Understanding Group Membership in Society
Unifying Concept: The Courage to Be Yourself / Reading Focus: Informational / Writing Focus: Informative/Explanatory
Overview: This unit contains plays, stories and poems that will help students develop positive social identities based on their association with multiple groups in society. By reading historical and cultural pieces, they will affirm and accurately describe their membership in multiple social groups. The unit is also designed to help students understand the idea of diversity by becoming comfortable with people who are both similar to and different from themselves and how to engage respectfully with all people. This unit will help students identify figures, groups, events, and a variety of strategies and philosophies relevant to the history of social justice around the world.
Purpose: To identify the theme of each piece of writing.
To compare/contrast differences in characters, ideas in stories and poems.
To identify the central idea of text citing textual evidence.
To analyze the structure of a piece of writing and infer an author’s intention with piece of writing.
To gather information on a specific topic and write an autobiography essay.
To analyze how language impacts audience’s understanding of reading.
Enduring Understandings:
The ability to comprehend and analyze information develops critical thinking, promotes logical reasoning, and expands one’s sense of the world and self. / Essential Questions:
  1. Where does the meaning of a text reside?
  2. How do you use the resources of language to impact an audience?
  3. How can a reader infer an author’s intentions?

Target Standards are emphasized during the quarter and used in a formal assessment to evaluate student mastery.
Highly-Leveraged1 are the most essential for students to learn because they have endurance (knowledge and skills are relevant throughout a student's lifetime); leverage (knowledge and skills are used across multiple content areas); and essentiality (knowledge and skills are necessary for success in future courses or grade levels).
7.RI.1 Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
7.RI.2 Determine two or more central ideas in a text and analyze their development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text.
7.W.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.
  1. Introduce a topic clearly, previewing what is to follow; organize ideas, concepts, and information, using strategies such as definition, classification, comparison/contrast, and cause/effect; include formatting (e.g., headings), graphics (e.g., charts, tables), and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.
  2. Develop the topic with relevant facts, definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples.
  3. Use appropriate transitions to create cohesion and clarify the relationships among ideas and concepts.
  4. Use precise language and domain-specific vocabulary to inform about or explain the topic.
  5. Establish and maintain a formal style.
f. Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the information or explanation presented.
7.L.3 Use knowledge of language and its conventions when writing, speaking, reading, or listening.
Choose language that expresses ideas precisely and concisely, recognizing and eliminating wordiness and redundancy.
Supporting are related standards that support the highly-leveraged standards in and across grade levels.
7.RL.2: Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text.
7.RL.7: Compare and contrast a written story, drama, or poem to its audio, filmed, staged, or multimedia version, analyzing the effects of techniques unique to each medium (e.g., lighting, sound, color, or camera focus and angles in a film).
7.RI.5 Analyze the structure an author uses to organize a text, including how the major sections contribute to the whole and to the development of the ideas.
7.RI.8 Trace and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is sound and the evidence is relevant and sufficient to support the claims.
7.W.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.
Produce clear and coherent functional writing (e.g., formal letters, experiments, notes/messages, labels, timelines, graphs/tables, procedures, invitations, envelopes, maps, captions, diagrams) in which the development and organization are appropriate to the task, purpose, and audience.
7.SL.2 Analyze the main ideas and supporting details presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, and orally) and explain how the ideas clarify a topic, text, or issue under study.
Constant Standards are addressed routinely every quarter.
7.RL.1,10
7.RI.10
7.W.5,6,10
7.SL.1,6
7.L.1,2,6
Selected Readings of Complex Texts
Extended/Short Texts:
Recommended Extended Texts: Choose 1-2
Monsters are Due on Maple Street, The, Rod Sterling, p.415
Across Five Aprils, Irene Hunt
Recommended Short Texts: Choose 3-5
Boy: Tales of Childhood, Ronald Dahl, p. 533
“Crush,” Cynthia Rylant, p. 68
“Names/Nombres” Julia Alvarez, p. 37
“Rider, The” Naomi Shihab, Nye p. 61
Additional Instructional Resources
Electronic Resources and Alternative Media:
THE TWILIGHT ZONE("The Monsters Are on Maple Street") - YouTube

Across Five Aprils (clips) - YouTube

Performance Assessments
Formative Assessments:
  1. Multiple writing assignments including: short paragraphs, essays, letters, timelines, poetry etc…
  2. Questions/activities from textbook
3. Speeches/debates
4. Autobiography
5. Newspaper article / Summative Assessments:
  1. Small Group discussions/ role playing
  2. Mock interview
  3. Peer editing
  4. AVID or other form of note taking
  5. Posters
  6. Reading response journals
  7. Vocabulary

ELA, Office of Curriculum Development©Page 1 of 3

1This definition for highly-leveraged standards was adapted from the “power standard” definition on the website of Millis Public Schools, K-12, in Massachusetts, USA.

ELA, Office of Curriculum Development©Page 1 of 3