Grade 7 EMC’s Mirrors & Windows Program Overview and Correlation to Illinois Learning Standards for English Language Arts Your Best Resource for Meeting the Illinois Learning Standards for English Language Arts Help your students excel and develop the skills they need to meet the Illinois Learning Standards for English Language Arts with EMC’s Mirrors & Windows: Connecting with Literature. This new and innovative Grades 6–12 literature program also provides extensive and varied preparation opportunities and materials for Illinois ISAT and PSAE tests. By mastering and applying skills that are basic to all learning, critical to success in the workplace, and essential to life as productive citizens, students will become excellent communicators, team players, and problem-solvers. ©2009 by EMC Publishing, LLC All Rights Reserved IL001_IL032_IL_ATE_FM_Gr07.indd IL1 1/19/09 2:11:14 PM Reading, Writing, and Communicating You will have no problem meeting the English Language Arts benchmarks with Nonfiction Reading Model the Mirrors & Windows program. BEFORE READING Build Background Analyze Literature You need to apply two different types of A nonfiction writer uses different techniques background to read nonfiction effectively. One is depending on the type of nonfiction he or she is the selection’s historical, scientific, or cultural writing. The Analyze Literature feature draws context. Read the Build Background and Meet your attention to a key literary element. the Author to get this kind of information. The other type of background is the personal Use Reading Skills Read with Understanding and Fluency knowledge you bring to your reading. The Use Reading Skills feature will help you get the most out of your reading. Learn how to Set Purpose apply skills such as determining author’s purpose A nonfiction writer writes to inform, describe, and using context clues. Identify a graphic persuade, or entertain. Read Set Purpose to organizer that will help you apply the skill before decide what you want to get out of a selection. and while you read. DURING READING Use Reading Strategies Analyze Literature • A Reading Model for each genre applies • Ask questions about things that seem What literary elements stand out? Are the significant or interesting. descriptions vivid or interesting? As you read, • Make predictions about what’s going to consider how these elements affect your reading strategies and skills before, during, happen next. As you read, gather more clues enjoyment and understanding of the selection. to confirm or change your prediction. and after reading. • Visualize the information. Form pictures in Make Connections your mind to help you see what the writer is Notice where connections can be made between • The gradual release of responsibility model describing. the selection and your life. What feelings or • Make inferences, or educated guesses, thoughts do you have while reading? about what is not stated directly. uses a scaffolded approach to increase reading • Clarify, or check that you understand, what comprehension and guide students to you read. Reread any difficult parts. independent reading. AFTER READING Find Meaning Analyze Literature • Students are provided multiple opportunities Recall the important details of the selection, Review how the use of literary elements such as the sequence of events and setting. Use increased your understanding of the selection. this information to interpret, or explain, the For example, did the author use sensory details? in each unit to improve and expand their meaning of the selection. How did he or she help shape meaning? vocabulary skills within the context of the Make Judgments Extend Understanding • Analyze the text by examining significant Go beyond the text by exploring the selection’s literature selections. details and determining what they contribute ideas through writing or other creative projects. to the meaning. • Evaluate the text by making judgments about how the author creates meaning. 262 UNIT 3 NONFICTION 0258-0283_Lit3eG06_U03.indd 262 11/30/07 11:09:27 AM Read, Understand, and Respond to Diverse Genre and Universal Themes Apply the Model BEFORE READING DURING READING • Reader’s Context questions before reading The Jacket AFTER READING engage readers by asking questions that A Memoir by Gary Soto GUIDED READING Build Background Use Reading Skills But whole pieces still casually flew off my jacket when I played connect to students’ prior knowledge and Literary Context Although “The Jacket” reads like a short Identify Sequence of vi•cious (vi> sh@s) adj., hard, read quietly, or took vicious spelling tests at school. When it cruel, fierce 6 story, it is actually a memoir, a true story about something that Events Using a graphic became so spotted that my brother began to call me “camouflage,” happened to the author