7th Grade ELA

General Info

Welcome to 7th Grade ELA with Ms. S!

What you'll find on this page...

On this page you will find general information about the books that we read in 7th grade. If you would like to see things like the syllabus, calendar, or course outline, please navigate to those pages through the drop down menu underneath "7th Grade ELA".

The Beginning...

We start off the year with some get to know you activities - this takes about a week to a week and a half. After that, we start studying short stories and parts of plot. We read various short stories in this unit, including Each Kindness, Yertle the Turtle, and The Last Dog.

Novel Studies...

The first novel we read is called Legend by Marie Lu. It is a dystopian novel about June Iparis and a boy named Day. They are living in a futuristic world where the United States is split between the Republic and the Colonies. We get to hear the story from both character's perspectives. We begin this novel mid-September and it takes us through the end of October.

The second novel we read is Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson. This novel follows the story of a young slave and her sister. We get to pull in tons of historical documents with this novel, which gives the students great practice working with primary sources. This novel is also JAM PACKED with figurative language and we spend a lot of time analyzing those. This novel spans from January to March.

Other Materials...

With each novel, we have supplemental texts - these change from year to year but always tie back into the central ideas and themes of the novels we read. For example, during Legend we read recent news articles about technology and viruses. During Chains we read poetry from Langston Hughes and Phyllis Wheatley.

We do a narrative writing unit after Legend in which the students are taught how to write a children's book.

We read A Christmas Carol between the two holiday breaks - this gets students into a bit of "drama" as they get to act out scenes from the play.

The End...

The end of the year (basically all of 4th quarter) is focused on writing and developing the students research skills. We talk about plagiarism, finding evidence, using databases, and writing research based essays.