7th Grade: Clean drinking water
Guiding Question: How can we at CMS design a more efficient way for people to obtain clean drinking water?
Lesson Plans
Science: S7L2. Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information to describe how cell structures, cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems interact to maintain the basic needs of organisms
a. Develop and use a conceptual model of how cells are organized into tissues, tissues into organs, organs into systems, and systems into organisms. b. Construct an argument that systems of the body (Cardiovascular, Excretory, Digestive, Respiratory, Muscular, Nervous, and Immune) interact with one another to carry out life processes. EQ: Can we model water filtration after our own excretory system? |
Science students studied symbiotic relationships earlier in the school year, which included parasitism. Many students researched water born illnesses and were able to refer back to that assignment during their group work building body systems. April 2023: Students began investigating all the human body systems and creating models of their groups systems. Student's used different avenues to create and display their systems including: clay, recycled materials, Minecraft, and many items brought from home. May 8th, 2023: Students finishing up their systems were asked to display them in the classroom and present the system to the class as a whole. Students used sticky notes to give out grows & glows on all the models from all classes. Student's discussed in class how unclean drinking water can affect all systems, and discussed what might happen if one system failed to work properly due to infestation of parasites or disease. May 10th, 2023: Students were introduced to Bronco Reese by watching a documentary "Bronco goes to Camp"www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1BVYpmGUmE. Bronco received a heart transplant at Atlanta Children's Hospital in April of 2015 and will come to CMS to discuss his transplant journey with our 7th grades. Bronco was only 9 years old when he received his new heart and student's will write a POV essay either from the donor family or the recipient patient after a transplant. broncosheart.org/ May 12th, 2023: Mr. Reese comes to CMS to share his story with our students, they get to meet a real live person that has had the blessing of donor ship. May 18th, 2023: Students begin designing portable water filtration systems to help people in other countries that struggle to find clean drinking water. |
Math: MGSE7.G.6 Solve real-world and mathematical problems involving area, volume and surface area of two- and three-dimensional objects composed of triangles, quadrilaterals, polygons, cubes, and right prisms.
MGSE7.RP.2 Recognize and represent proportional relationships between quantities. MGSE7.G.4 Given the formulas for the area and circumference of a circle, use them to solve problems; give an informal derivation of the relationship between the circumference and area of a circle. MGSE7.SP.3 Informally assess the degree of visual overlap of two numerical data distributions with similar variabilities, measuring the difference between the medians by expressing it as a multiple of the interquartile range. Extension: MGSE8.G.9 Apply the formulas for the volume of cones, cylinders, and spheres and use them to solve real-world and mathematical problems. |
May 8th, 2023:
Math will be doing data collection for our Social Studies department. The social studies department is showing their students how challenging it is for people to obtain clean water and transport clean water. The students will be able to see what it felt like for Salva in their book for “Long Walk to Water” that they are reading in ELA. We will be discussing as a class what this journey will look like on Thursday. The students will be assigned to a group to collect their data. The students will be finding their average water of weight carried and lost, distance traveled and how long it took the group to walk the journey for clean water. May 9th, 2023: Students will brainstorm some efficient ways to measure how much average water of weight they carried on the journey and lost after the journey. Students will be writing this in their stem journal, and we will have a class discussion on what is the most efficient way for Thursday for our journey. May 10th, 2023: Students will create a table in their Stem journal and select their bucket of choice for their journey tomorrow. Students will know their partner and who they will be paired up with for the journey. May 11th, 2023: Math students will be collecting data for social studies outside on the CMS Track field for our journey, Long Walk to Water. May 12th, 2023: Math students will be taking the data collection that we gathered from the Social Studies Dept yesterday. and the students will be figuring out the measures of center and variability on their average water of weight carried and lost, distance traveled and how long it took the group to walk the journey for clean water. |
Social Studies: Social Studies
SS7G1 Locate selected features of Africa. a. Locate on a world and regional political-physical map: Sahara, Sahel, savanna, tropical rain forest, Congo River, Niger River, Nile River, Lake Victoria, Great Rift Valley, Mt. Kilimanjaro, Atlas Mountains, and Kalahari Desert. b. Locate on a world and regional political-physical map the countries of Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Sudan. SS7G2 Explain environmental issues across the continent of Africa. a. Explain how water pollution and unequal access to water impacts irrigation, trade, industry, and drinking water SS7CG2 Analyze how government instability in Africa impacts standard of living. SS7E3 Describe factors that influence economic growth and examine their presence or absence in Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya. a. Evaluate how literacy rates affect the standard of living. b. Explain the relationship between investment in human capital (education and training) and gross domestic product (GDP per capita). d. Explain how the distribution of natural resources affects the economic development of Africa |
Aug. 2022: Students learned geography of Africa. This included locations of countries like Kenya, South Africa, and Sudan as well as physical features like the Nile river, Mt. Kilimanjaro, The Great Rift Valley, The Saraha Desert, and many others.
