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How to learn Grade 7: Science

Florida academic standards: Science, Grade 7

0 of 24 concepts ready to learn · Markdown, for your AI

1. Interdependence

  1. Symbiosis: Understand symbiosis — close relationships between different species — including mutualism (both benefit, like clownfish and anemones), commensalism (one benefits without harming the other, like remora fish riding sharks), and parasitism (one benefits at the other's expense, like ticks on deer) — and recognise these relationships in nature
  2. Food Webs & Interdependence: Construct and interpret food webs showing the interdependence of organisms in an ecosystem, explaining how a change in one population affects others

2. Heredity and Reproduction

  1. Offspring resemble parents: Observe that young plants and animals resemble their parents but are not identical, recognising inherited similarities and individual differences
  2. Predicting Inherited Traits: Explain how alleles are inherited in sexual reproduction and use Punnett squares to predict the probability of offspring inheriting a characteristic, including dominant and recessive alleles

3. Diversity and Evolution of Living Organisms

  1. How animals adapt to environments: Identify how animals and plants are adapted to suit their environment and understand that adaptation may lead to evolution over time
  2. Fossils as Evidence: Analyse and interpret data from fossils to provide evidence of organisms and environments that existed long ago
  3. Extinction & Rapid Change: Explain how environmental change can outpace a species' ability to adapt through natural selection, leading to extinction, using historical and contemporary examples
  4. Life Changed Over Time: Recognise that living things have changed over time and that fossils provide information about organisms that inhabited the Earth millions of years ago

4. Energy Transfer and Transformations

  1. Energy stores and transfers: Identify the main energy stores (kinetic, gravitational potential, elastic potential, thermal, chemical, nuclear, electromagnetic) and the pathways by which energy is transferred between stores (mechanically, electrically, by heating, by radiation)
  2. Reactions That Release or Absorb Heat: Distinguish between exothermic reactions (release energy, temperature rises) and endothermic reactions (absorb energy, temperature falls), with everyday and industrial examples
  3. Heating experiments and Q = mcΔT: Plan and carry out experiments to measure energy transferred during heating, including using the equation Q = mcΔT, recording temperature changes over time, and evaluating sources of error
  4. Building an energy-converting device: Apply scientific ideas to design, test, and refine a device that converts energy from one form to another

5. Forms of Energy

  1. Waves & Different Materials: Explain how waves can be absorbed, transmitted, or reflected by different materials, and apply these interactions to explain colour perception, sight, communication technologies, and the effects of different surfaces on wave behaviour
  2. How Sound Waves Travel: Explain that sound is produced by vibrating objects and travels as a longitudinal pressure wave through solids, liquids, and gases; describe reflection of sound (echoes) and absorption; explain why sound cannot travel through a vacuum
  3. Reflection & Refraction: State the law of reflection (angle of incidence = angle of reflection) and explain refraction as the change in speed and direction when light crosses a boundary between two media; apply ray diagrams for plane mirrors and refracting surfaces
  4. White Light & Colour: Explain that white light is a mixture of all visible colours (ROYGBIV), describe dispersion through a prism, explain why objects appear coloured (selective reflection and absorption of wavelengths), and describe colour mixing with filters

6. Earth Structures

  1. Types of rocks: Use vocabulary for Earth's geological processes and rock types — igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic, erosion, weathering, deposition, fossil, sediment, strata, permeable, impermeable — and apply these when explaining how rocks form and how landscapes change over time
  2. Earth's Atmosphere & CO2: Describe the composition of Earth's atmosphere (mainly nitrogen and oxygen, with small amounts of CO₂ and other gases), explain how human activity increases CO₂, and describe the impact on global climate
  3. Natural Disaster Solutions: Generate and compare multiple solutions to reduce the impacts of natural Earth processes on humans, such as earthquakes, floods, or volcanic eruptions
  4. Rock Layers & Relative Dating: Understand that rock layers (strata) form in sequence with the oldest at the bottom and the youngest at the top, and that fossils found in deeper layers are older — this is the principle of relative dating
  5. How Tectonic Plates Move: Understand that convection currents in the molten mantle drive the movement of rigid tectonic plates; distinguish between convergent (collision/subduction), divergent (spreading ridges), and transform (sliding) plate boundaries; explain why volcanoes, earthquakes, and mountain chains cluster at boundaries; introduce the Wilson cycle of supercontinent assembly and breakup

7. The Role of Theories, Laws, Hypotheses, and Models

  1. Science Can Be Revised: Scientific knowledge is provisional — it is the best current explanation based on available evidence, and it can and should be revised when better evidence arrives
  2. Evidence Supporting Ideas: Identify scientific evidence that has been used to support or refute ideas or arguments, evaluating the strength of evidence

8. The Characteristics of Scientific Knowledge

  1. Changing Scientific Knowledge: Evaluate competing scientific explanations about dinosaurs by weighing fossil evidence — understanding that scientific knowledge changes as new fossils are discovered and new methods of analysis are developed