7th Grade Literacy Common Core Standards

RL 7.1 Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. Cite textual evidence Support analysis of text Differentiate between implicit and explicit Implicit, explicit, inferences
RL 7.2 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. Determine theme or central idea Analyze theme development over text Provide summary of text Theme, summary
RL 7.3 Analyze how particular elements of a story or drama interact (e.g., how setting shapes the characters or plot). Analyze interaction of story elements
Craft and Structure
RL 7.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of rhymes and other repetitions of sounds (e.g., alliteration) on a specific verse or stanza of a poem or section of a story or drama. Determine meaning of words and phrases in text Analyze impact rhymes, sound repetitions (poem, story, drama) Figurative, connotative
RL 7.5 Analyze how a drama’s or poem’s form or structure (e.g., soliloquy, sonnet) contributes to its meaning. Analyze how structure contributes to meaning in drama or poem. Per text such as soliloquy or sonnet
RL 7.6 Analyze how an author develops and contrasts the points of view of different characters or narrators in a text. Analyze development of point of view of character or narrator For more complex text, contrast points of view of different characters, narrators
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
RL 7.7 Compare and contrast a written story, drama, or poem to its audio, filmed, staged, or multimedia version, the effects of techniques unique to each medium (e.g., lighting, sound, color, or camera focus and angles in a film). Compare and contrast a written story, drama, or poem to audio version. Compare and contrast a written story, drama, or poem to filmed/staged version. Compare and contrast a written story, drama, or poem to multimedia version. Multimedia
RL 7.9 Compare and contrast a fictional portrayal of a time, place, or character and a historical account of the same period as a means of understanding how authors of fiction use or alter history. Compare and contrast fictional and nonfictional accounts of time period to understand authors use of fiction.

Compare and contrast fictional and nonfictional accounts of time period to understand authors altering of history.
Alternate history
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
RL 7.10 By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 6–8 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

Eduhonesty: I’d like to start by saying that standards are essential in education. We must figure out what targets we want to hit in order to plan instruction. States have always had standards. But I have misgivings about the above demands.

What about the low end of the range? What about the many, many American students who are not currently reading close to grade level? What will happen with/to this group?

We are reinventing the wheel here and I would like to observe that the Illinois standards and other state standards covered at least the bulk of these topics. Schools were already creating “Power Standards” to teach in Illinois schools. Power Standards are standards you pick to teach because you can’t possibly teach ALL the standards in one school year.

One of my major complaints with Common Core: It is better to do fewer tasks well than to gloss over the surface of many tasks, barely introducing ideas that are then likely to be forgotten. We only have so much time.

What I expect to happen is further gutting of social studies, science, electives and vocational/technical education (yes, I am fully aware that “vocational” designation is now supposed to have the word “career” in there somewhere) as schools try to get ready for the Common Core language and math tests. If there is not enough time to cover items likely to be on the test — there’s not if you read all the Core standards — then schools will steal the time from somewhere since substantial federal dollars ride on their success.

I honestly don’t know if I believe in exit tests. A former teaching assistant of mine from Honduras does believe in these tests. He grew up in a system where you passed the third grade test if you wanted to go to the next grade. You proved you were ready for fourth grade or you repeated the year.

My own opening argument for exit tests is a simple one. I’ll call him Jaime. This year, Jaime pops around and into my classroom regularly. He’s supposed to be in his seventh grade classroom, since he failed seventh grade. I’m pretty sure he’s failed other grades, too. If not, he started school late or something. Because Jaime is almost big enough to be a linebacker. He has a noticeable, black mustache. When I sent an email to the administration asking them to please promote this boy, I wrote, “he’s a little like Godzilla among the tiny residents of Tokyo.”

One fragment of a conversation from right before his promotion has stayed with me: “They should put me in 8th grade,” Jaime said. “I did what they said to do. I got Cs. If they’d told me to get Bs, I’d have got Bs. I did my part.”

I looked at this big boy standing across the desk from me, asking me to help him get his verbal contract with the administration fulfilled, and I thought, “You could have gotten those Bs, too.” But we had asked for Cs and Cs were exactly what Jaime had delivered.

