Growing Up: Thinking With Literature - Grade 7
Arthur Applebee’s notion of “curriculum as conversation” plays an important
role in this multi-textual study where students read, write about, and write like texts united by the theme of growing up. During the unit, students will work carefully with texts by Alberto Álvaro Ríos, bell hooks, and Richard Wright. This close reading work provides a foundation for the heart of the study: the students’ own writing projects. In addition to writing text-based arguments and crafting a descriptive essay like Rios’s, students will take on a “little stories” narrative writing project. At the end of this project, student writings are compiled and studied alongside the texts by Ríos, hooks, and Wright. Students do essential comprehension and interpretive work with these compilations of “little stories” as they work to see the insights and questions their own writing brings to a text-anchored conversation about the idea and experience of “growing up.”
Table of Contents
Text Audio
Writing Tasks
Title: S-2: Studying Ríos: Mapping the Story
Session 2
Title: S-4: Studying Ríos: The Most Significant Line
Session 4
Title: S-11: Studying hooks: Creating a Character List
Session 11
Title: S-13: Studying hooks: Summarizing the Work
Session 13
Title: S-18: Interpreting hooks and Wright
Session 18
Title: S-25: Little Stories Writing Project
Session 25
Charts for Discussion
Title: S-2: Small-Group Work: Problems and Solutions
Session 2
Title: S-15: During Interpretive Discussions….
Session 15
Forms and Graphic Organizers
Title: S-4: Criteria for a Good Discussion
Session 4
Title: S-23: hooks and Wright: Selected Scenes
Session 23