The sands of the Nile River Valley hold many clues about one of the most mysterious, progressive, and artistic ancient civilizations. A great deal of evidence survives about how the ancient Egyptians lived, but questions remain. Even the wise sphinx would have trouble answering some of them. How were the pyramids built? Who came up with the idea for mummies and why? What was a typical day like for a pharaoh?

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.

This lesson will involve work in oral language, concepts of print, spelling, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing with the use of one book, The Black Snowman.

Students must think critically to create comic strips highlighting six important scenes from a book they have read.

While reading “Chinatown” from The Lost Garden by Laurence Yep and gathering background information from online sources, students consider how race, power, and privilege influenced the experiences of those living in Chinatown, including the author.

Using their new skills in deconstructing advertisements, students will look at advertisements through the lens of gender.  Students will be encouraged to critically analyze the cultural stereotypes for men and women. Students will deconstruct advertisements based on gender representation.Rationale: Students will begin to see how believing in stereotypes can lead towards a negative self image for men and women.  This is Part 4 of a 5 part Unit: Media Manipulation: What Are They Really Saying?

Students will read through chapter 12 of The Giver where they find that the people in The Giver got rid of the ability to see color. First students will look at a variety of colors and determine what emotions the colors make them feel. Then they will each write about a color without giving the name of the color; the students in the class will need to guess the color. After that assignment, students will analyze how colors affect behaviors and emotions and critically determine why the people in the that world decided to make everyone see in black and white. Students will end the lesson answering the question "Why do you think we have color in our world?"

After students have read through The Giver, they will learn about symbolism and find the ways the author used symbolism throughout the book. After they complete a chart on symbolism, they will create a symbol that describes themselves. They will present their symbol project through Voicethread.com.

*Please see link included for a more detailed planning document.

Students will be designing a graphic based on the book they have finished reading in their guided reading group.   They will use the app, Canva (www.canva.com),  to create the graphic.  The graphic will include key details, descriptions, themes, plot, summary, as well as other text evidence we have discussed throughout our guided reading time together.  Students will create their graphics, and present them in a gallery walk for the rest of the class.

The content on their graphics will come from our guided reading group questions and discussions . They will record answers in their Google Classroom, based on the questions I post.  Questions will be text dependent, and focus on comprehension, main idea, key details, point of view, and connections. Students will then synthesize the information and discussion topics to create a graphic about their book.

The lesson provides an opportunity for students to not only read and view the importance of choosing career choices now, but gives them an opportunity to write about their future career goals and think about the best way to achieve them starting now.

The lessons in this unit provide you with an opportunity to use online resources to further enliven your students' encounter with Greek mythology, to deepen their understanding of what myths meant to the ancient Greeks, and to help them appreciate the meanings that Greek myths have for us today. In the lessons below, students will learn about Greek conceptions of the hero, the function of myths as explanatory accounts, the presence of mythological terms in contemporary culture, and the ways in which mythology has inspired later artists and poets.

Using the topic of Mythology, students will work through various activities to learn the characteristics of a Narrative Essay. This particular unit will/should take place prior to writing the Narrative Essay. Many of the lessons address how to identify, create, apply and analyze point of view, theme, dialogue punctuation, argumenative qualities and citing direct and indirect evidence.

After students have read Out of the Dust, they will create a Glogster. They will write about the theme, use their vocabulary words in writing, write using similes, metaphors, and personification in poetry, compare and contrast Billie Jo's experience to someone else in history, and be able to pick an option from a list. They will use their creativity to make their poster appealing to the reader.

Students will be able to read a grade level text,  the novel "The Outsiders". As they read they will have to cite information, make inferences and connections, summarize, compare different mediums (book and movie) and learn about the author and how her experiences shaped the novel. Students will also get to write persuasively and creatively during this unit.

This reading work booklet is designed to help your students develop their reading skills. They have to complete a series of tasks which should demonstrate how important reading is not just for everyday life; but for pleasure too.

This two week unit will have students analyze and then write their own 2 Minute Mystery stories.  Students will immerse themselves in the genre of 2 Minute Mysteries, learn mystery terms, identify literary devices, and eventually write their own mysteries.

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.

While the French had kept their end of the bargain by completing the statue itself, the Americans had still not fulfilled their commitment to erect a pedestal. In this lesson, students learn about the effort to convince a skeptical American public to contribute to the effort to erect a pedestal and to bring the Statue of Liberty to New York.

In Lesson 1, students focus on the first stave of the novel as they identify the meanings of words and phrases that may be unfamiliar to them. This activity facilitates close examination of and immersion in the text and leads to an understanding of Scrooge before his ghostly experiences. In Lesson 2, students examine Scrooge’s experiences with the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future and discover how Dickens used both direct and indirect characterization to create a protagonist who is more than just a stereotype. In Lesson 3, students focus on stave 5 as they identify and articulate themes that permeate the story.

Explore the traditions and conventions of haiku and compare this classic form of Japanese poetry to a related genre of Japanese visual art.