Grade 7 Curriculum 

Students will examine the characteristics of living things including the structure of cells and the processes they carry out.  Students will also learn what materials are required by living things, how the materials are delivered, and how these materials sustain life. 

Students will study the body systems of organisms and explore how the interactions of those systems affect overall functions.  Students will learn about the levels of organization within an organism and the contribution cells provide a system as the basic building blocks of life. Students will explore how matter and energy are processed by organisms to build, maintain, and repair themselves.  Students will relate structure and function of body systems to nutritional requirements and disease prevention.

Students will study the principles of heredity and genetics.  They will learn how organisms reproduce and transfer their genetic information to their offspring. Students will study how characteristics get passed on from generation to generation and research several genetic disorders that affect human offspring.  Students will use biotechnical processes to explore the genetic characteristics of organisms.  Students will conduct a DNA extraction and a microarray will be performed as a way of checking the genotypes of the offspring.

In this unit, students investigate the connections between ancient and modern organisms. Students develop a model for natural selection and use it to account for patterns between the body structures and behaviors of ancient organism fossils and similar organisms living today.  The unit begins with students hearing about the surprising fossil of an ancient penguin (nicknamed “Pedro”) in a video from the researchers who found and identified the fossil. Students also read a photo journal from their research. Students question how penguins living today could be connected to this fossil of a much larger penguin from long ago. Students then explore the different species of penguins alive today through a series of videos and data cards. Students develop initial explanations for how today’s penguins could be connected to Pedro or other penguins from long ago. 

Students will explore the biodiversity and essential factors of different ecosystems and learn that a population consists of all species that occur together at a given place and time.  Students will investigate populations within food webs and categorize those populations as producers, consumers, and decomposers.  Students will learn that organisms compete for limited resources and that the number of organisms an ecosystem can support depends on the resources available.  Students will explore how competition may limit or generate the growth of populations in specific niches in the ecosystems.  They will use models to demonstrate the flow of matter and energy in an ecosystem.