Seventh Grade Curriculum Overview
 

At Monticello Academy, we believe in academic excellence as well as the emotional and social development of a student.  The academic curriculum that we implement in our program is based on the California State Standards.  Being a developmental based program, our curriculum is gauged in accordance to the educational level of each individual class every year as they progress from one grade level to the next.  Our curriculum will vary year to year depending on the developmental ability and level of the upcoming grade.  This overview will allow you to have a general understanding of what your child will learn throughout the school year.

Reading

In the seventh grade students are exposed to various genres of reading where students are able to apply their reading skills in a more sophisticated context.  Once again, at this level, students are expected to be reading fluently and coherently.  They will be exposed to reading various types of writing styles based on the recommended California Department of Education reading list in literature.  Extensive independent reading outside the classroom is emphasized as an important element of the literature program.  They will continue to build upon the skills that they have acquired in the previous grade level. 

Vocabulary Development

In order to have a firm grasp in reading, materials from the previous years are reviewed with complete and clear understanding prior to advancing to the next level.  At this level, vocabulary and concept development in relation to idioms, analogies, metaphors, and similes are used to infer literal and figurative meanings of phrases.  Students will learn how to use word meanings within the appropriate context and show ability to those meanings by definition, restatement, example, comparison, or contrast. 

Listening and Speaking

At this level, students are learning to deliver focused and coherent presentation of various genres that convey ideas clearly and relevant to the subject at hand.  They are able to paraphrase and analyze oral interpretations of literature.

Writing

Developing from what they have learned in the previous grade level, students will further develop their writing ability through clear, coherent, and focused essays that contain formal introductions, supporting evidence, and conclusion.  They will be writing narrative, expository, persuasive, and descriptive essays of at least 500-700 words in each genre.  Furthermore, at this point, students are expected to write and speak appropriately to their grade level.  They will continue to work on developing their skill in sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling.

Reading Comprehension

Building from the previous grade level, seventh grade students will be learning how to compare and contrast the structural features of informational materials by analyzing text that uses proposition and support patterns.  They will also discover about similarities and differences between text in the treatment, scope, or organization of ideas.  In relation to this, students will master the art of critiquing their own and others’ summary in correlation to the original text in order to see the accuracy of the written work.  Beside this, they will be given the opportunity to do expository critique to evaluate the unity, coherence, logic, internal consistency, and structural patterns of the text.

Literary Response and Analysis

At the seventh grade level, students are starting to understand the structural features of various literatures by determining and articulating the relationship between the purposes and characteristics of different forms of poetry.  They also involve themselves in the narrative analysis of grade level text where they can evaluate the structural elements and development of the plot and different ways in which the conflicts are resolved.  In doing this, they will also be comparing and contrasting different literary characters from other historical eras with similar situations or conflicts.  Students will be discussing the relevance of setting, mood, tone, and meaning of text as well as identifying recurring themes across traditional to contemporary literature.  They will be discussing the significant literary devices that define the author’s writing style and use of those elements to interpret the literature.  Students will also be involved in literary criticism from a biological approach.

Science

The main emphasis in the seventh grade science program is to focus on life science.  Knowledge of biological systems is expanding rapidly, and the development of new technologies has led to major advances in medicine, agriculture, and environmental management.  A foundation in modern biological science, with an emphasis on molecular biology, is essential for students as they are preparing to learn about health education.  Focusing on life science at this grade level will help students better understand about their own biological and behavioral transition into early adolescence.  The study of life science will provide a knowledge base on which adolescence can make well-informed and wise decisions about their health and behavior.  The relevance of the curriculum to student’s lives will help students to maintain an interest in science and to expand their knowledge for natural science.

History-Social Science

The focus of the seventh grade history-social science program emphasizes on world history and geography in medieval and early modern times. Students in the seventh grade will study the social, cultural, and technological changes that occurred in Europe, Africa, and Asia in the year A.D. 500-1789.  After reviewing the ancient world and the ways in which archaeologists and historians uncover the past, students will study the history and geography of the great civilizations that were developing concurrently throughout the world during medieval and early modern times.  Students will be given the opportunity to examine the growing economic interaction among the different civilizations as well as the exchange of ideas, beliefs, technologies, and commodities.  They will learn about the resulting growth of the Enlightenment philosophy and the new examination of the concepts of reason and authority, the natural rights of human beings and the divine right of kings, experimentalism in science, and the dogma of belief.  Finally at the end of the school year, they will assess the political forces let loose by the Enlightenment, particularly the rise of democratic ideas, and they will learn about the continuing influence of these ideas in the world today.

Mathematics

After reviewing and gaining a firm grasp on the sixth grade mathematic curriculum, students in our seventh grade program are introduced to Algebra I, where the key fundamental background centralizes around the understanding of symbolic reasoning and calculations with symbols.  As students continue their study about algebra, they will acquire a more deepening knowledge about the symbolic language of mathematics and science.  Hence, students’ algebraic skills and concepts are advanced, and they will learn to use it in a wide variety of problem-solving situations.