Through this earth science curricular unit, student teams are presented with the scenario that an asteroid will impact the Earth. In response, their challenge is to design the location and size of underground caverns to shelter the people from an uninhabitable Earth for one year. Driven by this adventure scenario, student teams 1) explore general and geological maps of their fictional state called Alabraska, 2) determine the area of their classroom to help determine the necessary cavern size, 3) learn about map scales, 4) test rocks, 5) identify important and not-so-important rock properties for underground caverns, and 6) choose a final location and size.

Students find the volume and surface area of a rectangular box (e.g., a cereal box), and then figure out how to convert that box into a new, cubical box having the same volume as the original. As they construct the new, cube-shaped box from the original box material, students discover that the cubical box has less surface area than the original, and thus, a cube is a more efficient way to package things. Students then consider why consumer goods generally aren't packaged in cube-shaped boxes, even though they would require less material to produce and ultimately, less waste to discard. To display their findings, each student designs and constructs a mobile that contains a duplicate of his or her original box, the new cube-shaped box of the same volume, the scraps that are left over from the original box, and pertinent calculations of the volumes and surface areas involved. The activities involved provide valuable experience in problem solving with spatial-visual relationships.

To display the results from the previous activity, each student designs and constructs a mobile that contains a duplicate of his or her original box, the new cube-shaped box of the same volume, the scraps that are left over from the original box, and pertinent calculations of the volumes and surface areas involved. They problem solve and apply their understanding of see-saws and lever systems to create balanced mobiles.

Through a five-lesson series that includes numerous hands-on activities, students are introduced to the importance and pervasiveness of bridges for connecting people to resources, places and other people, with references to many historical and current-day examples. In learning about bridge types arch, beam, truss and suspension students explore the effect of tensile and compressive forces. Students investigate the calculations that go into designing bridges; they learn about loads and cross-sectional areas by designing and testing the strength of model piers. Geology and soils are explored as they discover the importance of foundations, bearing pressure and settlement considerations in the creation of dependable bridges and structures. Students learn about brittle and ductile material properties. Students also learn about the many cost factors that comprise the economic considerations of bridge building. Bridges are unique challenges that take advantage of the creative nature of engineering.

CSDE Model Curricula Quick Start GuideEquitable and Inclusive Curriculum  The CSDE believes in providing a set of conditions where learners are repositioned at the center of curricula planning and design. Curricula, from a culturally responsive perspective, require intentional planning for diversity, equity, and inclusion in the development of units and implementation of lessons. It is critical to develop a learning environment that is relevant to and reflective of students’ social, cultural, and linguistic experiences to effectively connect their culturally and community-based knowledge to the class. Begin by connecting what is known about students’ cognitive and interdisciplinary diversity to the learning of the unit. Opposed to starting instructional planning with gaps in students’ knowledge, plan from an asset-based perspective by starting from students’ strengths. In doing so, curricula’s implementation will be grounded in instruction that engages, motivates, and supports the intellectual capacity of all students.Course Description:  In Grade 7, instructional time should focus on four critical areas: (1) developing understanding of and applying proportional relationships; (2) developing understanding of operations with rational numbers and working with expressions and linear equations; (3) solving problems involving scale drawings and informal geometric constructions, and working with two- and three-dimensional shapes to solve problems involving area, surface area, and volume; and (4) drawing inferences about populations based on samples.  Upon completion of this course students will have the ability to Analyze proportional relationships and use them to solve real-world and mathematical problems. Apply and extend previous understandings of operations with fractions to add, subtract, multiply, and divide rational numbers. Use properties of operations to generate equivalent expressions. Solve real-life and mathematical problems using numerical and algebraic expressions and equations. Draw, construct and describe geometrical figures and describe the relationships between them. Solve real-life and mathematical problems involving angle measure, area, surface area, and volume. Use random sampling to draw inferences about a population. Draw informal comparative inferences about two populations. Investigate chance processes and develop, use, and evaluate probability models.Aligned Core Resources:  It is critical that curriculum be implemented using high quality instructional materials to ensure all students meet Connecticut’s standards. Ensuring alignment of resources to the standards is critical for success. There are tools that are available to districts to assist in evaluating alignment of resources, such as CCSSO’s Mathematics Curriculum Analysis Project and Student Achievement Partner’s Instructional Materials Evaluation Tool.   In addition, there exist compilations of completed reviews from a variety of resources. Some of these include but are not limited to EdReports, Louisiana Believes, CURATE, and Oregon Adopted Instructional Materials.Aligned Core Programs:  The CSDE in partnership with SERC has engaged with providers of high-quality vetted resources to provide additional alignment guidance to the CSDE model curriculum.  High-quality instructional resources are critical for improving student outcomes. The alignment guidance is intended to clarify content and support understanding for clear implementation and coherence. Materials selection is a local control decision and these documents have been provided from participating publishers to assist districts in implementation. Use of the materials from these publishers is not required. These aligned core programs meet expectations as reported by EdReports. If your resource is not listed below, you are encouraged to review EdReports to ensure the alignment of your resource to the Connecticut Core Standards. Strong alignment of curricula and instructional materials have the potential to support student engagement of meaningful grade level content daily and teacher growth.   Carnegie Learning Math Grade 7EdGems Math Grade 7enVisions Grade 7Eureka Math Grade 7Fishtank Plus Math Grade 7HMH Into Math Grade 7Imagine Learning Illustrative Mathematics Grade 7i-Ready Math Grade 7MidSchoolMath Grade 7Open Up Resouces Math Grade 7Reveal Math Grade 7Additional Course Information:  Major work of Grade 7 mathematics focuses on ratios and proportional relationships and arithmetic of rational numbers. Habits of Mind/SEIH/Transferable Skills Addressed in the Course: The Standards for Mathematical Practice describe the thinking processes, habits of mind, and dispositions that students need to develop a deep, flexible, and enduring understanding of mathematics. They describe student behaviors, ensure an understanding of math, and focus on developing reasoning and building mathematical communication. Therefore, the following should be addressed throughout the course: Make sense of problems & persevere in solving them Reason abstractly & quantitatively Construct viable arguments & critique the reasoning of others Model with mathematics Use appropriate tools strategically Attend to precision Look for & make use of structure Look for & express regularity in repeated reasoning 

Unit Overview/Summary - FOCUS: This unit focuses on Geometry. Learning this unit will enable students to: Solve real-life and mathematical problems involving angle measure, area, surface area, and volume; and Draw, construct, and describe geometrical figures and describe the relationships between them. 

Students use two different methods to determine the densities of a variety of materials and objects. The first method involves direct measurement of the volumes of objects that have simple geometric shapes. The second is the water displacement method, used to determine the volumes of irregularly shaped objects. After the densities are determined, students create x-y scatter graphs of mass versus volume, which reveal that objects with densities less than water (floaters) lie above the graph's diagonal (representing the density of water), and those with densities greater than water (sinkers) lie below the diagonal.

Students are introduced to the important concept of density with a focus is on the more easily understood densities of solids. Students use different methods to determine the densities of solid objects, including water displacement to determine volumes of irregularly-shaped objects. By comparing densities of various solids to the density of water, and by considering the behavior of different solids when placed in water, students conclude that ordinarily, objects with densities greater than water sink, while those with densities less than water float. Then they explore the principle of buoyancy, and through further experimentation arrive at Archimedes' principle that a floating object displaces a mass of water equal to its own mass. Students may be surprised to discover that a floating object displaces more water than a sinking object of the same volume.

This lesson introduces students to the important concept of density. The focus is on the more easily understood densities of solids, but students can also explore the densities of liquids and gases. Students devise methods to determine the densities of solid objects, including the method of water displacement to determine volumes of irregularly-shaped objects. By comparing densities of various solids to the density of water, and by considering the behavior of different solids when placed in water, students conclude that ordinarily, objects with densities greater than water will sink, while those with densities less than water will float. Density is an important material property for engineers to understand.

