Mrs. Lisa Verdigets
Literacy, 7 West
lisaverdigets@claytonschools.net
314-854-6438
th
24
year
teaching
Essential Question:
What is value? How is value determined?
Use of Core Literature: Use the text and ideas presented
in the text to help students better understand the world
around them.
Don’t beat the text itself into the ground. Rather, use it as
a vehicle to examine their own lives and the lives of
others.
7th Grade Core Text Titles:
Core texts are supplemented
poems, essays, picture books,
short stories, additional
novels, videos, etc.
This helps us use the ideas
presented in the core texts as a
springboard for our learning.
7th Grade Literacy
Moving beyond plot, setting, character. – Evidence and
reasoning!
We start to look at the elements of literature more deeply. • So, yes, the character is does this in the story. How does that
affect the plot?
•How exactly is the author choosing to convey deeper messages?
•So this is the setting of the story. How does that affect the plot?
How does the setting affect the characters? How does a
characer’s experience in the setting affect the plot?
•How does your personal experience affect your understanding
of the story?
•What is going on in our world today that helps us understand
this piece of literature? How does this piece help you understand
the world?
Other Shared Book
Experiences
Out of the Dust – set during the Dust Bowl
Civil Rights Lit Sets including titles such as:
Claudette Colvin
Mississippi Trial 1955
One Crazy Summer
Rock and the River
Spies of the Mississippi
The Greatest
The $66 Summer
Warriors Don’t Cry
Fire from the Rock
Writing assignments include, but are
not limited to the following:
•Poems
•Business letter
•Multi-paragraph essays
•Dialogue
•Memoir
•Creative writing
•Interdisciplinary writing
Independent Reading
Yes, there is required
independent reading.
Student choice, with
some guidelines
The Writer’s Notebook, affectionately known as “The
WNB” to your kiddos, is a place for your students to
write, to brainstorm, to vent, to glue “stuff”, to record
examples of awesome writing…well, you get the point.
Bits of
information…
Homework : Yes, there’s homework in this class.
Homework is not busy work.
Homework is usually a necessary component of the
next lesson. If the homework is not complete,
students find it difficult to engage in class and fall
behind.
Much of your child’s work will be
completed on GoogleDocs.
Students get feedback on their work in
many ways including peer feedback, oneon-one conferences, and comments on
GoogleDocs.
Proofreading tips…
Please do not make corrections
for your kids. If you do, they
are not learning. My
suggestion: give them hints and
then talk through how to make
the corrections if necessary.
Read your child’s writing to
them! Sometimes they can’t SEE
mistakes, but they can HEAR
them!
“No Excuses”