• The Short Story: Plot, Character, Setting, and Theme
• Drama: Three Plays
• Nonfiction: Biographies and Personal Accounts, Essays for Enjoyment, Essays in the Content Areas
• Poetry: Narrative Poetry, Lyric Poetry, Imagery and Figurative Language, The Changing Seasons, People in their Variety
• Myth and Folk Tales Around the World: Animal Fables, Tricksters, Rascals, Fools, and Transformations and Origins
• The Novel: A complete novel

Features at the end of the selection are designed to foster comprehension and encourage constructive response, either personal or literary. The study questions are built upon four levels of comprehension: the personal response, the literal, the interpretive, and the applied. These features encourage the growth of skills needed by students to become independent readers.

Each unit ends with two complete writing lessons. Each lesson focuses on a form of writing and guides students through the writing process.

Math

The Nature of Science
What is Science?, Measurement and the Sciences, Tools and the Sciences
Do you read the newspaper or watch the news on television? Perhaps you prefer the radio or even science  magazines. Whatever your preference, you know that it's hard to escape hearing about advances in science. Computers, CD players, microwave ovens, and even hand-held video games all became possible through discovers in science.Science, for better or worse, is all around us. It is through science that we have developed new sources of energy-- and have found ways to make traditional sources more efficient and less polluting. Science has given us television, telephones, and other forms of communication. A list of scientific advances that have improved out lives could fill this textbook.
What exactly is science? How do scientists fo about making discoveries? If you think that science is a job for white-coated laboratory workers who never look up from their microscope or get involved in the world around them. In this textbook you will find out about the nature of science and the ways in which scientists investigate the world. You will have theopportunity to explore and discover something that few people understand: Science is fun.

Heredity: the Code of Life:
A unicorn is a mythical animal with the body and head of a horse, the hind legs of a stag, the tail of a lion, and a single horn in the middle of it's forehead, The unicorn was not the only mythical beast with a combination of body parts of different animals. The chimera of Greek mythology had the head of a lion, the body of a goat, the tail of a serpent, In anchient Egypt, the Sphinx was constructed as a winged lion with a woman's head. Do you think any of these creatures could exist in the real world?
Unfortunately, the unicorn, chimera, and Sphinx exist only in people's imaginations. In the real world, living things always resemble their parents. Horses never give birth to unicorns. I this book you will meet the man who discovered how living things pass their characteristics on to their offspring. You will explore the complex molecule-- called DNA--- that maks heredity possible and also see how  the principles of heredity that apply to plants and animals apply to humans as well. Finally, you will learn how scientisis are beginning to use genetic engineering to produceorganisms that will benifit humans in many ways--organisms almost as exotic, in their own way, as the creatures of myth.

Dynamic Earth -  It is midnight on the island of Hawaii.  The stars shine brightly in a coal-black sky; they look close enough to touch.  But in one part of the sky above a distant mountain ridge, something strange is happening.  Red and purple clouds swirl rapidly and restlessly, rumbling with thunder.  Just below them, there is an eerie reddish glow.  Orange and yellow flames flicker along the ridge, forming a shimmering curtain of fire.  Through your binoculars, you can see that this is no ordinary fire.  Fountains of molten rock the colors of flame leap from cracks in the Earth and fall back to the ground in showers of black cinders.  Scarlet streams of molten rock ooze from the cracks and flow away, creating twisted formations of black rock as they cool. Even as the island is being built up in one place, it is being broken down in another.  Waves pound against the island's shore, grinding the rocks of the coast into sand and carrying the sand away.  Farther inland, rocks are broken down into soil by wind, rain, and plants.  Like the rest of the dynamic Earth, the island is constantly changing.

Heat Energy - The colorful picture above is not a cartoon or a computer graphic.  It is a thermogram of a young girl and her pet dog.  A thermogram (from thermo-meaning heat and -gram meaning something recorded) is an image formed by the invisible heat given off by an object.  In the thermogram, the hottest areas are bright and the coolest areas are dark.  Doctors can use thermograms to determine whether parts of the body are functioning properly.  Thermograms illustrate only one way in which heat is important in our lives.  Heat is also important because of its many uses.  Thousands of years ago, early humans discovered fire and began using it to heat their cave dwellings and to cook their food.  Today, central heating and cooling systems make our homes, schools, and office building comfortable places in which to live and work. Heat engines-from steam engines to modern gasoline engines-help make our work easier.  But heat can also damage the environment if we are not careful.  What exactly is heat?  You will find the answer to that question in this textbook.  You will also learn about the many applications of heat in your daily life