I like this boy. He’s another student on the list of kids I’d definitely adopt, despite the fact I know he’d drive me completely nuts. He seldom follows marching orders. He wanders the school. He skips. He ambles into my classroom and that of a special education teacher down the hall. He’s not in special education, but she helps him with his schoolwork anyway. We send him back to where he supposedly belongs. But the problem is – he doesn’t belong in those classes. He has almost nothing in common with those little seventh graders, physically, mentally or emotionally. Eighth grade will only be a little better.

Jaime is a time traveler who has fallen into the wrong time. His physical and emotional peers are in high school. Some have dropped out of high school by now. I expect Jaime to drop out of high school. I hope to be wrong, but Jaime’s not academically motivated. The factors that might keep him in school would likely be social and family factors. He hasn’t had a chance to make high school friends. At conferences, his mom grinned at me when I suggested possible future military service.

“He’s too lazy,” she said.

She’s most likely right. I was grasping for the proverbial straw at that point. Military aspirations can keep a student in school because they provide a reason to get a diploma.

Fundamentally, this “kid” is a great guy and I’d like to see him finish high school. Neither his mom nor I can think of a hook to keep him in school, however. Jaime needs to become emotionally invested in school for that to happen. His many differences from his peers make that investment unlikely.

Eduhonesty: For me, Jaime represents the perfect example for why America needs exit testing. I recognize that what I am about to say will seem contradictory: I am recommending mandatory retention as a solution after describing a problem that probably came directly from Jaime’s retentions. I’m also creating a governmental requirement of sorts at a time when I believe we desperately — and I mean desperately — need to get the government out of the classroom.

But I look at Jaime and think that exit testing might well have rescued this boy. Jaime and many students like him have the intelligence to meet clearly-set standards. If the cost of failing to meet those standards will be an obligation to repeat fourth grade, I strongly suspect many of these boys and girls will learn what they need to pass a well-crafted exit test.

Illinois requires that students pass a test on the Illinois Constitution to pass the 7th grade and a test on the U.S. Constitution to pass the 8th grade. This test naturally makes our lower students very nervous. “Will I get a second chance, Ms. T?” they ask. Then they study like they’ve never studied before. I give them study guides and index cards to make into flash cards. They make the cards. They ask each other questions. They ask me questions. In the end, they all passed last time and most passed with a comfortable margin to spare.

When we pass a student who is unready for the next grade, we create problems that ripple beyond that one student. A few years ago, during a year when my school had 18 false fire alarms and a lot of time standing in the snow, I’m not sure any student was held back. Two of my students missed the equivalent of at least one day every week and yet were promoted.

Kids talk. The following year, we had students with stories like, “I got three Fs and I passed.” The new administration put an end to the automatic pass. Students began to fail. But the stories of students passing, students who knew that by any standard measure they ought to have been held back, were already in circulation. Some kids still don’t believe their grades are necessarily linked to moving on to the next grade.

Some students will fail no matter what we do and what stories are going around. Some kids just don’t do the work. Mostly, these are kids who need more active parental involvement, but I know failing children from families whose parents are requesting regular phone calls during the evening, parents who are working constantly to make sure their child fulfills school responsibilities. Our academic failures can be Jedi Masters at evading schoolwork, blocking calls and intercepting the mail from concerned teachers.

I do think that a percentage of our students would respond to the threat of an exit test, however. Academic performance in aggregate would improve. If we ended up failing and retaining more students, maybe those students should be retained. Under the current system, there are too many 8th graders reading at a third grade level.

Tenure appears to be disappearing and I don’t know how I feel about that. Teachers need more protections than the public may realize. For one thing, some students lie so well they can make me doubt myself. (Maybe I didn’t see him throw it. No, that’s ridiculous. I was only 15 feet away. He threw it.) For another, administrators can be both vindictive and arbitrary, not to mention incompetent.

Eduhonesty: Nonetheless, I’d like to note one problem with tenure.

