-- the spread of the bubonic plague, or the Black Death. Each text is organized into cause-and-effect pattern of organization. One outlines HOW the disease spread (causes) and the other explains how it affected Europe (effects). Students analyze two texts by different authors writing about the same topic, the Black Plague, and compare/contrast how each author shapes their presentations of key information by emphasizing different evidence. 

Students read two descriptions of Earth's interior structure and summarize similarities and differences between the two and answer a series on analysis questions.

In this lesson, students read and analyze a story about cultural differences between America and Papua New Guinea.

Students will view a reality television episode and read a news article related to reality television. Then students will complete a graphic organizer to create an argument for or against children participating in reality television. Students will apply supportive details for writing a persuasive paragraph.

This lesson was designed to help students gain social studies/history content knowledge by using textual evidence to answer text-dependent questions.

This lesson and resource uses point-by-point arguments to help students develop higher order thinking skills by learning to distinguish fact from opinion.

In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

Elizabeth I is the biography of Queen Elizabeth who reigned in England for 45 years from 1558 to 1603. Milton Meltzer chronologically highlights her birth into parliament rule, her historical influence on England’s political system and her untimely death that brought the end to a dynasty. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this history through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

Students will explore the Articles of Confederation and the Articles' influence in revising the Constitution of 1787. Students will experience the sentiments of Federalists and Anti Federalists by participating in a partner debate as either North Carolina Federalist James Iredell or Anti Federalist Willie Jones.