(Framing Text): Co-Requisite - Characteristics of Science

S7CS1: Students will explore of the importance of curiosity, honesty, openness, and skepticism in science and will exhibit these traits in their own efforts to understand how the world works.

S7CS1.a: Understand the importance of - and keep - honest, clear, and accurate records in science.

Pendulum Clock

S7CS1.b: Understand that hypotheses can be valuable, even if they turn out not to be completely accurate.

Effect of Environment on New Life Form
Effect of Temperature on Gender
Pendulum Clock

S7CS2: Students will use standard safety practices for all classroom laboratory and field investigations.

S7CS2.b: Demonstrate appropriate techniques in all laboratory situations.

Hearing: Frequency and Volume

S7CS3: Students will have the computation and estimation skills necessary for analyzing data and following scientific explanations.

S7CS3.b: Use the mean, median, and mode to analyze a set of scientific data.

Effect of Temperature on Gender
Seed Germination

S7CS3.e: Decide what degree of precision is adequate, and round off appropriately.

Unit Conversions 2 - Scientific Notation and Significant Digits

S7CS4: Students will use tools and instruments for observing, measuring, and manipulating equipment and materials in scientific activities.

S7CS4.a: Use appropriate technology to store and retrieve scientific information in topical, alphabetical, numerical, and keyword files, and create simple files.

Effect of Environment on New Life Form
Pendulum Clock

S7CS4.b: Use appropriate tools for measuring objects and/or substances.

Triple Beam Balance

S7CS5: Students will use the ideas of system, model, change, and scale in exploring scientific and technological matters.

S7CS5.b: Understand that different models (such as physical replicas, pictures, and analogies) can be used to represent the same thing.

Ocean Mapping

S7CS6: Students will communicate scientific ideas and activities clearly.

S7CS6.a: Write clear, step-by-step instructions for conducting particular scientific investigations, operating a piece of equipment, or following a procedure.

Real-Time Histogram

S7CS6.c: Organize scientific information using appropriate simple tables, charts, and graphs, and identify relationships they reveal.

Graphing Skills
Pendulum Clock

S7CS8: Students will investigate the characteristics of scientific knowledge and how that knowledge is achieved. Students will apply the following to scientific concepts:

S7CS8.a: When similar investigations give different results, the scientific challenge is to judge whether the differences are trivial or significant, which often requires further study. Even with similar results, scientists may wait until an investigation has been repeated many times before accepting the results as meaningful.

Effect of Temperature on Gender
Growing Plants
Seed Germination

S7CS9: Students will investigate the features of the process of scientific inquiry. Students will apply the following to inquiry learning practices:

S7CS9.a: Investigations are conducted for different reasons, which include exploring new phenomena, confirming previous results, testing how well a theory predicts, and comparing competing theories.

Pendulum Clock

S7CS9.b: Scientific investigations usually involve collecting evidence, reasoning, devising hypotheses, and formulating explanations to make sense of collected evidence.

Effect of Environment on New Life Form
Effect of Temperature on Gender
Hearing: Frequency and Volume
Pendulum Clock

S7CS9.c: Scientific experiments investigate the effect of one variable on another. All other variables are kept constant.

Effect of Environment on New Life Form
Effect of Temperature on Gender
Pendulum Clock
Seed Germination

S7CS9.f: Scientists use technology and mathematics to enhance the process of scientific inquiry.

Pendulum Clock

(Framing Text): Co-Requisite - Content

S7L1: Students will investigate the diversity of living organisms and how they can be compared scientifically.

S7L1.a: Demonstrate the process for the development of a dichotomous key.

Dichotomous Keys

S7L2: Students will describe the structure and function of cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems.

S7L2.b: Relate cell structures (cell membrane, nucleus, cytoplasm, chloroplasts, mitochondria) to basic cell functions.

Cell Energy Cycle
Cell Structure
RNA and Protein Synthesis

S7L2.c: Explain that cells are organized into tissues, tissues into organs, organs into systems, and systems into organisms.

Circulatory System
Digestive System
Paramecium Homeostasis

S7L2.d: Explain that tissues, organs, and organ systems serve the needs cells have for oxygen, food, and waste removal.

Digestive System

S7L2.e: Explain the purpose of the major organ systems in the human body (i.e., digestion, respiration, reproduction, circulation, excretion, movement, control, and coordination, and for protection from disease).

Circulatory System
Digestive System

S7L3: Students will recognize how biological traits are passed on to successive generations.

S7L3.a: Explain the role of genes and chromosomes in the process of inheriting a specific trait.

Human Karyotyping
Mouse Genetics (One Trait)
Mouse Genetics (Two Traits)

S7L4: Students will examine the dependence of organisms on one another and their environments.

S7L4.a: Demonstrate in a food web that matter is transferred from one organism to another and can recycle between organisms and their environments.

Forest Ecosystem

S7L4.b: Explain in a food web that sunlight is the source of energy and that this energy moves from organism to organism.

Food Chain
Forest Ecosystem

S7L4.c: Recognize that changes in environmental conditions can affect the survival of both individuals and entire species.

Natural Selection
Rainfall and Bird Beaks

S7L4.e: Describe the characteristics of Earth’s major terrestrial biomes (i.e., tropical rain forest, savannah, temperate, desert, taiga, tundra, and mountain) and aquatic communities (i.e., freshwater, estuaries, and marine).

Coral Reefs 1 - Abiotic Factors
Coral Reefs 2 - Biotic Factors
Pond Ecosystem

S7L5: Students will examine the evolution of living organisms through inherited characteristics that promote survival of organisms and the survival of successive generations of their offspring.

S7L5.a: Explain that physical characteristics of organisms have changed over successive generations (e.g. Darwin’s finches and peppered moths of Manchester).

Natural Selection

S7L5.b: Describe ways in which species on earth have evolved due to natural selection.

Evolution: Mutation and Selection
Rainfall and Bird Beaks

S7L5.c: Trace evidence that the fossil record found in sedimentary rock provides evidence for the long history of changing life forms.

Human Evolution - Skull Analysis