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.

Students will be reading and writing myths. They will follow the structure of short stories and eventually publish their work.

This Lesson Plan 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

Creating Native American Myths and Legends is a five-part lesson plan asking students to research a traditional or modern Native American myth or legend story and then turn that story, or create an original story into a Pixton graphic cartoon representation. The lesson provides an overview of the basic elements of myths and legends so that students are aware of the structure and key components of each as it relates to Native American storytelling. While traditional methods of Native American storytelling rely heavily on oral storytelling, modern graphic novel collections of stories such as Trickster: Native American Tales are providing a new way of recording traditional stories and providing an outlet for new creations for modern Native American artists and storytellers. The project follows an adapted inquiry model and uses the graphic cartoon generator software website Pixton.com, as well as GSuite for Education.

In this resource, students will be asked to use a graphic organizer in order to identify and track the development of theme and character in a literary text. Students will use evidence from the text to construct an evidence based response.

In this activity, you and your students will explore Elizabethan stage practices as the rustic yet enthusiastic amateur actors from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. While it's not necessary to teach Shakespeare's biography while studying his plays, sometimes opportunities to explore his world through his own eyes present themselves in his text. Students' new insights into the text will provide them with a deeper appreciation for Shakespeare’s world. This activity will take one or two class periods.

This handout is a short set of questions for students to use to explore the elements of the mystery genre. When they use thisy, students will be able toList core elements of mystery storiesIdentify how the core elements of a mystery story are manifested in a story they are currently reading.