Sept. 2022: Students discovered some of the environmental issues plaquing the Eastern Hemisphere. All of the three main areas learned about throughout the year have problems relating to water, both the lack of water and the pollution of it. March 2023: Students reviewed maps of Africa while learning about European imperialism and colonization of Africa. Students looked at where Europeans were choosing to colonize and why those places might be more desirable than other areas. April 2023: Students began looking at government systems in the Eastern Hemisphere. Students spent additional time research Government Systems in Kenya, S. Africa, and Nigeria. Monday 5/2/2023: Students began comparing economy types using information economists look at when determining if a country is a market economy, command economy, or a developing economy. They gathered information about a country from each category using the CIA Factbook. Using the information students discussed relationships between resources, literacy rates, life expectancy, government types, and various other factors. Thursday 5/4/23: Students looked at a website (Dollar Street) that allowed them a peek into the standard of living of people around the world. They compared incomes, housing and many other topics. There was classroom discussion on the connections between water access, literacy, government, and economy and how it was like a spiral, each impacted by the others. This is when students began focusing on the standard of living in many Africa countries and what these countries have in common (Lacki of access to water or clean water). Monday 5/8/23: Students thought about how they use water. Brainstorming all the ways they might use water in a day, writing down their thoughts in their STEM notebooks. Students continued to brainstorm water usage, adding the amount of water their families might use in a day. Students created a guesstimate of the total water used by their family by finding out the average amounts of gallons per minute of water that a shower and faucet use and the number of gallons of water used for the average toilet flush. There was class discussions about were our water comes from and how far students had to walk to get to water. Accelerated classes were asked to hoe and see if they could determine an actual amount of water used by their families using a water bill. They were then asked to compare the usage to their guesstimate. The questions was given- Could you carry the water needs for your family? How would you change your habits if you could not carry all the water your family needed for a day? Tuesday & Wednesday 5/9 – 5/10/2023: Finished discussions on how the water access was impacted and impacts economy, Literacy rates, and how changing one could leave positive results for the others. Students then watched a video called "In Sabine's Shoes". The video shows how the women of a small village has to walk to water and the journalist decides she must 'walk in their shoes' to truly know how these women feel. We also watched a short video of a girl's thoughts about what it would be like to live somewhere else, as she makes her daily water walk. Students were then asked again if they could carry the water their family needs for a day. Predications were written in STEM book. Thursday 5/11/2023: Students experience a 'water walk' - Students have chosen families (groups of 3) and given the task of carrying water around the track, up the stairs, and down the ramp . Students select the container, fill it with the amount of water they believe they can carry. Data is collected by math students Friday 5/12/2022; Class discussion about water walk – Were you as successful as anticipated? Students will reflect on data collected about their groups results. Question posed Using the information collected, how could you design/plan a more efficient method to access water? Students will begin brainstorming in STEM book, sketching a rough draft, then joining with groups to create a blueprint on large anchor charts. Students may determine that change a physical change or contraption will not help enough, and look towards policies for improving education, literacy rates, and ultimately the economy. Monday 5/15/2022: Students will be peer reviewing designs/plans for a more efficient method in Africa for water access. |
ELA: ELAGSE7RL2: Determine a theme and/or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text.
ELAGSE7RL1: Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. ELAGSE7RL6: Analyze how an author develops and contrasts the points of view of different characters or narrators in a text. ELAGSE7W4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. |
Monday (4/24)
Students create a postcard from Nya’s point of view to Salva, thanking him for the well in the village. They will use prior knowledge and evidence from the text to explain how this directly impacted and changed Nya’s life |