7th Grade - Gateway 2

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 7 meet the criteria that texts are organized around a topic/topics (or, for grades 6-8, topics and/or themes) to build students’ ability to read and comprehend complex texts independently and proficiently.

The Grade 7 materials are organized around the theme of choices. Each unit takes on a facet of this theme: Unit 1: The Choices We Make, Unit 2: What Influences My Choices, Unit 3: Choices & Consequences, and Unit 4: How We Choose to Act. Within each unit, texts are also connected to appropriate topics, such as advertising to kids and influential leaders. The texts included follow a logical sequence that scaffold students toward reading increasingly more difficult texts independently including stories, dramas, poetry, myths, literary nonfiction, historical, scientific, and technical texts. The Planning the Unit page of the materials provides the rationale for the goal of the unit and details the scaffolding that will be used to help students increase their skills by the end of the unit and ultimately by the end of the year.

Evidence includes, but is not limited to:

• In Unit 1, students explore the theme, “The Choices We Make.” Students read a series of literary texts including short stories, personal narratives, memoirs, poems, and myths to develop an understanding of how stories are created to reflect the concept of choice. Each text within the unit depicts characters that make notable choices that have a significant impact throughout the course of the story. This unit includes titles such as the following: Bad Boy by Walter Dean Myers, “The Road not Taken” by Robert Frost, “Choices” by Nikki Giovanni. The Planning the Unit page states that in the first half of the unit, students read texts that reflect personal narratives, and in the second half of the unit, they focus on more imaginative narrative writing skills in order to produce a personal myth that utilizes the skills they have developed throughout the unit.
• In Unit 2, students begin by reading informational texts regarding advertising which directly relates to the theme of “What Influences My Choices.” The Planning the Unit page suggests that these readings prepare students about specific advertising techniques they will learn later in the unit. In Unit 2, Activity 2.2, students read an informational text by Caroline Knorr, entitled “How Kids Can Resist Advertising and Be Smart Consumers.” In Unit 2, Activity 2.3, students read an informational text from Nielsen, entitled “Mobile Kids,” written to an audience of advertisers who are marketing to children. Students use the information learned from all texts to state and support a claim in their own argumentative essay.
• In Unit 3, the texts are organized around the theme “Choices & Consequences.” The Planning the Unit page states that the first half of the unit is connected to the novel Tangerine, and the second half of the unit is focused on the life and work of Nelson Mandela. Students read a variety of texts, including a novel, a biography, an autobiography, poetry, a speech, a song, and informational texts which examine how the choices individuals make drives the consequences those choices have for not only themselves, but potentially entire nations.
• In Unit 4, the texts are organized around the theme “How We Choose to Act.” In Activity 4.4, students read and analyze a trio of monologues, “The Paper Avalanche,” “Dreams,” and “Study Tips” all by Mary Hall Surface. Then they consider different performance techniques and present a monologue. In the second part of the unit, students read the play, Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare. Connections are made with the literal definition of acting, and the choices that Viola makes acting as a man in the scene. After reading the play, students predict the reason she might have chosen to do this and the difficulties that might arise from her decision. In Embedded Assessment 2, the students “work collaboratively to plan, rehearse, and perform a dialogue from William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. ” This is a culmination activity which connects to the theme of “How We Choose to Act.”

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 7 meet the criteria that materials contain sets of coherently sequenced questions and tasks that require students to analyze the language, key ideas, details, craft, and structure of individual texts.

The Grade 7 SpringBoard materials provide text-dependent questions and activities to build students’ comprehension and knowledge over the school year. The texts, including, but not limited to, poems, novels, speeches, paintings, and plays, require students to carefully analyze the text for use of language, key ideas, details and craft, and structure. The tasks and questions are sequenced over the course of an activity, unit, and school year to progress from more literal and scaffolded tasks, to more rigorous and independent ones. In the Teacher Wrap, teachers are provided with guidance, instructions, scaffolds, and suggestions for the planning and implementation of questions and tasks to utilize in class. Teachers are provided with formative and summative tasks that show mastery of the concepts included in each unit.

