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.

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.

Musical Overtones is a four-week unit that connects music and history. Students research musical styles as it relates to the other arts and science. Students select a musician and analyze his or her work and its impact on history. A discussion of this impact is presented in an open forum during instructional time.

Playground Physics is an iPad and Progressive Web application (app) developed by the New York Hall of Science. The app is accompanied by a supplemental Teacher Guide for middle school teachers. The Playground Physics curriculum is a six-week supplemental physics curriculum, designed to be used alongside any existing science curricula in the middle grades. It includes a teacher guide and student work, and maps to the NGSS and NYSSLS. The curriculum is focused around three different units which each explore a major concept in physics (motion, force and energy) through a specific type of physical play (catching a ball, jumping, swinging).

Playground Physics is particularly well suited to supporting diverse learners because it leverages students’ abilities to playfully ask and answer their own questions to connect academic content to what they notice, describe and analyze about their own individual actions. Additionally, the multimodal nature of the program, which uses videos and images as well as kinesthetic exploration to build understanding, is less text-dependent than more traditional physics instructional materials.

Students learn how young people in Washington exercised their rights and responsibilities through “fish-in” protests to fight for tribal fishing rights in the 1960s. Students use this example of civic engagement to reflect on their rights and responsibilities today, then begin to consider the unit-driving question: How can we use social media to engage community members on issues of injustice? Working in teams, students examine a case study on one of three critical issues: natural resources, the environment, or hazard preparedness. The case studies help students understand how social media can be used to raise awareness and promote action. Finally, teams create a social media campaign that engages their local elected officials and community on an issue of social and environmental justice.

This unit is focused on the examination of a single topic, in this case, the Native Americans of the inland Northwest and conflict that arose when other non-native people started to settle in the northwest, and to specifically address the native populations that lived in the inland northwest. The materials were created to be one coherent arc of instruction focused on one topic. The module was designed to include teaching notes that signal the kind of planning and thinking such instruction requires: close reading with complex text, and specific instructional strategies or protocols are described that support students’ reading and writing with evidence are described in enough detail to make it very clear what is required of students and how to support students in doing this rigorous work. Materials include summative assessment of content and process, central texts, key resources, and protocols that support and facilitate student learning.