English Language Arts, Grade 7 Module 3

Paths to College and Career is a new, comprehensive English Language Arts curriculum for grades 6 to 12 built from the ground up over a three-year period to address the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts and Literacy.  It reflects a deep understanding of the standards and assessments, and is written with a focus on the shifts in instructional practice and student experiences the standards require. It includes daily lesson plans, guiding questions, recommended texts, scaffolding strategies, and other classroom resources. Paths to College and Career provides teachers, schools, and districts with a concrete and practical ELA instructional program that engages students with compelling and complex texts.  At each grade level, Paths to College and Career delivers a yearlong curriculum that develops all students’ ability to •                read closely and engage in text-based discussions, •                build evidence-based claims and arguments, •                conduct research and write from sources, and •                expand their academic vocabulary. Paths to College and Career’s instructional resources address the needs of all learners, including students with disabilities, English language learners, and gifted and talented.  The curriculum is flexible, user friendly, engaging, and purposefully built to prepare students for career, college, and life. In Module 3 of Grade 7, students explore the life of Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave and noted abolitionist who wrote Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. The module focuses on the questions of what makes stories powerful and on understanding an author’s purpose. In addition, students analyze how writers use figurative language and word choice to convey meaning. A recommended read-aloud of The People Could Fly introduces the topic and the question that connects all three units in the module: What gives stories and poems their enduring power?  Students then learn about slavery, Douglass’s life, and the debate over slavery in the United States before the Civil War. At the end of the module, students select one event from the Narrative and rewrite it as a picture book for younger students, making sure that the story they create is powerful, just as the stories they have been reading are powerful.