Examples include, but are not limited to:

• In Unit 1, Activity 1.3, students read the poem,“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. In Returning to the Text question 2, students are asked to identify the lines that name the factors that he considers while deciding and to explain the word diverged within the context of the poem. Students also read “Choices” by Nikki Giovanni. In Returning to the Text: Vocabulary Question 6, students offer examples of words that give a specific connotation, as well as, words and phrases with figurative meanings. Then, students examine the words trodden and satisfied contained within the poems and explain whether they have a more positive or negative connotation.
• In Unit 1, Activity 1.5, students read an excerpt from Bad Boy by Walter Dean Myers and analyze the language of the text. Students answer the following questions: “What is the metaphor in paragraph 14, and how does it help characterize Mrs. Conway? In paragraph 22, what word does the narrator use to describe his ‘Needs Improvement’ mark on his report card? What does that word choice convey to the reader?”
• In Unit 2, Activity 2.14 students read a Nobel Lecture speech by Malala Yousafzai. In Returning to the Text question 7, students answer the question, “Find examples of cause-and-effect relationships in Yousafzai’s speech. How do they contribute to the overall tone of the text?”
• In Unit 3, Activity 3.7, students complete a graphic organizer to examine how setting influences the character and plot and affects the mood of a section of the novel Tangerine by Edward Bloor. In the Detail about Setting section, the students are asked the following questions: “How does the detail influence a character’s action or the plot?" (consequences) and “How does the detail affect the mood?” Then students complete the Writing to Sources: Informational Text activity in which they “write a paragraph that explains how the setting of Tangerine has influenced the plot so far. Students must: create a topic sentence about the setting; cite evidence from the text, such as details and quotations, to support your ideas; use transition words and a variety of sentence structures.”
• In Unit 4, Activity 4.2, students read “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost and examine language, word choice, key details, craft, and structure by responding to several prompts, including: “Write a description of how the speaker gives the reader more information in each stanza, creating a complete explanation of the speaker's situation by the poem's conclusion. Each stanza in the poem ‘Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening’ is connected by rhyme. Using four different colors, highlight the words that rhyme with each other. Is there a pattern to the rhymes used? If so, what is it?”

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 7 meet the criteria that materials contain a coherently sequenced set of text-dependent questions and tasks that require students to analyze the integration of knowledge and ideas across both individual and multiple texts.

In the SpringBoard Grade 7 materials, the majority of the questions and tasks in the materials support students’ analysis of knowledge and ideas. The teacher materials found in the Teacher Wrap section provide teachers with guidance on sequencing questions and tasks, as well as guidance on scaffolding and differentiation. The materials provide opportunities for students to integrate knowledge over a single text and multiple texts in each unit. Students are also provided with the opportunity to analyze their independent reading selections with the texts read in class through the Independent Reading Checkpoints and in some cases, the opportunity to analyze primary and secondary sources on the same topic. By the end of each unit and the program, students are integrating their learning from all the activities associated with that unit.

Examples include, but are not limited to:

