English Language Arts — Grade 7

Resources on the web

Leading to great places in the middle school classroom

This mini-lesson examines types of leads in prominent young adult literature and challenges students to search for great leads and then write original examples. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 6–8 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Inventing and presenting unit 3: Persuasive speaking and invention promotion

Students read about inventors, propose inventions to solve problems they have identified, and build and test their inventions. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 6–7 English Language Arts and Science)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Inventing and presenting unit 1: Analyzing nonfiction and inventing solutions

Students read about inventors, propose inventions to solve problems they have identified, and build and test their inventions. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 6–7 English Language Arts and Science)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Inside or Outside? A Mini-Lesson on Quotation Marks and More

Students look closely at their writing, marking quotation marks and considering how the conventions of punctuation apply. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 6–8 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Imagine that! Playing with genre through newspapers and short stories

Introduce students to one form of expository writing: news briefs and articles. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 7 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

He said/she said: Analyzing gender roles through dialogue

Students brainstorm gender stereotypes, find examples in popular culture, and discuss how the stereotypes affect their lives. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 7 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

GIST: A summarizing strategy for use in any content area

This lesson supports comprehension and summarizing skills by engaging students in reading and identifying the “5Ws and the H” in newspaper articles. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 6–8 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Expository escapade-Detective's handbook

In this lesson, students combine reading the detective fiction genre with expository writing. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 6–8 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Everyone loves a mystery: A genre study

Students examine story elements and vocabulary associated with mystery stories. They then create story frames, write their own original mystery stories, and publish them online. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 7 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Entering history: Nikki Giovanni and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Students study the social impact of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech by reading Nikki Giovanni’s poem “The Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr.”. Students complete a close reading of the text of King's speech and... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 6–8 English Language Arts)

Provided by: ReadWriteThink

Critical media literacy: Commercial advertising

Conducting an evaluation of television and magazine advertisements, students critique the effect mass media has on American culture. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 7–8 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Critical literacy: Point of view

Students learn to look at texts from different viewpoints. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 6–7 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Creative communication frames: Discovering similarities between writing and art

Students will build a comparative frame to explore the creative processes of writing and art as communication. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 7 Visual Arts Education and English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Cosmic oranges: Observation and inquiry through descriptive writing and art

This lesson employs scientific observation, descriptive writing, sketching, reading, investigation, and poetry writing to train students to use their senses and focus their attention. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 6–7 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Cooking up descriptive language: Designing restaurant menus

In this lesson students explore the genre of menus by analyzing existing menus from local restaurants and creating their own original menus. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 6–8 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Character clash: A mini-lesson on paragraphing and dialogue

When writing dialogue in their stories, student writers often forget to indent paragraphs to indicate a change of speaker, which can create problems in understanding. This ReadWriteThink mini-lesson asks students to look closely at their writing, marking... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 6–8 English Language Arts)

Provided by: ReadWriteThink

Campaigning for fair use: Public service announcements on copyright awareness

In this lesson that introduces issues of fair usage and copyright laws, students create audio public service announcements that can be broadcast over the school's public address system or published as podcasts on the Internet. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 7–8 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Book reviews, annotation, and web technology

In this lesson from ReadWriteThink, students will write a group book review, taking notes in their journals throughout the reading and discussion process; write short research papers as annotations for their reviews; and post them to the Web, demonstrating... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 7 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Book report alternative: Summary, symbol, and analysis in bookmarks

Students practice summarizing, recognizing symbols, and writing reviews—all while writing for an authentic audience. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 7 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Book report alternative: Creating a childhood for a character

In this lesson, students examine the character traits of an adult character in a book they have read, create a childhood for the character, and describe that childhood in the form of a short story, journal entry, or time capsule letter. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 6–8 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE