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Grade 7
Indiana's Academic Standards as outlined for seventh grade and how, through participation in our interactive program, teachers and students would review these important principles.
English/Language Arts
Reading: vocabulary development. Learn the origin of the root words used in science and better understand how the parts of each word help explain its meaning. Use word search and crossword puzzles as handouts to enhance vocabulary and review concepts presented.
Listening and Speaking: comprehension and analysis and evaluation of oral communication. Use science to evaluate hypotheses, collect new information through observations and direct measurements, evaluate data by comparing and contrasting results, and summarize what was discovered in concluding statements.
Mathematics
Computation, Algebraic Functions. Use algebra and the functions of addition, multiplication and division to quantitate various sugars in food products.
Measurement. Use soil monoliths and Indiana soil maps to discuss the concept of time from a geological standpoint. Discuss the concept of time from a digestive standpoint as the early processes of starch digestion are studied using simple hands-on experiments. Discuss the concept of an acre.
Data Analysis and Probability. Enhance student problem solving skills by using graphing techniques to illustrate results. Learn triangular graphing while determining soil texture. Relate enzyme activity and substrate concentration with reaction time.
Problem Solving. Using clays that contain contrasting water-binding capacities have the students monitor the evaporation of water from these clays and show the results of this work using line graphs.
Science
The Nature of Science and Technology: scientific inquiry. Using our hands-on experiments discuss some facts we know about soil or plants, use logical reasoning to make an hypothesis and state an objective, outline the methods we could use to obtain results, and summarize what we discovered in a particular experiment.
Scientific Thinking: computation and estimation, communication skills. Estimate the reaction time for digestion assays varying enzyme and substrate concentrations. Introduce charge and show result of an electric current flowing in soil. Employ a bar graph to explain the differences in carbohydrate content among various foods. Use a triangular graph to characterize souls.
The Physical Setting: our earth. Water and glacial ice form our soil and shape/reshape Earth's land surface by erosion over extended periods of time. Rock is composed of different combinations of minerals, sand, and organisms. Discuss how soil evolves from rocks due to weathering and erosion, and learn the components of soil through texture analysis. Use monoliths to show the history of earth's formation.
The Living Environment: interdependence of life and evolution, human identity. Food from plants provides energy and materials for growth and repair of the body. Discuss the nutrient component of fruits, vegetables, and grains. Discuss the process of photosynthesis, the resulting sugar products formed, and how the plants metabolize those sugars into storage components. Using hands-on lab techniques examine how food is digested. Discuss the processing of food by industry, and how nutrients are altered through such processes.
Common Themes: systems. Do erosion experiments with and without plants and discuss the different outcomes as water moves through soil. Discuss clay and its negative charge and the ultimate effect it and organic matter have on nutrient movement in soils. Use filter paper to illustrate the capillary movement of water and to produce a chromatograph by separating black ink into its color components.
If you have any questions please e-mail either Sherry Fulk-Bringman at sherryfb@purdue.edu or Suzanne Cunningham at scunningham@purdue.edu .
S. Fulk-Bringman and S. M. Cunningham
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