7th Grade ELA Course

Question 1: How do the stories of our past and the lives of our ancestors help make us who we are today, and how can learning about them help us grow?  

Question 2: How can we, as a family, a community, our country, and even the whole world, find ways to live in peace and kindness with each other, even when it means being brave and trying new things? 

Resources for Literacy Learning

English Language Arts Standards - 7th Grade (PDF)

Back to Curriculum Family Landing

We begin by recognizing our families, grandparents, and communities provide us with important lessons that help us understand who we are. What have you learned from your elders, traditions, or community that has shaped who you are becoming? (Everyone's experience will be different, reflecting the lessons and challenges passed down through generations.) How has the past influenced the person you are today? 

Our writing this quarter will focus on storytelling and the many components that bring a story alive: deeply developed characters, a variety of sentence constructions, sensory details, dialogue, suspense, and word choice. 

Next, we focus on researching the unknown, and following where it leads us, even if that is to Mars. For generations, our neighbors, friends, and families have dreamt about what is beyond this planet. We discuss whether the monies spent to go to the moon and/or Mars is worth the discovery.  Have we always been hard-wired for curiosity and the unknown calling to us? We conduct research that evaluates both sides of the topic and write argumentative essays developing our case with evidence from valid resources.  We use all the writing strategies we practiced crafting our case. 

Then we explore how our family's past and the lives of our ancestors have shaped us. We discover that we may find information that changes our minds about things! Change is a part of life, but it can often feel a little scary. We practice important skills to help us feel ready for challenges. We talk about how we react to changes and if there's anything we want to change about our own reactions. Is change always good? Why does it sometimes make us worry, and what can we do to feel less worried? Finally, we think about how the natural world around us powerfully influences our thoughts and feelings. 

Finally, we consider, what exactly is adversity, and what do we do when tough times hit us? We read and talk about how to handle challenges and understand our own feelings about them. 

Next, we explore natural disasters like tornadoes, fires, hurricanes, and droughts. We see how nature can sometimes be a powerful challenge and learn how people in the past have faced and survived these difficult situations. We also study brave men and women who stayed strong during really hard times. 

It might be a bumpy journey, but we believe that just like in the song, "the sun will come out tomorrow!"