A complete description of the middle school language arts Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills can be found at the Texas Education Agency web site. Some of the knowledge and skills emphasized in seventh grade, specific to reading, are described below. 
Across genres, students will describe the structural and substantive differences between an autobiography or a diary and a fictional adaptation of it; and explain the difference between the theme of a literary work and the author's purpose in an expository text

With literary texts, students will work primarily with fiction to explain the influence of the setting on plot development; analyze the development of the plot through the internal and external responses of the characters, including their motivations and conflicts; and determine the figurative meaning of phrases and analyze how an author's use of language creates imagery, appeals to the senses, and suggests mood. Students will also describe multiple themes in a work of fiction; describe conventions in myths and epic tales; analyze how place and time influence the theme or message of a literary work; analyze the importance of graphical elements on the meaning of a poem; explain a playwright's use of dialogue and stage directions; and analyze different forms of point of view, including first-person, third-person omniscient, and third-person limited.

With informational texts, students will work primarily with expository text to evaluate a summary of the original text for accuracy of the main ideas, supporting details, and overall meaning; use different organizational patterns as guides for summarizing and forming an overview of different kinds of expository text; and synthesize and make logical connections between ideas within a text and across two or three texts representing similar or different genres, and support those findings with textual evidence. Students will also distinguish factual claims from commonplace assertions and opinions; analyze the structure of the central argument in contemporary policy speeches and identify the different types of evidence used to support the argument; identify such rhetorical fallacies as ad hominem, exaggeration, stereotyping, or categorical claims in persuasive texts; explain the function of the graphical components of a text in procedural texts; interpret both explicit and implicit messages in various forms of media; and evaluate various ways media influences and informs audiences.