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ACADEMICS | ||
| English | |||
Seventh grade English students work intensively in reading, writing, speaking and listening during the course of each week. Solid foundations in grammar, word usage, mechanics, spelling rules, and vocabulary development prepare students for effective written and spoken communication. Seventh grade grammar emphasizes sentence structure in order to create more sophisticated writing. Periodic quizzes will check retention of concepts, and final drafts will be assessed for editing accuracy and sentence variety. In order to improve verbal communication, students participate in speeches, oral presentations, debate, poetry reading, literature discussion groups, oral reading and composition sharing. In-class compositions promote fluency and are the basis for practicing the writing process: prewriting, revising, rewriting, editing, and publication. Forms of writing include narrative, descriptive, persuasive, and expository pieces. In seventh grade, students read and analyze a variety of print materials to improve organization, voice, word choice and clarity in their own writing. Research, note-taking, outlining, and report writing skills are practiced through an author report displayed and presented the night of Academic Fair. Literature discussion groups and response activities encourage critical thinking. An open forum exists for free expression of thought while skills are taught to support and defend opinion. Specific goals include an interpretive yet substantiated analysis of themes; aspects of characterization, use of description, and details of plot development. In addition, seventh grade students will work with alliteration, symbolism, simile, dialogue, and point of view. Students have a minimum of one hundred minutes of required self-selected reading per week. Books are selected from the thousands of titles in the Accelerated Reader program. Students take an Accelerated Reader computer quiz after each book they read. The purpose of this independent reading is to instill a nightly habit of reading and most importantly, to create life-long readers. Language Arts 6 | Language and Composition 7 |
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