Grade 7 Life Science

Course Overview

Middle school life science learning is intended to equip students to address the following six essential questions as identified within the Next Generation Science Standards. 

1. How do the structures of organisms contribute to life's functions?
2. How do organisms grow, develop and reproduce?
3. How do individual organisms obtain and use matter and energy, and how does energy move through an ecosystem?
4. How do organisms interact with other organisms in the physical environment to obtain matter and energy?
5. How does genetic variation among organisms in species affect survival and reproduction?
6. How does the environment influence genetic traits in populations over multiple generations?

The middle school Performance Expectations (PEs) in the life sciences address these essential questions and build on PK-5 ideas and experiences.  They blend Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI) with Scientific and Engineering Practices (SEP) and Crosscutting Concepts (CCC) to support students in developing usable knowledge to explain real-world phenomena in the life sciences.  In Life Science, students regularly engage in asking scientific questions that drive their investigations and lead to increasingly sophisticated evaluation of data and their presentation.  Students also have opportunities to learn and apply engineering-specific practices such as designing solutions to identified problems. Read the full NGSS storyline  (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.for Life Science.

The learning sequence in Life Science is organized around a series of driving questions that provide the context and motivation for learning.  Within each driving question, students engage in a series of unique learning experiences that are carefully designed to immerse them in the SEPs as they construct their understanding of important concepts. These experiences are carefully sequenced so that students encounter ideas that are developmentally and cognitively appropriate.  By the end of the learning experiences,  students will be able to meet the NGSS performance expectations and address the driving questions.

Grade 7 Science is comprised of six units with the following Driving Questions:

1. How can we make something new that was not there before?
2. How do living things heal?
3. Where does food come from and where does it go next?
4. How does changing an ecosystem affect what lives there?
5. Why are living things different from one another?
6. How could things living today be connected to the things that lived long ago?

Unit OVERVIEW

How can we make something new that was not there before? Seventh grade chemistry students' conceptual understanding of chemical reactions for middle school science is foundational to much science learning. Understanding atomic level reactions is crucial for learning physical, life, earth, and space science. Even more importantly, they open up new windows of curiosity for students to see the world around them. By seventh grade, students are ready to take on the abstract nature of the interactions of atoms and molecules far too small to see.

To pique 7th grade students’ curiosity and anchor the learning for the unit in the visible and concrete, students start with an experience of observing and analyzing a bath bomb as it fizzes and eventually disappears in the water. Their observations and questions about what is going on drive learning that digs into a series of related phenomena as students iterate and improve their models depicting what happens during chemical reactions for middle school science. By the end of the unit, students have a firm grasp on how to model simple molecules, know what to look for to determine if chemical reactions have occurred, and apply their knowledge to chemical reactions to show how mass is conserved when atoms are rearranged.

Embedded in this 7th grade chemistry unit are a variety of assessments, including self, peer, formative, and summative assessment tasks. This unit concludes with a transfer task in which students apply what they have figured out to two different related phenomena, elephant’s toothpaste and the crumbling of the marble that makes up the Taj Mahal.

We are proud that this unit has earned the highest score available and has been awarded the NGSS Design Badge Links to an external site.. You can find additional information about the EQuIP rubric and the peer review process at the nextgenscience.org Links to an external site. website.

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Unit OVERVIEW

How do living things heal? This unit launches with students hearing about an injury that happened to a middle school student that caused him to need stitches, pins, and a cast. They analyze doctor reports and develop an initial model for what is going on in our body when it heals. Students investigate what the different parts of our body are made of, from the macro scale to the micro scale. They figure out parts of our body are made of cells and that these cells work together for our body to function.

Once students have figured out what their bodies are made of and how the parts of their body work together to be able to move, they wonder how the parts of our body heal. They start by watching a timelapse of a knee scrape and notice that over time the part that was scraped is filled in with new skin cells. Students investigate what happens when cells make more cells, what cells need to make more cells, and how cells get what they need to make more cells. Students return to the healing timeline they made at the start of the unit and apply what they have figured out about the interactions between the different systems in the body to explain the various events of healing that took place for the injury at the start of the unit. Finally, they apply their model for healing to explain growth at growth plates in children's bodies as they become adults.

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Unit OVERVIEW

Where does food come from and where does it go next? This unit on the cycling of matter and photosynthesis begins with 7th grade students reflecting on what they ate for breakfast. Students are prompted to consider where their food comes from and consider which breakfast items might be from plants. Then students taste a common breakfast food, maple syrup, and see that according to the label, it is 100% from a tree.

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Unit OVERVIEW

How does changing an ecosystem affect what lives there? This unit on ecosystem dynamics and biodiversity begins with students reading headlines that claim that the future of orangutans is in peril and that the purchasing of chocolate may be the cause. Students then examine the ingredients in popular chocolate candies and learn that one of these ingredients--palm oil--is grown on farms near the rainforest where orangutans live. This prompts students to develop initial models to explain how buying candy could impact orangutans.

Students spend the first lesson set better understanding the complexity of the problem, which cannot be solved with simple solutions. They will figure out that palm oil is derived from the oil palm trees that grow near the equator, and that these trees are both land-efficient and provide stable income for farmers, factors that make finding a solution to the palm oil problem more challenging. Students will establish the need for a better design for oil palm farms, which will support both orangutans and farmers. The final set of lessons engage students in investigations of alternative approaches to growing food compared to large-scale monocrop farms. Students work to design an oil palm farm that simultaneously supports orangutan populations and the income of farmers and community members.

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Unit OVERVIEW

This unit on genetics starts out with students noticing and wondering about photos of two cattle, one of whom has significantly more muscle than the other. The students then observe photos of other animals with similar differences in musculature: dogs, fish, rabbits, and mice. After developing initial models for the possible causes of these differences in musculature, students explore a collection of photos showing a range of visible differences.

In the first lesson set, students use videos, photos, data sets, and readings to investigate what causes an animal to get extra-big muscles. Students figure out how muscles typically develop as a result of environmental factors such as exercise and diet. Then, students work with cattle pedigrees, including data about chromosomes and proteins, to figure out genetic factors that influence the heavily muscled phenotype and explore selective breeding in cattle. In the second lesson set, students use what they’ve learned from explaining cattle musculature to help them explain other trait variations they’ve seen. They investigate plant reproduction, including selective breeding and asexual reproduction (in plants and other organisms) and other examples of traits that are influenced by genetic and environmental factors. Students figure out that environmental and genetic factors together play a role in the differences we see among living things

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Unit OVERVIEW

At the beginning of this unit, students hear about the surprising fossil of an ancient penguin (nicknamed “Pedro”) in a podcast from the researchers who found and identified the fossil. Students analyze data about modern penguins and Pedro to develop initial explanations for how these penguins could be connected. They brainstorm about 1) Where did all the ancient penguins go? 2) Where did all the different species of modern penguins come from? and 3) What other organisms alive today might also be connected to organisms that lived long ago?

After exploring variations in body structures and behaviors in modern penguins and ancient penguins, they also analyze data from ancient and modern species of horses, whales, and horseshoe crabs to see whether these organisms have similar patterns. Then, to figure out the cause of the changes they have observed in populations, students explore more recent cases of changing heritable trait distribution in populations and explain them by developing a model for natural selection.

In the last part of the unit, students use their model for natural selection to explain how some body structure variations in different species of modern penguins could result from natural selection and how they could descend from a common ancient ancestor penguin population. They analyze embryological data to their argument supporting how different species may be connected. 

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