7th Grade Language Arts PLC Meetings- week of January 19th
Tuesday January 19th
We met in E11 and continued to look at learning essential questions. We completed the next two
units and the notes can be seen below.
Unit: Elements of Fiction
LEQ: How do effective writers use irony and figurative language?
 We discussed a teaching idea to go with this. Reading a short story "The Chaser" which
correlates with a Twilight Zone episode. Nancy Herb has done this in her class, if you have
specific questions please see her.
LEQ: How does the use of euphemisms make writing more colorful?
 We discussed examples of euphemisms. This is making something sound nicer. Insteading
of saying "kill the dog" you could say "put the dog to sleep"
LEQ: How do some themes carry across time and a variety of genres?
 A question was brought up about different examples of this. What are some novels or short
stories that have the same theme? This might be revisited at another time.
LEQ: How can I produce a quality piece of fiction writing?
 The following was listed for this question: plot (beginning, middle, end), characters, dialogue,
point of view same throughout, verb tense, setting, conventions
Unit: Narrative Text
LEQ: How do the purpose and the point of view in a narrative text work together to tell a
story?
 As a whole, we feel that this question is not the best question in the tool box. This is one we
would like to reword or eliminate in the future.
LEQ: What literary strategies and narrative techniques are used to create an engaging
narrative?
 Strategies: dialogue, verb tense, point of view, conventions, lead/hook, descriptive language
LEQ: When and how are different types of narrative writing effective?
 As a group, we decided this would be a question that we would like to reword in the future.
LEQ: How do I choose the precise language I need to convey my message?
This question we thought was reviewing what has been said in the other questions, this could
also be a possible elimination.
Thursday January 21st
We met in E8 with Susan. We discussed walkthrough data and other happening information.
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Susan noted two pieces on information about the walk through data.
 Direct Instruction (72%)
 Higher Order Thinking (65%)
There have been several people sent here from PDE since parts of district is in correction
action etc. One of those people being Vera Bej.
Vera Bej
 Focusing on Rigor and Student Engagement
 Pushing Bloom's Taxonomy
 Be aware of having too many worksheets in a lesson
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Students should be working harder than you
Idea: Give students Bloom words and have them pose their own questions within a
lesson
Susan addresssed higher order thinking questions in lessons. She wants Faust and high
school to have at least 2 higher order thinking questions within lesson plans. We should start
thinking about this, since we are transitioning into two middle schools and it will have all
secondary buildings speaking same language and be on the same page
Susan will be meeting with Kurt in the next couple of days. She has put together a packet of
things to cover during our PLC meetings. In this packet there will be worksheets that
correlate with the higher order thinking questions mentioned above.
Keystone Tests will be happening in two years, will take place of PSSA. Susan mentioned
that they are much harder than PSSA. Subjects mentioned for these tests were algebra,
literature, and biology.
National standards are also probably in the future.