English Language Arts Grade 7 [2011]

• 7th grade Short Story
  Students will be reading and writing myths. They will follow the structure of short stories and eventually publish their work.

• Choose Your Own Adventure: Hypertext Writing Exp.
  This lesson, from ReadWriteThink, combines reading and writing in a collaborative, small-group learning experience. It utilizes technology, specifically Web page design, group and individual work, and student self-assessment. After reading several examples, students will plan their own adventure story. They will be divided into smaller groups for each split in the story until finally the students are writing their own endings. Using Web-authoring software, groups will create their own Web sites with the parts of the story hyperlinked to each other.
• Poems that Tell a Story
  In this lesson, students read, discuss, and analyze selected poems by Robert Frost. The activities that make up this lesson encourage students to draw inferences about a poem's speaker based on evidence contained within the poem and to gather evidence supporting those inferences. From this page, teachers can access all materials needed to complete the lesson.
• The Big Bad Wolf: Analyzing Point of View in Texts
  Many students read without questioning a text or analyzing the author's viewpoint. In this lesson from ReadWriteThink, students learn to look at texts from different viewpoints. Was the "big bad wolf" really bad? Throughout the lesson, students are encouraged to view texts from different angles.
• The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
  Washington Irving's tale of the Headless Horseman has become a Halloween classic, although few Americans celebrated that holiday when the story was new. In this unit from EDSITEment, students explore the artistry that helped make Irving our nation's first literary master and ponder the mystery that now haunts every Halloween--What happened to Ichabod Crane?
• Writing Alternative Plots for Robert C. O'Brien's Z for Zachariah
  Throughout Z for Zachariah (Robert C. O'Brien), the narrator, Ann Burden, is faced with a number of tough decisions as she strives to survive in a post-nuclear holocaust world. As a culminating activity, students apply their knowledge of cause and effect to these tough decisions to create alternative plots.
• Writing a Flashback and Flash-Forward Story
  Flashbacks and flash-forwards are common devices used in literature and films. In this lesson from ReadWritethink, students are introduced to examples of these devices through the film "The Sandlot" and/or illustrated books. Students are then asked to create a story that contains both flashback and flash-forward.