The two NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards) that 7th grade science focuses on in the beginning of the year are NGSS MS-LS 1-3 and MS-LS 1-8. 

 

During the second week of school students were introduced to the New Path Learning website, which they were then able to use to complete a virtual investigation on Nerve Conduction.  Students explored how different substances can affect the rate at which a nerve impulse travels in the nervous system.  Throughout the virtual investigation students collected data that they then were able to graph using the web-based graphing program Create-a-Graph.

 

 

As students continued to explore the body systems and their interactions, they got their heart rates going with a cross-curricula investigation called “Pump it Up.”  Thanks to the teaching efforts of our amazing staff in the WMS physical education department, students already had a working knowledge of how to find their heart rate.  Students used their knowledge on heart rate to design their own investigation, in which they were able to collect real-time data and then create a bar graph comparing their heart rates throughout our outdoor exercise investigation.  Students had to use their data that they had collected as evidence to support the relationship that the circulatory system has with other systems of the body.  

 

 

The culmination of these units ended this week with students completing a “Human Body System Google Slides Research, Relationship and Analogy” Project.  Students completed guided research on a specific human body system and turned their research into a google slides presentation. Students will then have the opportunity to present their google slides research presentation in class.

 

 

All images are examples of student work throughout the first two units of the first marking period.  The ultimate goal of these units is for students to collect and use evidence to show how the body is made up of many interacting systems that all work together for the organism, with the Nervous System in control of it all!