7th Grade
“Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.” -Albert Einstein
Course Description
Seventh grade language arts students will expand on the skills built from previous years. Students should expect some things to seem familiar from past years, but the level of precision and sophistication should be growing, along with the level of expectation.
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We will be reading both independently and as a class, but we will also be making connections between the texts we read and the real world. In addition to paraphrasing, summarizing, and evaluating the texts, students will further analyze the differences between fact and opinion. Students will also continue to detect bias in the texts they read as well as applying objective criteria for evaluating texts. Class discussions will become more often and rigorous. In grade seven, students will listen for meaning in conversations and discussions and effectively summarize them. Students will listen more attentively and use critical analysis to formulate appropriate oral responses.
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Vocabulary, grammar, and writing conventions will still be in the forefront of our class, as well as discussion of rhetorical and literary devices (syntax, diction, imagery, symbolism, etc). We will be writing and editing regularly in a variety of different ways in order to make us strong communicators. By the end of this class, we should all have something to say and a good idea of how to effectively say it.
Overall Objectives (Students should be able to):
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Understand and comment on the language, content, structure, meaning, and significance of texts·
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Use language to narrate, describe, analyze, explain, argue, persuade, inform, entertain, and express feelings
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Compare texts and connect themes (also making personal or world connections)
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Express an informed personal response to texts or topics with clarity and coherence in both oral and written communication
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Demonstrate the ability to approach works independently
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Structure ideas and arguments in a sustained and logical way, and supported with relevant examples
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Distinguish the main ideas and themes and make connections
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Use and understand an appropriate and varied range of vocabulary and idioms
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Use correct grammar with appropriate and varied sentence structure
Assigned Reading and Book Summaries
Aside from numerous short stories and independent reading books, we will read from as many of the following novels as time permits together as a class: Animal Farm by George Orwell, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Macbeth by Shakespeare, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie.
Plans may change as the year progresses at the teacher's discretion.
WAAS has a copy of each text for the students to borrow, but I encourage each student and their family to consider buying their own copy of the books. It is so much easier to be a strong, active reader when you mark in the book. This tremendously aids in building reading comprehension skills. Additionally, students will read many of these books again in high school and college. Having your own copy is not mandatory, just suggested. Keep in mind, though, that if you use WAAS's copy, you must take care of it, or you will have to replace it.
These reading selections will ask us to look at respect, leadership, responsibility, and justice. I stand by my choice in selecting all of the novels, short stories, poems, and/or plays that we will read this year, but if you are honestly uncomfortable reading a text, please come to me immediately so we can discuss it. I am including a summary of the texts listed above for families to have an understanding of what we will be gaining through reading and studying these texts.
Summaries are thanks to Amazon.com and Goodreads.com
War of the Worlds
It never was a war, any more than there's war between man and ants.
The Original 1898 Classic
Humans vs. Martians. Conventional ballistics vs. the dreaded Heat-Ray and poisonous black smoke. It's not the survival of one person at stake. It is the survival of all humanity.
A classic unlike anything the world had yet to read, The War of the Worlds takes you into late 19th century England where a full-scale Martian invasion has begun.
Lord of the Flies
At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate. This far from civilization they can do anything they want. Anything. But as order collapses, as strange howls echo in the night, as terror begins its reign, the hope of adventure seems as far removed from reality as the hope of being rescued.
Animal Farm
A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned—a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.
And Then There Were None
"If you’re one of the few who haven’t experienced the genius of Agatha Christie, this novel is a stellar starting point." — DAVID BALDACCI, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author
An exclusive authorized edition of the most famous and beloved stories from the Queen of Mystery.
Ten people, each with something to hide and something to fear, are invited to an isolated mansion on Indian Island by a host who, surprisingly, fails to appear. On the island they are cut off from everything but each other and the inescapable shadows of their own past lives. One by one, the guests share the darkest secrets of their wicked pasts. And one by one, they die…
Which among them is the killer and will any of them survive?
A Long Way Gone
This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.
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What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived.
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In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.
Things Fall Apart
“A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama
“African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison
Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political and religious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order.
With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.
Pride and Prejudice
Few have failed to be charmed by the witty and independent spirit of Elizabeth Bennet in Austen’s beloved classic Pride and Prejudice. When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows us the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life.
Macbeth
Macbeth is a tragedy by William Shakespeare; it is thought to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatizes the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power for its own sake. Of all the plays that Shakespeare wrote during the reign of James I, who was patron of Shakespeare's acting company, Macbeth most clearly reflects the playwright's relationship with his sovereign. It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book, and is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy.
A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia. Forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler. The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of madness and death.
The Hunger Games
In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated. As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl to appear in an annual televised event called, "The Hunger Games," a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. The terrain, rules, and level of audience participation may change but one thing is constant: kill or be killed.