Expectations for All Students

Be 

Respectful

• Take turns speaking
• Respect other people’s space
• Stay positive when dealing with others

Be a 

Learner

• Be an active listener
• Make eye contact with group members/teachers
• Ask questions

Be 

Responsible

• Bring all materials to class
• Be on time to class
• Complete your work

Units and Standards

Novel Studies: The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis, The Giver by Lois Lowry, and The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

Unit 1: Conflicts and Clashes - When do differences become conflicts?

• Genre Focus: Fiction
• Writing Focus: Narrative

Texts: “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”, Woodsong (excerpt), Nimona (excerpt), Stargirl (excerpt), “Seventh Grade”, “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street”, The Skin I’m In (excerpt), “The Wise Old Woman”, “Mad”, “In the Year 1974” 

Unit 2: Highs and Lows - What do we learn from love and loss?

• Genre Focus: Poetry
• Writing Focus: Argumentative

Texts:  “Annabel Lee”, “My Mother Pieced Quilts”, “Museum Indians, The Walking Dance”, “Second Estrangement”, “No Dream Too High: Simone Biles”, “The Highwayman”, “Flesh and Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and Its Legacy”, A Christmas Carol (excerpt), Tangerine (excerpt), “My Mother Really Knew”

Unit 3: Chasing the Impossible- What makes a dream worth pursuing?

• Genre Focus: Argumentative 
• Writing Focus: Argumentative 

Texts: “We Beat the Street”, “The First Americans”, “Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad”, “The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales”, “All Together Now”, “Mother Jones: Fierce Fighter for Workers' Rights”, “Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward”, “Letter to President Theodore Roosevelt”, “Before We Were Free”, “Machines, not people, should be exploring the stars for now” 

Unit 4: Moment of Truth - How can one event change everything?

• Genre Focus: Informational 
• Writing Focus: Informative

Texts: “Casey at the Bat”, “Hitting big league fastball ‘clearly impossible’”, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (excerpt), An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 (excerpt), Fever 1793 (excerpt),“Harrison Bergeron”, “The Last Human Light” (from What If?), “The Power of Student Peer Leaders”, “The Three Questions”, “The Tequila Worm”, “Barrio Boy”

Supplementary Text

Unit 5: Test of Time - Why do we still read myths and folktales?

• Genre Focus: Traditional Stories
• Writing Focus: Research Writing

Texts: Aesop’s Fables, The Hunger Games (excerpt), The Classical Roots of The Hunger Games, “The Cruel Tribute” (from Old Greek Stories), “The Invisible One” (Algonquin Cinderella), “The Other Side of the Sky”, “The Story of Anniko, Icarus and Daedalus,”  “Perseus”, “The Third Elevator”, “The New Colossus” 

Unit 6: The Power of One - How do we stand out from a crowd?

• Genre Focus: Drama
• Writing Focus: Oral Project writing

Texts: “Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea”, A Thousand Cranes, Remarks at the UNESCO Education for All Week Luncheon, Hidden Figures (excerpt), “Miami Dancer Follows Dreams While Planning for the Future”, “Reality TV and Society”, “The Matsuyama Mirror”, “New Directions”, “Choices”, and “Cuentos de Josefina”