Grade 7 Writing: goals and how we get there
A grade 7 writing student at Learn To Be does three things:
- Works through the Essay Foundations Grade 7 course.
- Writes about what they read.
- Practices a little every day (at home!).
The goal and what success looks like
By the end of grade 7, a student writes an argument with evidence. They:
- take a position on something they read,
- back it up with what the text actually says,
- answer the other side.
The student can put a quote from the text into their own sentence cleanly.
Everything from earlier grades stays correct.
Typing goal: the student types 40 words per minute.
The course
Essay Foundations Grade 7 has 55 lessons. It covers thesis statements, the three-point thesis, and argument essays.
- Find the start. Try the first few lessons. If they are easy, skip ahead to where the student starts making mistakes.
- Do not skip lessons after that. A student moves on only after they master a lesson.
If the course is too hard, go down to Paragraph Mastery Grade 6.
What they write about
Kids cannot write about nothing. They write about what they read. The topics come from this grade's reading program. The 7th Grade Reading course also has short science and history passages that give them things to write about.
- America Becomes a World Power
- World War I
- The Russian Revolution
- America from the Twenties to the New Deal
- World War II
- Geography of the United States
- Atoms and Chemical Bonds
- Cells, Genetics, and Heredity
- The History of the Earth
A typical session
- Warm-up, about 10 minutes. Quick sentence practice. Make a short sentence longer. Join two sentences into one. Finish a sentence that starts with "because", "but", or "so".
- Course lessons. This is the main part of the session. Do one or two lessons together.
- Write about what they read. The student writes a short piece about something from their reading. The reading gives them something to say.
Between sessions (at home)
Daily practice happens at home, not in your session. A little every day works better than a lot once a week.
Tell the parent:
"Every day, have your child sign in at learntobe.org and do a lesson in their writing course. A little every day helps most."
Show the parent and the student how to sign in and find the course during your first session.
Other resources
- IXL. If your student has an IXL account through our pilot, its diagnostic shows the grade level your student works at in each part of English language arts. Use it as an extra check, not instead of the course. See How should tutors use IXL?