6th Grade/ Year 1

1st Nine Weeks

(Unit) Resilience in the Great Depression

(Brief Description) Learning about adversity and hardships during the Great Depression, and how people transform due to hardships. Students read novels related to the Great Depression. Students will write an explanatory essay about one of the characters from the Unit texts, explaining how they have transformed during their journey.

7th Grade/ Year 2

1st Nine Weeks

(Unit) Identity in the Middle Ages

(Brief Description) Our students begin with a historical fiction narrative, Castle Diary. Taking a look at the medieval social hierarchy’s power whose fates are tied to the rigid societal structure in which they live. Next, students are taken away on a pilgrimage by reading, The Canterbury Tales. On the road to Canterbury, characters from disparate social classes swap stories and bond, revealing the power of narrative to transcend both social divisions and time. Lastly, we end our unit with the book, The Midwife’s Apprentice, the protagonists inspiring fight to carve a place for herself within medieval society illuminates the complexity and rewards of any quest to transform one’s life despite injustice, deepening students’ thinking about the relationship between society and the self. Students will write their own narratives set in the Middle Ages applying historical fiction elements learned throughout the unit to demonstrate how society can support and limit the development of identity.

8th Grade/ Year 3

1st Nine Weeks

(Unit) Poetics and the Power of Storytelling

(Brief Description) Students will examine storytelling as a personal, social, and cultural form of expression that we use to make sense of ourselves and our worlds. The focus of the contemporary novel-in-verse The Crossover, by Kwame Alexander. They learn the social power of stories, with their potential to help humans navigate complex social situations, become more empathetic to others, and integrate different world views. Students will explore these linguistically and stylistically diverse examples of narrative verse to understand the impact of oral expression and the role of poetic form in creating meaning. After producing their own poetic performances by creating two informational articles. For their Summative Task, students apply their knowledge of contemporary poetry to their contemporary experience. Devising their own narrative-in-verse, they work deeply with form and craft to make meaning of an important experience, creating a story by capturing essential moments with poetic precision and pacing.