A full introduction for teachers who teach RL.7 in middle school ELA. In this post, we’ve included learning targets, concept breakdown, resource suggestions, and activity and assessment ideas!
I love watching and analyzing different versions of stories and characters.
Whether it is a real-life version of a classic movie or a shorter adaptation of a longer work, I am always intrigued by how the creator makes the choices they do.
I’m constantly frustrated that they removed one of my favorite moments or excited that they kept a specific scene in. I’m intrigued by how they showed the connection between the characters.
In the last 10 years, it seems like adaptations of old films and books have made quite the comeback, and we’ve been gifted remakes and different dimensions of some of our favorite books and big-screen characters.
As we begin to dive into the RL.7 standard, which focuses on analyzing different versions of the same story, it is fun to consider why variations do so well.
A conversation that follows this line of thought may be the perfect way to open up this unit with your students.
After talking with students about why adaptations and remakes are so popular, you can introduce them to the learning targets associated with RL.7.
Learning Targets
When you deconstruct a standard, start with the learning targets. To get the learning targets, break down the standard into 3-5 parts or key skills by focusing on the key concepts of the standard. In the checklists below, we have broken down the middle school standards into key concepts.
- 6th Grade Standards Checklist
- 7th Grade Standards Checklist
- 8th Grade Standards Checklist
Now that we know the key concepts, let’s outline the learning targets for each grade level.
Teaching RL.6.7 (6th Grade)
6th Grade Standard: Compare and contrast the experience of reading a story, drama, or poem to listening to or viewing an audio, video, or live version of the text, including contrasting what they “see” and “hear” when reading the text to what they perceive when they listen or watch.
6th Grade Learning Targets
- I can recognize the differences between multiple text formats – text, audio, visual, and live performances.
- I can compare and contrast what is seen/heard in a text when visually/ auditorily presented to what is experienced when read.
- I can determine the similarities and differences between the experience of reading a story, drama, or poem to that of listening or viewing the audio, video, or live version of the text.
Teaching RL.7.7 (7th Grade)
7th Grade Standard: Compare and contrast a written story, drama, or poem to its audio, filmed, staged, or multimedia version, analyzing the effects of techniques unique to each medium (e.g., lighting, sound, color, or camera focus and angles in a film)
7th Grade Learning Targets
- I can analyze the effect of the techniques used.
- I can explain the similarities and differences between a written work and an audio/visual presentation of the same work.
Teaching RL.8.7 (8th Grade)
8th Grade Standard: Analyze the extent to which a filmed or live production of a story or drama stays faithful to or departs from the text or script, evaluating the choices made by the director or actors.
8th Grade Learning Targets
- I can compare and contrast the text of a story or drama and the live or filmed production.
- I can analyze the faithfulness or departure between the text and the live/filmed production.
- I can evaluate the outcome/impact of choices made by directors and actors.
Growing through Middle School
This is one of the standards that actually changes quite a bit from the beginning of middle school to the end. Although you can do many of the same activities in 6th grade as in 7th and 8th grade, the complexity with which you explore the texts or videos chosen will completely change.
In 7th grade, you’ll focus mainly on the different techniques that the creators use.
For example, if the book has a first-person narrator, how does the movie fulfill the same need?
How do they set the scene in different ways?
How do they use sound or music to add to a work that wasn’t originally created to include those types of sound?
In 8th grade, you can use a lot of the same films and texts, but this time you’ll focus on how well it stayed true to the original. Was the adaptation changed significantly to meet the needs of a video audience with a shorter attention span? What scenes did they choose to cut out or keep, and why?
This 8th-grade analysis will result in a much deeper discussion about the author’s/creator’s intent and audience expectations.
Common Misunderstanding: You do not need to read a full novel
A lot of teachers believe that in order to analyze how a film version or dramatic version of a story compares and contrasts with the text version, they need to view the entirety of both. That is simply not true.
Although it would be great if we had all the time in the world to do just that, it is not really an option when we only have 40-60 minutes a day with students and a whole slew of other standards we need to introduce, practice, and assess.
Instead, try reading just a short piece of a text and then watching just the corresponding scene in the film version or showing a few different examples of that scene from different plays and videos.
Students can compare and contrast the scene with the limited amount of information they have and still practice this standard.
Another good option is to use children’s stories and short film versions or variations from children’s programming. These tend to be much shorter and still provide a good option for practicing the skills associated with this standard.
Resources for teaching RL.7
With so many different options for resources and discussion prompts for teaching the RL.7 standard skills, it is hard to know where to start. If you are looking for a quick way to start and make sure that you’re covering the different elements of this standard, consider taking a closer look at our resources for this standard.
Click on the links below to learn more about each resource.
- 6th Grade RL.7 Resource
- 7th Grade RL.7 Resource
- 8th Grade RL.7 Resource
Each of the resources works through the standard using grade-level-specific passages and activities that help the student develop the standard completely.
The resources include a lesson/activity for each specific learning target or concept and also include assessments, posters, and answer keys.
Activities and Projects for Practicing and Assessing RL.7 in Middle School
You have lots of different activities and projects you can do related to the RL.7 standard. Here are a few of the activities we have built into our resources. Hopefully, they will prompt some ideas that you can use to create your own resources; however, if you find yourself wanting to save a whole lot of time, you can also grab our resources to start using immediately with your students.
- Compare and contrast a text version of a story with an audio, film, or play version. We compare different versions of Shrek in our 6th-grade resource.
- To discuss how creators might portray different elements in the film, study different film shots and the effects different shots have on mood and tone. In our 7th-grade resource, we take a closer look at different shots and how a director might use them in a movie.
- In addition to different shots, you can also discuss the use of music and lighting in films. These are examples of other ways a director might try to set a particular mood or elicit a specific feeling from an audience member. In our 7th-grade resource, we do an activity that is designed to consider these types of elements.
- Storyboarding scenes help students to analyze the differences between different versions of the story. In our summative assessment for 7th grade, students do just that!
- Break a text or story down into individual scenes and then compare and contrast the individual elements. Some elements or scenes may have even been left out of a version of the story altogether. Discuss the results. We do an activity like this as part of the 8th-grade unit.
Ensuring your students understand and master the standards feels like a huge challenge, and we understand that. We have created full bundles of units built around the middle school ELA standards. Take a closer look at the bundles below to learn more about what we have available!