After four years in Illinois, a teacher who has become tenured may be difficult to remove (this is less true all the time) but the administration has to decide within four years whether to fish or cut bait. Will “Karen” learn to manage her classes? Maybe. Classroom management in urban and financially-disadvantaged school districts often proves a tough proposition. If they cut Karen loose in year one or two, they are fairly safe from challenges and legal repercussions. But Karen may be a great teacher in a few years. Who knows? Administrations under a tenure system may not be able to take the chance and wait, unfortunately.

When they talk about that 50% of teachers who leave the field within 5 years, I think part of that percentage is created by administrators who got stuck with a tenured turkey or two and decided to take no future chances. Many teachers with good potential may lose their positions for this reason.

The following is from: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/01/creationism_in_texas_public
_schools_undermining_the_charter_movement.html

When public-school students enrolled in Texas’ largest charter program open their biology workbooks, they will read that the fossil record is “sketchy.” That evolution is “dogma” and an “unproved theory” with no experimental basis. They will be told that leading scientists dispute the mechanisms of evolution and the age of the Earth. These are all lies.

The more than 17,000 students in the Responsive Education Solutions charter system will learn in their history classes that some residents of the Philippines were “pagans in various levels of civilization.” They’ll read in a history textbook that feminism forced women to turn to the government as a “surrogate husband.”

Responsive Ed has a secular veneer and is funded by public money, but it has been connected from its inception to the creationist movement and to far-right fundamentalists who seek to undermine the separation of church and state.

Infiltrating and subverting the charter-school movement has allowed Responsive Ed to carry out its religious agenda—and it is succeeding. Operating more than 65 campuses in Texas, Arkansas, and Indiana, Responsive Ed receives more than $82 million in taxpayer money annually, and it is expanding, with 20 more Texas campuses opening in 2014.

Eduhonesty: Apparently, the opening line of the workbook section declares, “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.”

I’m not sure how I feel about this. Charter schools are private schools for all intents and purposes. It’s not like they are sneaking an unfamiliar theological view into the books, hoodwinking parents who don’t understand the educational agenda they bought into. Opponents will naturally argue that these schools should not be allowed to use taxpayer funds since not all taxpayers support this agenda. Well, I don’t support the war in Iraq but no one gives me a choice about contributing my tax dollars. I’d argue that the Founders’ intent with separation of church and state was to prevent the government from mandating that people follow one religion. Still, fuzzy science would seem to make for substandard schooling. The fossil record may have gaps, but we certainly have no shortage of fossils.

That said, I’d like to make the observation that protesting these schools because they have an agenda is hypocritical. Public schools certainly have an agenda. The large majority of teachers are liberal democrats and many are fiercely political. Union membership and liberal arts educations tend to steer people that direction.

I may alienate a few readers here, but personally I’d rather get rid of political correctness than Creationism. Education should promote free discussion and inquiring minds in my view. In that regard, the doctrine of political correctness seems every bit as intent as Creationism in shutting down the views of opponents, especially those who might hold conservative or anti-union viewpoints. I’d say let the people in Texas have their money.

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If I ask a classroom of middle-school students or even elementary students how many of them intend to go to college, every hand in the room is likely to go up. They know the right answer to that question, even if they are fuzzy on the details. Many or most of those hands will still be up in the freshman and sophomore year of high school, although I’m sure that by that time some students are just trying to duck the lecture they expect to get if they don’t raise their hand.

Eduhonesty: We have sold these kids on the product “college” very effectively. But many of these kids are not ready for college and some never will be. Some of these college-bound students will tell you they hate to read and don’t like school. Some are reading multiple years behind grade level and almost never do their homework except in spurts when I call home. These kids are extremely unlikely to succeed in college.

America needs a realistic vocational/technical track instead of this one-size-fits-all college plan.

I’ve said the below before but I’ll keep hammering on this particular nail. Nothing in this blog may be more important than the idea following:

Eduhonesty: Sensitive children may well accept buy into the idea that test scores show how capable they are in general. Especially when scores are consistently low – or are low on ”important” evaluations – they hurt. I am not saying students should never receive low scores. If you don’t know the math, you should not pass the test. What I am saying is that we need to make certain our testing instruments are appropriate. We should know our students. We should test our students on information they may reasonably be expected to know. In a classroom, new material should never be introduced during a test. If we must have unfamiliar material on a standardized test, we need to make certain that our students understand that the test is a state test. We do not expect them to be able to answer everything on the test. We only want to learn what they know so that we can figure out what we still need to teach them.