This module consolidates and expands upon students’ understanding of equivalent expressions as they apply the properties of operations to write expressions in both standard form and in factored form.  They use linear equations to solve unknown angle problems and other problems presented within context to understand that solving algebraic equations is all about the numbers.  Students use the number line to understand the properties of inequality and recognize when to preserve the inequality and when to reverse the inequality when solving problems leading to inequalities.  They interpret solutions within the context of problems.  Students extend their sixth-grade study of geometric figures and the relationships between them as they apply their work with expressions and equations to solve problems involving area of a circle and composite area in the plane, as well as volume and surface area of right prisms.

**NOTE: The New York State Education Department shut down the EngageNY website in 2022. In order to maintain educators' access, nearly all resources have been uploaded to archive.org and the resource links above have been updated to reflect their new locations.**

In Module 6, students delve further into several geometry topics they have been developing over the years.  Grade 7 presents some of these topics, (e.g., angles, area, surface area, and volume) in the most challenging form students have experienced yet.  Module 6 assumes students understand the basics.  The goal is to build a fluency in these difficult problems.  The remaining topics, (i.e., working on constructing triangles and taking slices (or cross-sections) of three-dimensional figures) are new to students.

**NOTE: The New York State Education Department shut down the EngageNY website in 2022. In order to maintain educators' access, nearly all resources have been uploaded to archive.org and the resource links above have been updated to reflect their new locations.**

Students are presented with a guide to rain garden construction in an activity that culminates the unit and pulls together what they have learned and prepared in materials during the three previous associated activities. They learn about the four vertical zones that make up a typical rain garden with the purpose to cultivate natural infiltration of stormwater. Student groups create personal rain gardens planted with native species that can be installed on the school campus, within the surrounding community, or at students' homes to provide a green infrastructure and low-impact development technology solution for areas with poor drainage that often flood during storm events.

Students take a hands-on look at the design of bridge piers (columns). First they brainstorm types of loads that might affect a Colorado bridge. Then they determine the maximum possible load for that scenario, and calculate the cross-sectional area of a column designed to support that load. Choosing from clay, foam or marshmallows, they create model columns and test their calculations.

Driving Question: How can we as 7th grade math students use surface area to make a mug that retains heat for the longest amount of time possible?

Students find the volume and surface area of a rectangular box (e.g., a cereal box), and then figure out how to convert that box into a new, cubical box having the same volume as the original. As they construct the new, cube-shaped box from the original box material, students discover that the cubical box has less surface area than the original, and thus, a cube is a more efficient way to package things.

Students use their knowledge of scales and areas to determine the best locations in Alabraska for the underground caverns. They cut out rectangular paper pieces to represent caverns to scale with the maps and place the cut-outs on the maps to determine feasible locations.

This real world word problem requires students to figure out the scale ratio and unit rate.

Students learn how different characteristics of shapes—side lengths, perimeter and area—change when the shapes are scaled, either enlarged or reduced. Student pairs conduct a “scaling investigation” to measure and calculate shape dimensions (rectangle, quarter circle, triangle; lengths, perimeters, areas) from a bedroom floorplan provided at three scales. They analyze their data to notice the mathematical relationships that hold true during the scaling process. They see how this can be useful in real-world situations like when engineers design wearable or implantable biosensors. This prepares students for the associated activity in which they use this knowledge to help them reduce or enlarge their drawings as part of the process of designing their own wearables products. Pre/post-activity quizzes, a worksheet and wrap-up concepts handout are provided.

Students investigate the critical nature of foundations as they learn differences between shallow and deep foundations, including the concepts of bearing pressure and settlement. Using models representing a shallow foundation and a deep pile foundation, they test, see and feel the effects in a cardboard box test bed composed of layers of pebbles, soil and sand. They also make bearing pressure calculations and recommendations for which type of foundations to use in various engineering scenarios.

Students learn about the major factors that comprise the design and construction cost of a modern bridge. Before a bridge design is completed, engineers provide overall cost estimates for construction of the bridge. Students learn about the components that go into estimating the total cost, including expenses for site investigation, design, materials, equipment, labor and construction oversight, as well as the trade-off between a design and its cost.