7th Grade
Welcome to Seventh Grade
March: What is Grade 7 Studying?
ELA
Module 3 : Collaboration in the Harlem Renaissance
During the month of March 7th grade scholars will read, listen to and examine diverse works from the Harlem Renaissance. Throughout Unit 1 scholars will focus on respect and empathy, as they read about the black American struggle that will be explored through an in-depth analysis of poetry, art, music and literature. The skills associated with literary techniques will include figurative language such as allusion and metaphor. In contrast, students will learn techniques used in music. Students will be expected to explain how volume, tone, and tempo affect meaning and develop themes that represent tough times. In preparation for the ELA state exam the skill of comparing and contrasting various texts will be part of the unit’s area of study. For the mid-unit assessment, students examine the thematic connections between the poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by James Weldon Johnson and the song and sculpture inspired by the text. When Unit 2 is completed, students will then explore the social and political context of the Harlem Renaissance.
Illustrative Math:
Unit 5: Rational Number Arithmetic
In this unit, students perform operations on rational numbers, which are all numbers that can be written as a positive or negative fraction. This builds on grade 6 work with interpreting, comparing, and plotting rational numbers. Students begin by revisiting how signed numbers are used to represent quantities above and below a reference point, such as measurements of temperature and elevation. They use tables and number line diagrams to represent changes in temperature or elevation. They extend addition and subtraction from fractions to all rational numbers. Next, students examine multiplication and division. They work with constant velocity, which is a signed number that indicates direction and speed. This allows products of signed numbers to be interpreted in terms of position, direction of movement, and time before or after a specific point. Students use the relationship between multiplication and division to understand how division extends to rational numbers.
In addition, students are expected to justify reasoning about distances on a number line and about negative numbers, account balances, and debt. Students are also expected to explain how to determine changes in temperature, how to find information using inverses, and how to model situations involving signed numbers.
Science:
Chemists answer questions about what substances are and where they come from. In this unit, students take on the role of student chemists to solve mysteries that can only be solved with an understanding of fundamental chemical principles. The first mystery is a fictional yet realistic scenario in which a reddish-brown substance is coming out of the water pipes in a neighborhood that gets its water from a well. This scenario serves as the anchor phenomenon for the unit. As students learn about what makes substances different in Chapter 1, they apply their growing knowledge of properties and atomic composition to determine that the reddish-brown substance is not the same substance as either the substance that makes up the pipes or the fertilizer that has seeped into the well water. As students learn about chemical reactions in Chapter 2, their explanation builds. Students apply what they have learned about atomic rearrangement to determine that the reddish-brown substance, now identified as rust, could only have formed from a chemical reaction between the iron pipes and the fertilizer. As students learn about the conservation of matter in Chapter 3, their explanation culminates with the conclusion that the reaction between the iron pipes and the fertilizer that formed the rust must also have formed another substance, which must be present in the water. In the last chapter of this unit, students continue in their role as student chemists, working to assist in a police investigation of a robbery that involved the use of an unknown substance to steal a rare and expensive diamond. Students must use their understanding of substances, atoms, and chemical reactions to identify the unknown substance as hydrofluoric acid. They then help the police determine which of their suspects is most likely to have produced this substance.
Social Studies:
Students are continuing their study of the Thirteen British Colonies. Students will be creating an annotated map of one the the following the colonial regions: New England, Southern, and Middle Colonies. We will be wrapping up our study of the colonial period with a focus on the experiences of women in the colonies and resistance of the enslaved in New York. We will then begin our study of the American Revolution.