7th grade English Language Arts
15 units matched to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). Kids see this subject as “Language Arts”.
Focus areas
- Foundational language skills: Greek and Latin roots such as omni, phil and luc
- Comprehension, response and genres: foreshadowing and suspense, poetry, argument and media
- Author's purpose and craft, and composition: direct address, loaded language and generalizations, and sentence craft
- Inquiry and research: asking questions, finding sources and sharing what you learn
Units
Unit 1
Literary Devices
Recognizing the tools writers use: figurative language, foreshadowing, flashback, symbolism and the three kinds of irony (verbal, situational and dramatic), plus the parts of a plot.
TEKS student expectation: 7.7(C); 7.9(E) · irony, foreshadowing and symbolism
Unit 2
Tone & Mood
Telling the writer's attitude (tone) apart from the reader's feeling (mood), and seeing how word choice and connotation shape both.
TEKS student expectation: 7.9(F) · tone and mood
Unit 3
Persuasive Power
Identifying appeals to credibility, emotion and logic; spotting weak reasoning like bandwagon, false cause and slippery slope; and judging which evidence and rebuttals are strongest.
TEKS student expectation: 7.8(E); 7.9(G) · persuasive appeals and logical fallacies
Unit 4
Clauses & Sentences
Finding independent and dependent clauses, naming the four sentence types, and fixing fragments, run-ons and comma splices, the building blocks of varied, clear sentences.
TEKS student expectation: 7.10(D) · simple, compound and complex sentences
Unit 5
Modifiers & Parallelism
Revising sentences so describing phrases sit next to what they describe (no misplaced or dangling modifiers) and list items match in form (parallel structure).
TEKS student expectation: 7.10(C) · placing modifiers and keeping sentences parallel
Unit 6
Word Mix-Ups
Choosing correctly between commonly confused words: its/it's, their/there/they're, then/than, lose/loose, who's/whose, affect/effect, accept/except and more.
TEKS student expectation: 7.10(D) · commonly confused words
Unit 7
Poetry Lab
Reading short original poems to find rhyme schemes, count stanzas, identify the speaker, recognize forms like haiku, limerick and free verse, and interpret figurative language and theme.
TEKS student expectation: 7.8(B) · poetic forms, stanzas, rhyme and meter
Unit 8
Punctuation Power
Using a colon before a quotation, a semicolon with words like however and therefore, and ellipses or dashes to show a pause, an omission or a break.
TEKS student expectation: 7.10(D) · colons, conjunctive adverbs and ellipses
Unit 9
Whose Story?
Telling first, second and third person apart, finding the clues, and imagining how a different narrator would change the story.
TEKS student expectation: 7.9(E) · first, second and third person
Unit 10
Roots & Word Parts
Children work out the meaning and spelling of new words from their roots, prefixes and suffixes, and meet figures of speech.
TEKS student expectation: 7.2(C) · Greek and Latin roots, prefixes and suffixes
Unit 11
Research Skills
Children practice primary and secondary sources, conflicts of interest, focused searches, checking AI answers and online images, quoting, paraphrasing and citing.
TEKS student expectation: 7.12(E); 7.12(G); 7.12(I) · primary and secondary sources, quoting and citing
Unit 12
Framing the Message
Children look at how headlines, graphs, camera angles, loaded words and sponsored posts shape a message, and how a reader's community and feelings affect their reaction.
TEKS student expectation: 7.8(F); 7.12(H) · how headlines, images and word choice frame a message
Unit 13
Spelling: Prefixes and Patterns
Children practice US spelling: -cede, -ceed and -sede, prefixes and suffixes that create double letters, -able and -ible, irregular plurals and commonly misspelled words.
TEKS student expectation: 7.10(D) · spelling with prefix, suffix and plural rules
Unit 14
Roots: omni, log, gen, vis, phil, luc, sent
Your child uses the roots omni (all), log/logue (word), gen (birth), vid/vis (see), phil (love), luc (light) and sens/sent (feel) to work out word meanings.
TEKS student expectation: 7.2(C) · academic words built on the roots omni, log/logue, gen, vid/vis, phil, luc and sens/sent
Unit 15
Talking to You: Rhetoric & Fallacies
Your child explains why writers use direct address and rhetorical questions, and spots loaded language and sweeping generalizations.
TEKS student expectation: 7.9(G) · direct address, rhetorical questions, loaded language and sweeping generalizations
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