when he was in fifth and sixth grade. An organizer can help you I flung it over the fence into the alley. Later, however, I swiped the personal experience. autobiographical memoir is a primary, or eyewitness, account of achieve your purpose in jacket off the ground and went inside to drape it across my lap and events in the author’s life and how he or she felt about them. reading. Identifying the mope (m9p) v., be gloomy or mope. in low spirits Reader’s Context How does wearing a favorite item of sequence of events in a I was called to dinner: steam silvered my mother’s glasses as she • Mirrors & Windows questions after reading clothing affect you? How could your clothes influence the way story can help you better said grace; my brother and sister with their heads bowed made ugly you experience events? understand the plot and allows you to analyze the faces at their glasses of powdered milk. I gagged too, but eagerly ate big rips of buttered tortilla7 that held scooped-up beans. Finished, I ask essential questions about students’ Set Purpose possible meanings of the DURING READING events. Create a story strip went outside with my jacket across my arm. It was a cold sky. The Preview the memoir’s title and first paragraph. As you read, look Analyze Literature for ways Soto uses humor to reveal how the events affected him. to record the events in the Memoir How has Soto’s tone faces of clouds were piled up, hurting. I climbed the fence, jumping understanding of the literature selections. order in which they changed since the beginning down with a grunt. I started up the alley and soon slipped into my Analyze Literature happened. Note that not of the selection? jacket, that green ugly brother who breathed over my shoulder that Memoir A memoir is a piece of nonfiction writing that tells a all story events are of day and ever since. ✤ • Literature selections are paired with story from the writer’s life. Memoirs are about a person’s equal importance in the experiences and reactions to historical events. As you read “The plot. Decide which events 6. camouflage. Color pattern of green and brown shades designed to blend in with the background, Jacket,” decide whether Gary Soto is using the memoir to tell are significant enough to often used in military clothing and equipment 7. tortilla. Round, thin, flat bread usually eaten with meat or cheese other texts to establish context and to about his own experiences or about a historical event that he be recorded. lived through. Does knowing that the events actually happened W to the writer make the story funnier or more interesting to you? Soto wants Soto’s In this story, Soto says he blames the ugly jacket “for those bad years.” help students see relationships between a black leather mother buys him IRRORS Think of a time when you have felt that a situation or experience would jacket. an ugly vinyl INDOWS have been better if only one thing had been different. Why do you think jacket. W we allow ourselves to believe that about our pasts? literature and real-world topics or events. MeetM the Author GaryG Soto writes poetry, fiction, 268 UNIT 3 NONFICTION anda nonfiction. Soto was born in 19521 in Fresno, California, to a Mexican-AmericanM family. The family struggleds to make ends meet when he 0258-0283_Lit3eG06_U03.indd 268 11/30/07 11:09:33 AM wasw growing up. There were times when Preview Vocabulary SotoS had to wear cardboard in his shoes vi•nyl (v8> n’l) adj., tough, shiny plastic and pick grapes to make money. In college Soto discovered swoop (sw2p) v., descend quickly in a poetry. He began writing his own poems and soon won a sweeping movement national poetry award. Although Soto has written for adults, vi•cious (vi> sh@s) adj., cruel, fierce today he is best known for his writing for young people. mope (m9p) v., be gloomy or in low spirits THE JACKET 263 0258-0283_Lit3eG06_U03.indd 263 3/19/08 9:34:08 AM IL2 IL001_IL032_IL_ATE_FM_Gr07.indd IL2 1/19/09 2:11:15 PM Across the Curriculum Writing Workshop 1. PREWRITE Persuasive Writing Assignment: Write a persuasive essay in which I present and support a clearly stated Choosing Your Topic Deciding on Your Position opinion. Sometimes, your topic will be assigned to you. Before you begin to gather details and support, Persuasive Essay Goal: Persuade my audience to accept or act When you can choose your topic, select one that decide how you feel about your topic. State your Write to Communicate for a you care about. For example, you may care very on my opinion. opinion as clearly as you can in a single sentence. much about whether your town or city builds a Strategy: Present clear reasons for my skateboard park. You may have an idea for a way to opinion, support my reasons, and anticipate The town of Leesburg needs a improve the school bus or a strong opinion about a skateboard park.