In Ms. Brown's ELA class, 7th graders read Roald Dahl's short story, "The Landlady," to conclude a unit on foreshadowing and suspense. In conjunction with the National Junior Honor Society's annual Thanksgiving Food Drive, 7th graders donated tea to bring to life the central plot device in the story. To analyze the importance of tea to the story's antagonist, students wrote explanatory paragraphs on index cards, which were arranged together to form a teapot display above the generous donations of green, black, and herbal teas!

In Ms. Brown's ELA class, 7th graders were challenged to extend their understanding of how setting impacts mood in Kristen Lewis' short story, "The Nothing," through a "spooky tree" photo contest. In the text, a key setting detail that contributes to the story's uneasy mood is a tree "that had a face caught in a scream." Therefore, students had to find their own local "spooky tree" and explain why - if it were placed as a setting detail in a story - it would also give readers an ominous feeling. By identifying and explaining two specific "spooky" features of their chosen tree, 7th graders captioned their photos.  The winning photo is pictured, and the description read, "At Village Green Park, there is a tree with fallen leaves and burls/bumps on the trunk, which gives me an uneasy feeling. The fallen leaves are creepy because it makes the tree look like it is dying and has not been tended to. The five burls/bumps on the trunk make the tree spooky because they resemble the form of a baby that is trapped in the tree, which is unnerving."