• In Unit 1, Activity 1.3, students read the poems, “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost and “Choices” by Nikki Giovanni. The questions that follow these poems afford students the opportunity to analyze each individual poem, as well as, the two poems together. Specifically, the questions focus on the choice the narrator must face in “The Road Not Taken” and how the narrator in “Choices” describes not having a choice. Finally, students are asked to respond to this question: “How do choices impact the narrators’ lives differently in ‘The Road Not Taken’ and ‘Choices’?”
• In Unit 1, Activity 1.15, Independent Reading Checkpoint, students analyze across multiple texts when connecting their Independent Reading Selection to the texts read in class. Students respond to the following: “With a partner, discuss the different explanations for natural phenomena you have discovered through your independent reading. Consider these questions: Was one natural phenomenon explained in different ways in different myths or folktales you read? What might each explanation tell you about the culture from which it came?”
• In Unit 2, Activity 2.14, students reread two speeches, “Nobel Lecture” by Malala Yousafzai and “Ain’t I a Woman” by Sojourner Truth. Then using a graphic organizer, they find examples of rhetorical devices, such as parallelism and repetition, and the effects of those devices.
• In Unit 3, Activity 3.10, in the Teacher Wrap, teachers are provided with guidance to scaffold text-dependent questions, and “Leveled Differentiated Instruction” for Developing, Expanding, and Bridging support while reading the poem, “To an Athlete Dying Young” by A.E. Housman. For example, question 5 is scaffolded by providing more guidance with more specific guiding questions: “What effect does the final stanza have on the poem as a whole? What is the final stanza about? Who is the speaker talking to? How is it different from previous stanzas? RL.7.5”
• In Unit 3, Activity 3.14, students read a biography and an autobiography about Nelson Mandela to analyze across texts. Students respond to several questions including: “Compare the details of the Mandela biography with those of Mandela's autobiography. How does each interpret his mission once out of prison?” Students also complete a graphic organizer with the following prompt: “Based on the two different versions of Nelson Mandela's life that you have read, analyze how biographical and autobiographical sources emphasize different evidence and interpret facts differently. Also think about the benefits and limits of each. Make one observation in each section of the chart that follows and then add to or modify your response during class discussion.”
• In Unit 4, Activity 4.15, after reading an act from Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare, students look at multiple images form different productions of the play. Using the images, they complete a graphic organizer on the effects that costume, set design, and props have on the play.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 7 meet the criteria that the questions and tasks support students’ ability to complete culminating tasks in which they demonstrate their knowledge of a topic (or, for grades 6-8, a theme) through integrated skills (e.g., combination of reading, writing, speaking, listening).

The Grade 7 SpringBoard materials provide culminating tasks for each activity and/or unit that are multifaceted and require students to demonstrate mastery of multiple grade 7 standards. Culminating tasks include, but are not limited to, writing an advertising analysis and engaging in a collaborative conversation and writing and performing a dialogue. The tasks require students to engage in integrated reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. Tasks leading up to the culminating tasks are varied and provide teachers with ongoing formative and anecdotal readiness information. Teachers are prompted in the Teacher Wrap to actively engage with students as they are working independently, in pairs, or in groups to access readiness and are provided with scaffolding support, such as guiding questions, if needed. The culminating tasks build to give students the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge about the topic or topics of the unit and/or activity.

Examples include but are not limited to the following:

• In Unit 1, Activity 1.14, students read “The Burro and the Fox.” At the end of the story, students consider what would happen if a friend was in a similar situation as the burro. They respond to specific questions in writing in their Reader/Writer Notebooks and then discuss the problems they identified, as well as the solutions with a partner. During the discussion, they practice articulating their thoughts clearly as well as listening to their partners ideas. At the end, students agree on a decision-making process that could be used to help both students’ friends. This activity demonstrates reading comprehension and enables students to apply what they have read in the story to real-life situations through writing, speaking, and listening.
• In Unit 2, Embedded Assessment 1, students “write an informational essay that explains the role of advertising in the lives of youth and then to exchange ideas in a collaborative discussion.” Students demonstrate their knowledge about the role of advertising to kids through reading and researching, writing an informative essay, and having a collaborative conversation.
• In Unit 3, Embedded Assessment 2, students “Work with a research group to create and deliver a biographical multimedia presentation of a great leader whose choices have had positive consequences for society.” Students demonstrate their knowledge about their chosen leader through reading and researching, writing about their poet from their research, orally presenting the information, and listening and responding to the group members throughout the project process.
• In Unit 4, Embedded Assessment 2, students “work collaboratively with a partner to plan, rehearse, and perform a dialogue from William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.” In the Teacher Wrap, teachers are provided with the following suggestions for adaptation of the activity: “If students need additional help understanding the role of costumes in Twelfth Night, have them reread Act 5, Scene 1, and highlight the stanza in which Viola reveals her true identity. Have them summarize the event.” In the culminating task, students demonstrate their knowledge about drama through reading and analyzing the play, writing notes and annotating the scene, orally performing the scene, and listening and responding to the group members throughout the project process.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 7 meet the criteria that materials include a cohesive, year-long plan for students to interact with and build key academic vocabulary words in and across texts.