And frankly, if a test cannot tell us what our students need to be taught, we need to scrap the test.

It’s vital to keep in mind that some students will take a poor grade and decide to work harder. Others will give up. I am convinced that “failing” state tests year after year makes some students decide to exit the academic arena, a place where they feel they cannot compete.

If the Fix is in, can we fix the fix?

I become weary as I lay out the challenges that face educators today, and more weary still as I attempt to teach within the framework these challenges create. The ghost of Jacob Marley probably felt like I do. I’ll grant that I get regular time off and I’m not condemned to carry chains and heavy weights through all eternity, but I walk through every teaching day carrying a list of invisible weights. The list is long: NCLB and the standardized testing frenzy that resulted, Power Standards, RTI, unreadable books, inflated grading, irrational curricula, inappropriate classroom placements, unattainable lesson plans matched to those pie-in-the-sky books and standards, changing demographics, technological gaps that leave my students with little and sometimes no access to modern technology. These have been my chains.

The technology situation has improved dramatically, but most of the rest of the list remains as my status quo.

This is why I blog.

I teach because I love the little blighters. My computer flashes pictures from my photo library across my screen as a screensaver. I have photos from so many places and times. Many of them are classroom pics. I look at students from past years and often I smile at Ceydi, Arturo and the many others.

Opener, Bell Ringer, Do Now — These are some of the names for the 5-10 minute activity that starts a class. That activity performs multiple functions. Students are put to work right away. Students get to practice previous academic material. Teachers can take attendance and deal with small administrative issues.

I never did put Peter in as absent during those first few minutes. He wasn’t in his seat, but I knew the odds favored Peter’s eventual arrival. I wrote him a few referrals for tardiness. I called home. Others called home. I talked to Peter. Peter kept missing openers. He missed the introduction for a variety of new topics as well. In the end, he barely passed math.

Eduhonesty: When kids are walkers, if no parent gets them up and on their way, sometimes tardiness becomes a habit. I have hopes for Peter. He reads for pleasure. That alone can make the difference when (if) he pulls his act together. The potential remains for Peter to go on to college where he will need a remedial math class or two. I never give up on readers.

But Peter’s referrals might as well have gone directly into the recycling for all the good they were going to do. I wrote them because I needed to document my useless interventions. I recorded phone calls for the same reason. In the end, however, when a 13 year old is made responsible for getting himself up, a first period teacher may have little chance to fix the tardiness problem.

Looking back, I wonder if I should have been calling to wake him up. If I have a similar problem next year, I think I will try being the alarm clock. This approach may not work, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, I guess.

I wrote a fair number of referrals for Ervin, mostly all about breaking the cell phone policy — he was constantly texting or gaming — or not doing any work. He did breathtakingly little work, almost none in an average week, in any of his classes. The administration tried numerous interventions, tried to find him an off-campus placement, and talked until they were turning blue in the face.

Nothing worked.

But his attendance was excellent. He was there almost every day, phone in hand. He came even when told he was suspended at least once.

Eduhonesty: I liked Ervin. He had nothing against me. He had just stepped out of the educational process without leaving the building. The reason had a locker down my hall and I must admit she was a very pretty girl. She was considered to be a good student as well.

If Ervin hadn’t been such a bad example, I might not even have written him up. He sat in the back of the room doing nothing. When I moved him up front, he did nothing. I settled him in the back of the room where he could not been seen as easily since laziness begets laziness. Most of the students in the room understood Ervin was on a path to the fast-food drive-up window (although I don’t know if he’ll be able to muster up the work ethic for any job that rigorous) and paid him no attention. A couple of boys thought he was cool, though, and overall learning loss from his example trickled through the classroom.

I spoke with his mom often. By the end, she was just waiting for him to drop out since she could see no point in Ervin’s going to school anyway. I agreed. I’m sure everyone was relieved when he dropped out before the end of the school year. His mind had left the building many months before his body finally exited.