This seventh grade annotated 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 in the North and South in order to address the compelling question, “Can words lead to war?” This query takes advantage of the mixed messages students often receive about the power of words. Students’ understanding about how words can make a difference is often grounded in discussions of words used to bully, instead of the power of words to encourage reform. This is an ANNOTATED inquiry with additional information on the questions, tasks, and sources within.

In this 8 eight-week module, students explore the experiences of people of Southern Sudan during and after the Second Sudanese Civil War. They build proficiency in using textual evidence to support ideas in their writing, both in shorter responses and in an extended essay. In Unit 1, students begin the novel A Long Walk to Water (720L) by Linda Sue Park. Students will read closely to practice citing evidence and drawing inferences from this compelling text as they begin to analyze and contrast the points of view of the two central characters, Salva and Nya. They also will read informational text to gather evidence on the perspectives of the Dinka and Nuer tribes of Southern Sudan. In Unit 2, students will read the remainder of the novel, focusing on the commonalities between Salva and Nya in relation to the novel’s theme: how individuals survive in challenging environments. (The main characters’ journeys are fraught with challenges imposed by the environment, including the lack of safe drinking water, threats posed by animals, and the constant scarcity of food. They are also challenged by political and social environments.). As in Unit 1, students will read this literature closely alongside complex informational texts (focusing on background on Sudan and factual accounts of the experiences of refugees from the Second Sudanese Civil War). Unit 2 culminates with a literary analysis essay about the theme of survival. Unit 3 brings students back to a deep exploration of character and point of view: students will combine their research about Sudan with specific quotes from A Long Walk to Water as they craft a two-voice poem, comparing and contrasting the points of view of the two main characters, Salva and Nya,. The two-voice poem gives students an opportunity to use both their analysis of the characters and theme in the novel and their research about the experiences of the people of Southern Sudan during the Second Sudanese Civil War.

The 7th grade poetry unit gives an in depth approach to poetry involving the four strands within the core. I've included worksheets, rubrics, and answers keys where applicable. I have also used literature examples from the core.

This Lesson was created to use in conjunction with materials in Clusive [https://clusive.cast.org], a free, online learning environment that makes materials flexible and accessible.  The Lesson is designed to engage and support middle school teachers and their students to evaluate Tom Sawyer as one of a long-line of trickster characters in world literature. 

This lesson uses the Lewis Carroll poem "Jabberwocky" to help students approach difficult, unknown vocabulary. The poem uses nonsense words, but with strong structural and context clues. By using multiple close-reading strategies, students gain confidence reading difficult text.

7th Grade Historical Literacy consists of two 43 minute class periods. Writing is one 43 minute block and reading is another. The teacher has picked themes based on social studies standards, and a read-aloud novel based on social studies serves as the mentor text for writing and reading skills. More social studies content is addressed in reading through teaching nonfiction reading skills and discussion.
Standards reflect CCSS ELA, Reading, and Social Studies Standards.

This lesson uses images and the "I See...and I Wonder" strategy to get students thinking about the bigger concepts that objects might represent.  Students often see symbols as mere objects with only a face value because of the speed with which they encounter them.  However, if we can encourage students to take more time to study an object, other concepts or meanings can come to light.This lesson uses images as an entry point to symbolism because they are less threatening than literature.  The images provided are a starting place, but feel free to remix and use your own images.   

This Lesson was created to use in conjunction with materials in Clusive [https://clusive.cast.org], a free, online learning environment that makes materials flexible and accessible.  The Lesson is designed for students in grades 6-8, and targets ELA standards as well as SEL skills of self-awareness and learner agency. As you use this lesson, students will be guided to recognize, understand, and apply key elements of a mystery story, tools that they can use to build learner agency, self-awareness, and comprehension

Throughout this unit on Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, students practice the same six skills with greater scaffolding and modeling at the beginning, and more independence toward the middle and end. The tasks include: 1. writing to an essential question to access background knowledge; 2. using context clues and root words to determine word meaning; 3. close reading with the aid of a glossary; 4. taking notes one of two graphic organizers (sequence of events and/or empathy map); 5. re-reading to answer text dependent questions; and 6. summarizing the chapter.