Topics Addressed in 7^th Grade Science

The topics we explore in Pride Team science classes change each year in response to student interests, current events, and new opportunities. Your child’s Pride Team teachers change aspects of the curriculum each year, as we try to design learning experiences that capture student interest. Even though the labs, lessons, and homework assignments may change each year, I rely on Indiana’s Academic Standards to guide the choices I make. These standards address seven basic areas:

Standard 1: The Nature of Science and Technology addresses students’ understanding of how scientists make observations, investigate questions, and come to decisions about what their findings mean. This standard also includes issues regarding the interaction of technology and society.

Standard 2: Scientific Thinking incorporates the use of mathematics and measuring instruments in science, reading and creation of graphs, and critical thinking skills. In Pride Team, we make connections between science and math classes that help students achieve these learning goals.

Standard 3: The Physical Setting addresses several areas of Earth and space science, including causes of global climate change, the rock cycle, and some basics of plate tectonics. This academic standard also touches on Newton’s laws of motion, energy transformations, light, and sound.

Standard 4: The Living Environment is all about biology—classification, interactions between living things and their environment, cell functions, photosynthesis, and factors affecting animal population growth. Human biology is here too: this standard addresses the effects of technology on human life and health, basic nutrition, germs (and our bodies’ defenses against them), and the importance of a healthy environment.

Standard 5: The Mathematical World adds to the mathematical concepts that were in Standard 2, including some graphing skills, and the concept of a “representative sample.”

Standard 6: Historical Perspectives focuses on the theories and accomplishments of Louis Pasteur, best known for developing the idea that germs cause many diseases. I’ll tie this together with parts of Standard 4 since they fit so well together!

Standard 7: Common Themes are ideas to which we’ll return again and again. These include the idea of using scientific models (both hands-on and conceptual), interactions of different parts of a system, and the use of mathematical equations.

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