Challenging, questioning, and craving self-expression, grade seven students experience:

Creative Writing, Composition, Classics, Biography, Grammar, Speech and Drama, Geometry, Negative numbers, Powers, Roots, Basic Algebra, Physics, Chemistry, Human Physiology and Nutrition, Renaissance Times, Reformation, African Geography, German, Spanish, Handwork, Woodwork, String Ensemble, Choir, Recorder, Movement and Games, Painting, Prospective Drawing, Circus Arts.
vibrant pastel picture of Africa by seventh-grader

Grade Seven Curriculum

If you know seventh grade students, you are familiar with the expressiveness and forcefulness of the adolescent’s emotional life at this time in their development. Overthrowing authority and challenging life itself with their questions, the students seek with every breath to assert their independence and to find their place among their peers. What better time to study the Renaissance, that flowering of humanity in which lived colorful individuals who made their mark in the sciences, the arts, and in human social life. A new way of looking at the world developed in these times which depended upon close, exact observations of the world, the basis of our modern scientific method. The study of the Reformation and of the Age of Exploration also resonates with the development of the children in these adolescent years. Students have their first creative writing and poetry block, which gives wings to their need for self-expression.

The physical sciences, taught in seventh grade, bring the students fully into abstract thinking, which is mobile and free to create concepts thanks to its metamorphosis from imaginative thinking during the younger grades. Mechanics begins the physics block with the discovery of the lever principle in the human arm. The study in this block extends to the basic mechanical principles applied to ancient and modern machines. Other topics in physics are the laws of refraction, reflection, heat and electricity. During the chemistry block, the students observe the properties of substances, especially acids and bases, and the way in which they inter-relate. Combustion of substances is a theme that leads into the study of physiology and the life processes in the human being. The students can be more objective about the human being and discover what contributes to health or illness, especially in the areas of nutrition.

The mathematics curriculum is very demanding, calling upon the students to use thinking that has no relationship to physical perceptions. Students must come to understand negative numbers, algebra and plane geometry, graphing, roots, powers and formulas. However, the students will be able to apply the laws of perspective, devised by Renaissance artists, as a way to understand ratio and proportion.

The geography curriculum takes the students out into world-wide spaces with the theme of the explorations of the New World by European explorers. The studies of climate, tides, weather and similar phenomena give the students a picture of how world cultures have adapted to a wide variety of climatic regions.

The Spanish and German curriculums include grammar skills, reading and conversation on a more sophisticated level. The fine and practical arts encompass sewing, woodwork, perspective drawing, and black and white drawing. Exact geometrical constructions are incorporated into the geometry block. During the music classes, students will continue to participate in chorus and orchestra and will become acquainted with a variety of musical styles. Finally, physical education will include team games and sports and circus arts.