The Grade 7 SpringBoard materials include a cohesive year-long vocabulary plan that is included in the Vocabulary, and Word Connection sections of the materials. Additionally, the words are listed for each activity in the unit. The vocabulary listed is connected to the texts or the tasks in each unit and is hyperlinked to the text. Students engage in vocabulary instruction through direct teaching, using context, and completing a task such as graphic organizers. One graphic organizer used throughout the materials is the QHT framework which is Q—words you have questions about, H—words you’ve heard before, but not sure about the meaning, and T—words you could teach. Students encounter the vocabulary before, during and after reading and carry over multiple texts and/or tasks. Lists of Academic and Literary terms are provided in the Planning the Unit section of each unit. The vocabulary in each unit is embedded in reading, speaking, and/or writing tasks, and builds over the course over the unit.

Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• In Unit 1, Activity 1.5, Word Connections section, students learn how to use the words’ etymology to gain a deeper understanding of their impact on the meaning of the text. In the Vocabulary section, students learn the vocabulary terms, glint and indicated, which appear in the Walter Dean Meyers’ Memoir Bad Boy. Students learn the terms before reading and deepen their understanding of the words throughout the reading of the text.
• In Unit 2, Activity 2.6, Vocabulary section, the following vocabulary words are listed: “Academic: credibility, primary; [Content/Text Specific] Terms: supplement, foster, dismayed, embedded, deceptive, violated, simulate, secondary sources.” Students then read the informational text “Re: Advertising in the New York Times For Kids.” Before reading, the teacher provides the following instructions, “As you read, underline the reasons and evidence that are mentioned in the text. Circle unknown words and phrases. Try to determine the meaning of the words by using context clues, word parts, or a dictionary.” In Evaluating Sources, students work with additional terms: “You can evaluate both print and online resources using five separate criteria, including authority, accuracy, credibility, timeliness, and purpose/audience. Use a dictionary or work with your classmates and teacher to define each term in the graphic organizer that follows. Then add questions that you can ask yourself when evaluating sources based on this criterion.” Under Vocabulary, students receive definitions for primary and secondary sources. Students revisit the terms credibility, primary, and secondary sources in Activities 2.7 and 2.13 when working with more texts and conducting research for their information and argument writing tasks for Embedded Assessments 1 and 2.
• In Unit 3, Activity 3.13, Word Connections, before reading several texts about Nelson Mandela students explore the definition of Apartheid. Then in Activity 3.16, students answer the question “What can we learn from studying the perspective of both the ruling party and the anti-apartheid movement?” In Activity 3.16 students examine several images and graphs relating to Apartheid.
• In Unit 4, Activity 4.1, Developing Vocabulary, students complete a QHT sort for the following academic and literary vocabulary words in Unit 4: diagram, improvise, precise, structure, alliteration, assonance, consonance, dialogue, internal rhyme, monologue, pantomime, parody, persona, prose, verse. Throughout the unit, terms are interspersed through activities and texts and are called out in the vocabulary sidebar and the Vocabulary section. The vocabulary terms are also bolded and underlined within the texts. Students revisit the terms in Activity 4.8, reflecting on their command of the terms in another QHT sort.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 7 meet the criteria that materials include a cohesive, year-long plan to support students’ increasing writing skills over the course of the school year, building students’ writing ability to demonstrate proficiency at grade level at the end of the school year.

