Reading/English Language Arts in Grade 7
Grade 7 students gain advanced skills in reading and writing. Students focus on how authors make their points and support their arguments in different forms, such as fiction, articles, and essays. Students analyze works of fiction to see how events advance the plot and how the authors reveal their characters’ thoughts, words, and actions.
Seventh-grade students know how to organize and focus their own writing. They can find facts to support their statements and show that the facts are reliable.
TOPICS COVERED
Reading/English language arts standards cover the following eight topics, or strands.
Expectations for what a child should be able to do increase from one grade to the next.
• Using and understanding spoken words (Language Development)
• Getting facts from books and other writing (Informational Text)
• Learning from and enjoying stories, poems, and plays (Literary Text)
• Using materials to find out information (Research)
• Using written words to share information, ideas, and feelings (Writing)
• Getting information from television, film, Internet, or videos (Media)
• Knowing how to spell and use grammar correctly (English Language Conventions)
WHAT YOUR CHILD SHOULD KNOW
BY THE END OF GRADE 7, YOUR CHILD SHOULD KNOW AND BE ABLE TO PERFORM THESE SKILLS:
1. Ask probing questions. Use evidence to support claims and conclusions.
2. Present critiques of literary works, films, or plays using various techniques for effective oral presentations.
3. Describe the facts and evidence used to support an argument.
4. Identify ways to detect bias in persuasive text.
5. Describe a character based on the following:
• thoughts, words, and actions of the character;
• the narrator’s description; and
• what other characters say and do.
6. Recognize multiple themes in a text, and supply evidence of the themes from the selection.
7. Analyze the characteristics and structural elements of a variety of poetic forms, such as epic, sonnet, ode, ballad, lyric, narrative poem, free verse, and haiku.
8. Write persuasive essays that state a clear position in support of a proposition or proposal, and use clear evidence to support the proposition or proposal.
9. Write summaries of passages that:
• group related ideas and place them in logical order,
• contain main ideas and significant details of the passage, and
• reflect the underlying meaning of the source.
10. Identify all parts of speech and types and structure of sentences.
HOME ACTIVITIES
1. Encourage your child to read daily for pleasure. Young teens enjoy books such as I Am the Cheese, by Robert Cormier; The Contender, by Robert Lipsyte; and The Invisible Thread, by Yoshiko Uchida.
2. Discuss how your child uses clothing, hairstyle, and other items of dress to express himself or herself without using words.
3. When your child wants a change in your house rules — like a later bedtime — ask him or her to build a case like a lawyer would, using supporting evidence and other tactics.
4. Ask your teen to write a poem that rhymes and one that doesn’t. Discuss how the poems are different and how they are the same.