Reading

Writing

Math

Science

Social Studies

September

Unit 1 - A Reading Community & A Deep Study of Character

The goal of this unit is to take the energy that students have for reading, and to channel it towards more purposeful, but not less enjoyable, work. Students will read like writers, alert to the moves their authors are making, interested in the plot of their stories but also in how the stories are put together.

Unit 1 - Writing Realistic Fiction

This unit launches the belief that students will accomplish a lot of writing over the course of this year starting with the opportunity to write fiction. The emphasis of the unit is on narrative structure and craft in fiction writing.

Unit 1 - Proportional Relationships

Students will recognize and represent proportions including identifying unit rates in tables, graphs, equations.

Unit 1 - Changes in Matter

Students explore the properties of matter/substances and explore their physical and chemical properties.

Unit 1 - North America: Modern Immigration: US, Mexico, and Middle America

Students will learn the history of Middle American countries primarily Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico and explore the issues that surround the debate around illegal and legal immigration.

October

Unit 2 - Proportional Relationships and Percentages

Students will continue to work with proportions with a focus on solving problems with percents (e.g. tax, tip)

November

Unit 2 - Nonfiction Book Clubs

Students will continue to build their identities as nonfiction readers. The work will focus on the tools and techniques that nonfiction writers use and students will certainly become more alert to how nonfiction text structures--such as cause and effect, problem and solution, and compare/contrast--help readers organize information and create meaning.

Unit 2 - The Art of Argument

Adolescents often experience a tension between wanting to make a difference and feeling powerless. Students will learn that by engaging in informed debate they can learn to think more logically, to call upon evidence to support their ideas, to respond to counterarguments, and to write more effective arguments.

Unit 2 - Eastern Europe: Past and Present: Soviet-Russian Transition

Students will explore Eastern Europe with a focus on the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.

December

Unit 2 - Organisms and Ecosystems

Exploring ecosystems, students figure out how different elements of the environment are dependent on one another, and how matter and energy flow through the system.

January

Unit 3 - Rational Number Arithmetic

Students will add, subtract, divide and multiply positive and negative numbers, including fractions

February

Unit 3 - Social Issues or Dystopian Book Clubs

Reading fantasy and dystopian series gets kids into highly engaging, complicated novels. In this unit readers will be pushed toward deep comprehension from the get-go through the study of dystopian and fantasy texts in clubs. Additionally, there will be a new strand of focus on literary terms, analysis and critique.

Unit 3 - Writing about Reading

In this unit students learn to transfer all they know about writing to the writing they do about literature. In addition to collecting entries that are a response to text, students will learn the qualities of good informational writing. Students will write a companion text for a self-selected fiction novel that explains character development, symbolism, and theme among other figurative elements of their text.

Unit 4 - Expressions, Equations and Inequalities

Students will add, subtract, factor and expand expressions and solve problems using expressions and equations.

Unit 3 - The Middle East and North Africa: Foreign Involvement in the Region

Students will explore the Middle East through its geography, history and culture while incorporating current events throughout.

March

Unit 3 - Changing Earth

Through examining Earth’s geology, students explore how and why energy and matter are moved around Earth through different processes, and how that impacts the availability of different resources.

April

Unit 4 - SBA Test Prep

This short unit provides an opportunity to revisit reading goals and comprehension strategies for complex texts. In addition, the aim is to create a bridge between the authentic reading work up to this point and the specific language and structure of the test.

Unit 4 - SBA Test Prep

This short unit is focused on the specific, unique writing tasks on the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Students will review strategies for writing effective short responses, as well as tips for revising and editing.

Unit 5 - Two & Three Dimensional Geometry

Students will focus on work with circles (circumference and area) as well as problems involving angle measure, area, surface area, and volume.

Unit 4 - East Asia: Post-Cold War: Japan, North and South Korea

Students will compare the results of communism vs. democracy with a focus on North Korea, South Korea and Japan and why the Korean situation became a global crisis.

May

Unit 5 - Historical Fiction/Non-Fiction Book Clubs or Poetry

Students will be immersed in the world of historical fiction in book clubs in this unit. They will explore times and places they have never inhabited, and the experience will allow students to grow as readers, writers, and thinkers.

Or

Students will explore the world of poetry by becoming more familiar with authors, subjects, and traditions. Students will understand how the knowledge of structure and form deepen their understanding and analysis of poetry and help them to have more meaningful discussions about the poetry they read.

Unit 5 - Historical Fiction Writing

Students will begin the unit studying a mentor text in the form of a documentary. Students will then move on to studying a historical event or era about which to research, write, and produce a documentary.

Unit 6 - Probability and Sampling

Students will work with statistics in order to understand generalizations that can be made from random sampling and comparing sets of data using random sampling. Students will also develop, use and evaluate the probability of chance events.

June