The Grade 7 SpringBoard materials support students’ growth in writing skills over the course of the school year and include writing instruction aligned to the standards. The materials include well-designed lesson plans, models, and protocols for teachers to implement and monitor students’ writing development. Students complete relevant and authentic writing tasks such as, but not limited to, writing a narrative, a research multimedia presentation, and an argumentative essay. Students are provided with ample direct instruction, practice, and application of writing skills that gradually move towards student independence. In the Teacher Wrap, teachers are provided with instructions on leading students to establish a Reader/Writer Notebook to record learning and ideas for their writing and to monitor their own progress and Portfolios to provide a place for storing writing tasks which show growth throughout the year. Each unit contains two Embedded Assessments, most of which are writing prompts. Students are provided the writing prompt at the beginning of the unit for Embedded Assessment 1 and midway through the unit for Embedded Assessment 2. Each activity in the unit helps teach writing skills through analyzing texts and writing prompts scaffold students toward their full length writing in the Embedded Assessment.

Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• In Unit 1, Activity 1.1, in the Teacher Wrap, teachers are instructed to set up portfolios and Reader/Writer Notebooks with students. Additional detail is provided for both: “Reader/Writer Notebooks may be made up of student daily work that you don't want written in the SpringBoard book, including: extended quickwrites, freewriting, writing prompt responses, personalized spelling lists, vocabulary study. Portfolios hold work that show growth and mastery of standards and learning targets. They also give students a place to organize culminating work for sharing with others and provide an organized way to show growth over the unit and throughout the year.”
• In Unit 2, Activities 2.10-2.16, teachers provide students with instruction and prompts to prepare them for writing an argumentative essay for Embedded Assessment 2. In each of the seven activities, students are provided with texts to model their writing after, and/or are provided brainstorming and reflective prompts to provide scaffolding and support. Some of these tasks are as follows: use a SOAPSTone graphic organizer for their own writing after having completed one for Andrew Rooney’s essay as a model; review the research process and an infographic entitled “Research Plan for an Argumentative Essay”; use a think aloud to analyze the rhetorical devices found in Sojourner Truth’s and Malala Yousafzai’s speeches. Students are also provided a detailed rubric with questions prompting them to monitor their own progress during the writing process.
• In Unit 3, Embedded Assessment 2, students “Work with a research group to create and deliver a biographical multimedia presentation of a great leader…” To prepare for this task, students engage in lessons on Nelson Mandela where they examine song lyrics, film clips, biography, and autobiography. These different types of texts and mediums serve as models for the students’ reading tasks in Embedded Assessment 2. In the Teacher Wrap, after students complete Embedded Assessment 2, teachers are instructed to do the following: “Portfolio: Have students respond to the Reflection question on the same paper they used in responding to the Reflection question for Embedded Assessment 1. Then you might want to ask students to reflect on the skills and knowledge they gained as they worked to accomplish the tasks of the Embedded Assessment. What was most valuable for their academic future? What did they especially enjoy or find challenging?”
• In Unit 4, Activity 4.5, in preparation for Embedded Assessment 1 (Creating and Presenting a Monologue), students write a monologue for one of the characters from “The Highwaymen.” Students are reminded to utilize writing skills they have honed throughout the year including: using diction, syntax, and punctuation for dramatic effect, varying the length and complexity of your sentence structure for effect, and sequencing information.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 7 meet the criteria that materials include a progression of focused research projects to encourage students to develop knowledge in a given area by confronting and analyzing different aspects of a topic using multiple texts and source materials.

The Grade 7 SpringBoard materials provide students opportunities to conduct multiple short and longer research projects spread across a school year and include a progression of research skills appropriate for the Grade 7. The materials support teachers in employing projects that develop students’ knowledge on a topic through embedding research in multiple activities in both the student text and the Teacher Wrap. The materials provide many opportunities for students to apply reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language skills to synthesize and analyze per their readings. The research topics align with the unit’s topic and to the tasks that students are engaging in during the lessons. For example, the students research an aspect of Nelson Mandela’s life before comparing the movie and the text, Invictus.

