To pique students’ curiosity and anchor the learning for the unit in the visible and concrete, students start with an experience of observing and analyzing a bath bomb as it fizzes and eventually disappears in the water. Their observations and questions about what is going on drive learning that digs into a series of related phenomena as students iterate and improve their models depicting what happens during chemical reactions. By the end of the unit, students have a firm grasp on how to model simple molecules, know what to look for to determine if chemical reactions have occurred, and apply their knowledge to chemical reactions to show how mass is conserved when atoms are rearranged.

A Google Drive folder with 7.1.1 and 7.1.2 phenomenon-based, 5E lessons that align to the SEEd standards. Lesson folders include lesson plans, a slideshow, and supporting materials for teaching the lesson to your students.

A Google Drive folder with 7.1.3 and 7.1.4 phenomenon-based, 5E lessons that align to the SEEd standards. Lesson folders include lesson plans, a slideshow, and supporting materials for teaching the lesson to your students.

A Google Drive folder with 7.2.2 and 7.2.3 phenomenon-based, 5E lessons that align to the SEEd standards. Lesson folders include lesson plans, a slideshow, and supporting materials for teaching the lesson to your students. Students will research and develop models to better understand the impact of landslides and earthquakes in Salt Lake County.

A Google Drive folder with 7.2.1 and 7.2.6 phenomenon-based, 5E lessons that align to the SEEd standards. Lesson folders include lesson plans, a slideshow, and supporting materials for teaching the lesson to your students. Students will explore how rocks provide evidence of the geologic events and processes that have shaped Earth throughout its history.

This is a seventh-grade student science experience tied to SEEd standard 7.3.3. In this experience students investigate how our heart rate is affected by different kinds of activities.
These experiences were designed to support students in engaging in science investigations with siblings and/or parents at home and then report back about what was discovered. They were created in a way that is easily adaptable for both online and printed formats. They are formatted to help students wonder about and investigate the science phenomena happening in the world around them. These experiences do not describe how students should write up and return work to their teacher. It is up to each teacher to adapt them to best meet student needs. When individualized by the teacher, a student could be asked to engage in one or more of these experiences a week and report back. This format aligns closely to the vision and expectation of the SEEd standards.

Unit Summary
This unit on metabolic reactions in the human body starts out with students exploring a real case study of a middle-school girl named M’Kenna, who reported some alarming symptoms to her doctor. Her symptoms included an inability to concentrate, headaches, stomach issues when she eats, and a lack of energy for everyday activities and sports that she used to play regularly. She also reported noticeable weight loss over the past few months, in spite of consuming what appeared to be a healthy diet. Her case sparks questions and ideas for investigations around trying to figure out which pathways and processes in M’Kenna’s body might be functioning differently than a healthy system and why. 
Students investigate data specific to M’Kenna’s case in the form of doctor’s notes, endoscopy images and reports, growth charts, and micrographs. They also draw from their results from laboratory experiments on the chemical changes involving the processing of food and from digital interactives to explore how food is transported, transformed, stored, and used across different body systems in all people. Through this work of figuring out what is causing M’Kenna’s symptoms, the class discovers what happens to the food we eat after it enters our bodies and how M’Kenna’s different symptoms are connected.
This unit builds towards the following NGSS Performance Expectations (PEs) as described in the OpenSciEd Scope & Sequence: MS-LS1-3, MS-LS1-5, MS-LS1-7, MS-PS1-1, MS-PS1-2. The OpenSciEd units are designed for hands-on learning, and therefore materials are necessary to teach the unit. These materials can be purchased as science kits or assembled using the kit material list.
Additional Unit InformationNext Generation Science Standards Addressed in this UnitPerformance ExpectationsThis unit builds toward the following NGSS Performance Expectations (PEs):

A Google Drive folder with 7.3.1, 7.3.2, 7.3.3 phenomenon-based, 5E lessons that align to the SEEd standards. Lesson folders include lesson plans, a slideshow, and supporting materials for teaching the lesson to your students. Students will learn about cells and cell function by looking at systems from big to small. First learning about how the digestive system works with the circulatory system to get food to cells. Students will investigate cells and their structure and function.

A Google Drive folder with 7.4.2, 7.5.1 phenomenon-based, 5E lessons that align to the SEEd standards. Lesson folders include lesson plans, a slideshow, and supporting materials for teaching the lesson to your students. students will explore the idea that evolution is change over time--that species come from other species due to natural selection, where traits that offer some advantage to an animal will be passed onto offspring.

Students figure out that they can trace all food back to plants, including processed and synthetic food. They obtain and communicate information to explain how matter gets from living things that have died back into the system through processes done by decomposers. Students finally explain that the pieces of their food are constantly recycled between living and nonliving parts of a system.

This unit on matter cycling and photosynthesis begins with students reflecting on what they ate for breakfast. Students are prompted to consider where their food comes from and consider which breakfast items might be from plants. Then students taste a common breakfast food, maple syrup, and see that according to the label, it is 100% from a tree.

Based on the preceding unit, students argue that they know what happens to the sugar in syrup when they consume it. It is absorbed into the circulatory system and transported to cells in their body to be used for fuel. Students explore what else is in food and discover that food from plants, like bananas, peanut butter, beans, avocado, and almonds, not only have sugars but proteins and fats as well. This discovery leads them to wonder how plants are getting these food molecules and where a plant’s food comes from.

A Google Drive folder with 7.4.1 phenomenon-based, 5E lessons that align to the SEEd standards. Lesson folders include lesson plans, a slideshow, and supporting materials for teaching the lesson to your students. Students will participate in discussions, modeling activities, and interactives in order to gain an understanding that sexual reproduction leads to greater variation in a population than asexual reproduction.

For the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, artist Stephanie Syjuco created an expansive shop of souvenirs produced in a monochrome palette: the memorable orange hue of the Golden Gate Bridge. Working with the same paint used to keep the bridge looking fresh, Syjuco's installation features all things reddish-orange: teacups, jewelry, postcards and tchotchkes that are surprisingly not for sale, but presented together as a conceptual art installation. This video offers a behind-the-scenes look at Syjuco’s collaborative process.

This task addresses many standards regarding the description and analysis of bivariate quantitative data, including regression and correlation. Students should recognize that the pattern shown is one of a strong, positive, linear association, and thus a correlation coefficient value near +1 is plausible. Students should also be able to interpret the slope of the least-squares line as an estimated increase in y per unit change in x (and thus for a 3 unit increase in x, students should expect an estimated increase in y that equals 3 times the model's slope value).

Students articulate their thoughts about the ethical issues related to population reaching seven billion and consider the opinions of their classmates. Note: A free account login is required to access this resource.

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: Malia is at an amusement park. She bought 14 tickets, and each ride requires 2 tickets. Write an expression that gives the number of tickets Malia has ...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: Below is a table showing the number of hits and the number of times at bat for two Major League Baseball players during two different seasons: SeasonDe...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important aspects of the task and its potential use.

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important aspects of the task and its potential use.

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important aspects of the task and its potential use.