Mrs. Camaratta
7th Grade Life Science
7th grade Life Science focuses not just on learning, but on doing. Cells, DNA, genetics, evolution, ecology, microbiology, and the human body are studied. Interactive activities include everything from making an edible cell to extracting the DNA from a strawberry to creating their own book about the human body.
Our 7th grade students have excelled in the Alachua county science fair – last year we sent six 7th graders to the state science fair, even earning a first place award overall. One of our 7th graders was a BroadCom Semi-finalist this past year as well.
http://www.gainesville.com/news/20160921/area-students-fare-well-in-national-science-contest
Student Work
Our edible cell lab is the highlight of the first quarter. Frosting for the cytoplasm, sprinkles for the ribosomes, an Oreo cookie for the nucleus, and jelly beans for mitochondria. It is a delicious activity that makes learning fun.
Making everything as interactive as possible is important. In this second quarter activity, we are modelling meiosis using pop-beads.
BiodiversityJournal.pdfLymphatic System_Body System Book.pdfDuring the third quarter, we explore the school looking for different local plants and animals that are all around us. We document our findings in a Biodiversity Journal, which records not only what we found, but the classification of the different organisms and some interesting facts about them.
Our last activity of the year is writing a children's book about a human body system. This allows the students to integrate what they have learned in language arts and technology with the material that they have learned in science. To make it even more special, the winning students in each class got to present their books to 3rd graders at Metcalfe Elementary, and we published their books so that now anyone can check them out at the library. This is an example of the lymphatic system.