Some examples of “short” projects include:

• In Unit 1, Activity 1.13, students conduct a short research project: “Working with a partner, select a god or goddess. Conduct further research in order to create a “Missing” or “Wanted” poster for him or her.” Students utilize reading and writing skills to create a poster about the god or goddess. Students then present the poster to a group.
• In Unit 3, Activity 3.15, students “... gather, compose, and orally present research about the life of Nelson Mandela.” Students work in a research group to research topics that relate to Nelson Mandela from a provided list. Then students individually complete a KWHL (Know-Want to Know-How to Find the Information-Learn) chart. Next, students brainstorm research questions, and one question is assigned to each person in that group. Afterwards, students find three different websites that could answer their research question and evaluate each source. Students choose the best source and record it for later use. Finally, the teacher models writing an annotated bibliography and has students practice creating one.

An example of a “long” project is:

• In Unit 2, Activity 2.3, students begin a longer research project on the “influence of advertising on young people.” First, they create a plan for their research. Then they choose a topic. With guidance from the Teacher Wrap, the teachers help students write research questions and also consider their audience. Next, they “write at least five possible research questions. Then they evaluate their questions with a partner. In Activity 2.6, students engage in a lesson on evaluating sources for credibility and reliability. In Activity 2.7 and 2.8, students gather evidence from a film and a news article. Then in Embedded Assessment 1, students write an informative essay and are to use “ the articles in the unit and at least one additional informational text that you have researched.”

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 7 meet the criteria that materials provide a design, including accountability, for how students will regularly engage in a volume of independent reading either in or outside of class.

In the SpringBoard materials, students have frequent opportunities to engage in independent reading through scaffolded lessons and self-selected materials. Most texts are organized with built in supports/scaffolds to foster independence. Each activity includes supports/scaffolds called Learning Strategies, such as marking the text, rereading, and using graphic organizers. As indicated in the Teacher Wrap, texts are often scaffolded through completing first reads by the teacher or in small groups or pairs. Students then have the opportunity to independently read the text while responding to text dependent questions. The text-dependent questions and Learning Strategies scaffold student understanding in order to foster independence. In each unit, the Planning the Unit section provides a suggested independent reading list of both literature and informational texts which complement the themes and skills found within the unit. The Instructional Pathways section of the materials provides embedded independent reading in each of the units called Independent Reading Links and individual activities with two Independent Reading Checkpoints per unit. In these checkpoints, students are given a prompt for discussion, writing, or an oral presentation and are required to record them in their Reader/Writer Notebook.

Examples include, but are not limited to:

• In Unit 1, Activity 1.14 students read the fable, “The Burro and the Fox” by Angel Vigil. As they complete an independent reading of the text, they are instructed to pause and write questions they have in their “My Notes” section.
• In Unit 2, Activity 2.10, Independent Reading Link, students establish their reading plan for the second half of the unit. Students are instructed: “You might consider reading famous speeches or informational texts about issues on which you have a definite position. Use your Reader/Writer Notebook to create a reading plan and respond to any questions, comments, or reactions you might have to your reading. You can also jot notes in your Independent Reading Log. Refer to those notes as you participate in discussions with your classmates about how the speeches or information affects the choices people make.”
• In Unit 3, Planning the Unit, teachers are given a list of both literature and informational text that could be used for independent reading. These titles connect to the theme of the unit. The chart also lists the author and Lexile for each title and teachers are encouraged to provide student choice for independent reading. Some examples of texts for Unit 3 include, but are not limited to, The Fault in Our Stars (850L) by John Green, Return to Sender (890L) by Julia Alvarez, and Cesar Chavez (930L) by Josh Gregory.
• In Unit 4, Activity 4.5, in the Teacher Wrap section, teachers are given instructions on ways to support students at various levels of independence. For example, the teacher is provided with guiding questions before, during, and after reading. The teacher is also prompted to listen during class discussion and “Check students’ general comprehension of the text based on the observations and ask follow-up questions as needed.”
• In Unit 4, students choose different dramas or monologues to read independently for the second half of the unit. Students select poems the poet has written, as well as things written about the poet, such as articles and biographies. In Activity 4.15, Independent Reading Checkpoint, students respond to the writing prompt: “Select a character from your independent reading and describe how the playwright developed the character through dialogue and staging.”