Home >
Curriculum >
Middle School Curriculum>Reading 7
TITLE
READING 7
TEXTBOOK
No textbook, four out of the following paperback books:
Julie of the Wolves, Jean Craighead George, 1972
The White Mountains, John Christopher, 1967
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Mildred Taylor, 1976
The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin, 1978
Children of the River, Linda Crew, 1989
Four students' choice books
DESCRIPTION
Seventh grade reading is a required course designed to encourage students to
become lifelong readers. It meets three days per week for 68 minutes throughout
the school year and is part of the core curriculum block along with English,
mathematics, science, and social studies. Students are heterogeneously grouped
in five sections. Students in this class will be expected to explore their past
personal history of reading habits, examine their current reading attitude,
improve comprehension, investigate different reading genres, maintain a personal
reading program, respond to books in various ways, establish discourse with
parents, family and friends about reading, set reading goals and work toward
achieving those goals.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
1. Students will identify the basic facts and essential ideas in what they have
read or viewed. (8.1.1).
a. Students will monitor their understanding as they read.
b. Students will draw on strategies such as recalling text characteristics,
generating essential questions, and clarifying ideas by rereading and discussing
in small groups and class groups.
c. Students will identify main ideas and supporting details.
d. Students will follow written and oral instructions.
e. Students will interpret information from diagrams, charts, graphs, vocabulary
webs and semantic maps.
f. Students will evaluate information for relevance and accuracy, based on prior
knowledge and classroom discussion.
g. Students will read materials of varying difficulty.
h. Students will demonstrate comprehension through written and oral responses.
2. Students will locate, access, and evaluate resources to identify appropriate
information. (8.1.2)
a. Students will use reference materials such as encyclopedia, almanacs, and
Something About the Author.
b. Students will use electronic resources such as an on-line encyclopedia, , the
interrret and others.
c. Students will use the electronic card catalog to locate and select books and
other materials to meet personal reading interests and learning needs.
d. Students will identify and gather resources that provide relevant and
reliable information for research.
3. Students will identify characteristics of different types of text. (8.1.3)
a. Students will independently read literature including fiction and nonfiction.
b. Students will identify different types of genre: fiction, fantasy, science
fiction, nonfiction/informational, historical fiction, biography/autobiography,
and mystery.
c. Students will explain author's purpose in writing.
4. Students will identify the structure and elements of fiction and provide
evidence from the text to support their understanding. (8.1.4)
a. Students will locate and analyze elements of plot and characterization.
b. Students will describe how qualities of central characters determine
resolution of the conflict.
c. Students will describe who the central characters are and how they are
related.
d. Students will identify setting (time and place) in each book that they read.
e. Students will speculate on the "whys" -- based on what you know about the
character, why did the character do this?
5. Students will identify and apply knowledge of the structure, elements, and
meaning of nonfiction or informational material and provide evidence from the
text to support their understanding. (8.1.5)
a. Students will generate visual organizers to support comprehension of text.
6. Students will interpret the meaning of fiction, nonfiction, film and media by
using different analytic techniques. (8.1.7)
a. Students will analyze how a book can show an author's history, attitude, and
beliefs.
b. Students will analyze how a work can be shown to reflect the period, ideas,
customs, and outlooks of a people living in a particular time in history.
c. Students will analyze how readers' prior knowledge can influence each
reader's perception of a particular text.
7. Students will maintain a personal reading program.
a. Students will compose a paper of their past personal history of reading
habits.
b. Students will evaluate their personal reading attitude according to the Estes
Attitude Scale.
c. Students will establish discourse with parents, family and friends about
reading.
d. Students will set personal reading goals and work toward attaining those
individual goals.
e. Students will list and evaluate each book they read.
WRITING ACTIVITIES
1. Reading logs are written on reading workshop days. These logs are informal
and must include a prediction about what will happen next in the book, something
about how the book relates to the student (personal experience), a strong
reaction or an evaluation of the book. These logs are a way to check
comprehension and give the students a private way to express themselves in
writing. (These are never shared in class.).
2. At the beginning of the year the students write a paper on their own personal
reading history .Each class novel may include some type of writing activity at
its conclusion. It could be an essay comparing two characters in the novel or it
might be a creative paper continuing the story.
3. The students are required to share a book each quarter and are given a list
of 13 different ways to do this. Many writing activities are included here. For
example, a student could write a book review for the Voice newspaper, write a
letter to an author, write a report about an author, write a play, write a
summary of the book or come up with their own idea.
MULTICULTURE ACTIVITIES
1. We read the novel ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR MY CRY and study African American
history during January and February. This ties in with Martin Luther King, Jr.
Day in and January and Black History Month in February.
2. The novel JULIE OF THE WOLVES helps students to appreciate the Inuit (Eskimo
-- Native American) culture of Alaska. This book is used as a class novel.
3. I do book shares frequently and share books that deal with other cultures.
Some examples include GRAB HANDS AND RUN (Hispanic culture), FAREWELL TO
MANZANAR (Asian culture), and CHILDREN OF THE RIVER (Asian culture).
4. Another class novel that we read is THE WESTING GAME. In this book, an
unlikely group of people get together to solve a mystery. The group includes old
and young people, Jewish people, Greeks, a black woman, a disabled person,
Oriental people, and rich and poor people. As they work together, they discover
that they can all help each other out and they learn to appreciate their
differences.
