Palm Springs Unified School District s1

Palm Springs Unified School District

Focus on Life Science

7th Grade Science Course Guide

Traditional Calendar

2009 – 2010

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7th GRADE SCIENCE - Focus on life Science

Table of Contents

Preface - Important Note to Teachers…………………………………………….……….3

Purpose and Use of Pacing Guide………………………………………………………...4

California Content Standards …………..…………..…………………………………….5

California Content Standards at a Glance…………………………………………………8

California Content Standards Unpacked…………………………………………………10

Instructional Segments…………………………………………………………….……..15

CA Content Standards Color-Coded by Instructional Segments…………...... 20

Benchmark Exams at a Glance………………………….……………………………….23

Vocabulary by Instructional Segments……………….………………………………….24

Vocabulary by Instructional Segments in Spanish…...………………………………….25

Pacing Guide……………………………………………………………………………..26

Please direct any questions or comments to:

Pete A’Hearn Sandi Enochs

K-12 Science Specialist Coordinator, Assessment and Data Analysis

(760) 902-7768 (760) 416-6066

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IMPORTANT!

THIS PACING GUIDE IS INTENDED TO BE FLEXIBLE!!!!

Although a Pacing Guide has been created with a suggested order for teaching the textbook lessons, site grade level teams may change the order of the lessons being taught WITHIN an Instructional Segment. The only requirement is that all lessons within each Instructional Segment be completed (and standards mastered) prior to that segment’s Benchmark Exam Closing Date.

The Benchmark Exam Closing Date is the absolute last date by which the Benchmark Exam must be administered and results entered into OARS. These are OARS deadline dates, not just dates by which the exams must be administered to your students. Feel free to administer the Benchmark Exam any time prior to this date.

In 7th grade there is no looming CST test to force you to try to “cover” everything. Use that freedom to teach the important foundational concepts and skills to mastery. Please note that throughout this document, Key Standards are highlighted in bold print.

The textbook is not the curriculum. Feel free to supplement the readings, labs, and activities with outside resources that help your students to master the standards.

Benchmark Exams are useful for gathering data and assessing student progress, but do not come often enough to provide ongoing formative assessment. Teachers need to embed continuous ongoing formative assessment into their classroom practice.

The prior knowledge and misconceptions boxes at the beginning of each unit in the pacing guide are useful for designing pre-tests and formative assessments. You should test for prior knowledge, but not assume it is there. Misconceptions need to be directly addressed in instruction. Misconceptions can be very persistent and prevent students from learning science. Formative assessment can tell you if students are holding on to their misconceptions.

The Textbook column of the Pacing Guide refers to our adopted textbook, CPO Focus on Life Science, by CPO Science.

The far right column (# of Days) on the Pacing Guide has been intentionally left blank. This column is intended to be used by teachers when planning individually or collaboratively.

Make sure you have signed parent permission for each student before discussing human reproduction AND THE WORKING WONDERS PRESENTATIONS IN INSTRUCTIONAL SEGMENT 4!

Purpose and Use of this Pacing Guide

1. PSUSD teachers created and revised the original 7th Grade Science Pacing Guide and the Benchmark assessments that were aligned to that document. This pacing guide is a work in progress and will be revised, along with the Benchmark assessments, each year.
2. Emphasis for 2009-2010:
3. There are five common Benchmark Exams within four Instructional Segments. Instructional Segment 1 contains two Benchmark Exams.
4. Teachers will work with colleagues through the DAIT process to identify Essential Standards.
5. Benchmark windows have been replaced by an OARS Due Date. This is the date that benchmark data is due in OARS. Teachers may give the benchmark earlier, if they choose. Note that the OARS Due Date is the last possible day for data to be entered into OARS and that teachers may want to administer the benchmark several days prior to ensure timeliness.
6. Benchmark assessment data will provide teachers with information to improve and drive instruction through team and department collaboration.
7. Benchmark assessment data may be used to provide information to assist with grading, but should not be the only data used in determining grades.
8. Course Guide Format:
9. The California Content Standards for 7th Grade Science are listed in their entirety.
10. Next is an “At a Glance” version of the standards, which provides a two-page abbreviated summary of the standards.
11. The following section, CA Content Standards Unpacked, restates the standards, followed by a listing of the individual skills and/or objectives encompassed by each standard. This may be utilized as a checklist, to check off all components of each standard as they are mastered. Teachers may even reproduce this section as a checklist for students to keep in their notebook to keep track of their individual progress.
12. The Pacing Guide is separated into four Instructional Segments followed by a Benchmark Assessment. An overview of the four Instructional Segments is placed at the beginning of the next section. Each Instructional Segment includes the Main Topics, a group of Standards and Essential Standards that must be taught prior to the Benchmark Assessment.
13. The next section contains a color-coded version of the CA Content Standards, aligning each standard with the Instructional Segment where it is taught.
14. This is followed by a Benchmark Exams at a Glance page. This chart lists the CA content standards tested on each Benchmark Exam, along with the number of questions per standard on each assessment.
15. The CA content standards (with correlated textbook sections) to be mastered before each Benchmark Exam are clearly shown on the Pacing Guide. This pacing guide focuses on the textbook pages needed to teach the 7th Grade Science CA content standards. Therefore, the pages that are outside of this scope have been omitted. Other lessons have been included with a scissors icon . Feel free to omit these lessons if time is limited.

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