GRADE LEVEL COURSE OFFERINGS

7th Grade Core Content

Course Description

English

In 7th Grade English, literature and a variety of modes of writing are used to probe more deeply into questions about the world, to expand creative thinking skills, and to make students’ voices heard throughout the greater community. The course helps students build on and further skills mastered in 6th Grade English, including reading comprehension, writing process, grammar, and vocabulary skills.

Social Studies

Seventh Grade Social Studies focuses on global issues that will challenge students to consider various contemporary issues (poverty, famine, immigration, civil war, politics, pollution, health/ disease, education, population, urbanization, genocide, religion, terrorism, etc.) while considering the role of the United States and the United Nations across the globe. Ultimately, the course aims to teach us all how to think globally. Research, writing, critical thinking, and presentations of learning are at the core of this course. The course will address themes across the globe, and address their root causes, often expanding generations.

Math

The Math II course focuses on the first half of the Algebra 1 curriculum. In the course, students will focus on simplifying expressions via the order of operations, solving equations and inequalities, and graphing equations. Mastery of solving equations will be assessed throughout the year. Students will learn through teacher instruction, collaborative work, and inquiry-based lessons. The purpose of using this model is to help the student take ownership of his learning experience and learn how to best work both individually and collaboratively, understand that mistakes are valuable learning tools, persevere when challenged, and learn to apply concepts to higher-level questioning, and most importantly, develop his curiosity of the world and be able to use skills learned when he leaves the classroom.

The Extended Math II course takes a deeper dive into the Algebra I curriculum.

Accelerated students are eligible to take the full Algebra I curriculum in 7th grade. The topics of study include properties of equality and inequality, solving and graphing linear equations and inequalities, ratio and proportions, laws of exponents, exponential functions, polynomials and factoring, and quadratic equations. Students will use application-based problems while learning how to represent data algebraically, graphically, and verbally. The prerequisite for this course is a teacher recommendation and placement test.

Spanish I

Seventh Grade Spanish offers students an opportunity to develop authentic Spanish language communication skills that they can use in everyday situations. This course will deepen and broaden the student’s foundation in basic Spanish grammar, and vocabulary, as well as the skills and strategies necessary for communication in authentic contexts at the novice level.