Family and Community Guide for 7th Grade

Working Together: To support families, communities, and teachers in realizing the goals of the Colorado Academic Standards (CAS), this guide provides an overview of the learning expectations for 7th Grade. This guide offers some learning experiences students may engage in at school that may also be supported at home.

Why Standards? Created by Coloradans for Colorado students, the Colorado Academic Standards provide a grade-by-grade road map to help ensure students are successful in college, careers, and life. The standards aim to improve what students learn and how they learn in 12 content areas while emphasizing critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, collaboration, and communication as essential skills for life in the 21st century.

See all of the Family and Community Guides here.

• Comprehensive Health
• Computer Science
• Dance
• Drama and Theatre Arts

• Mathematics
• Music
• Physical Education
• Reading, Writing, and Communicating

• Science
• Social Studies
• Visual Art
• World Languages

Comprehensive Health (adopted 2018)

The comprehensive health standards in grades six through eight focus on enhancing and strengthening skills in the areas of physical, social, and emotional wellness and using those individual skills in family, school, and community environments. In each grade, the standards ask students to deepen their understanding of ways to set and maintain healthy relationships and continue to investigate healthy eating/living habits, positive communication strategies, effective decision making, and ways to ensure personal and community safety.

Expectations for 7th Grade Students:

• Physical and Personal Wellness: Demonstrate the ability to make healthy food choices in a variety of settings and analyze the internal and external factors that influence eating behaviors; develop positive decision-making skills around sexual activity; compare and contrast healthy and unhealthy relationships (family, peer, and dating); define sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and acquired immunodeficiency deficiency syndrome (AIDS).
• Social and Emotional Wellness: Develop self-management and communication skills to appropriately express feelings and to manage stress.
• Prevention and Risk Management: Demonstrate safety procedures for a variety of situations; analyze and synthesize the consequences of using/abusing alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs.

Throughout 7th Grade You May Find Students:

• Analyzing factors that influence healthy eating.
• Utilizing effective interpersonal communication skills to express individual needs and boundaries.
• Explaining how sexually transmitted diseases, such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), are transmitted and their possible effects on the body.
• Developing and practicing healthy strategies to deal with stress.
• Evaluating internal and external influences (media, social media) on social and emotional health.
• Analyzing appropriate information regarding safety precautions for a variety of emergency situation.
• Describing how personal, family, and cultural beliefs and values can influence healthy decision-making.
• Examining the effects of marijuana, illegal drugs, abuse of prescription drugs, alcohol, and tobacco on an individual’s physical, mental and emotional well-being.

Computer Science (adopted 2018)

Computer science may be taught at all levels preschool through high school, but the State of Colorado only has standards for computer science in high school.

Read the high school computer science family and community guide.

Dance (adopted 2022)

​Instead of being organized by grade level, the dance standards are organized into ranges that describe the progression of learning a student should experience as they grow from novice learners to an exemplary learner. 

Read the dance family and community guide for secondary (middle school and high school) here.

Drama and Theatre Arts (adopted 2022)

The drama and theatre arts standards in middle school focus on an intermediate level of theatrical knowledge and skill. In each grade level, students research and perform various acting techniques in plays and improvisational scenes, experiment with character development and scene work, picture basic ideas for playwrighting and/or directing, discuss their individual opinions about different performances. Students in middle school are also asked to make connections to themselves, their communities, and the greater world through their own creative process and the art of theatre.

Mathematics (adopted 2018)

The mathematics standards in middle school build on students' understanding of number and quantity. Students apply more formal statistics, probability, and algebra to model phenomena in the world around them. Students gain a deeper understanding of geometry and its application. Students also persevere in solving problems as they use strategies to apply their new tools and techniques.

Expectations for 7th Grade Students:

• Number and Quantity: Fluently add, subtract, multiply and divide with both positive and negative numbers, including fractions and decimals; solve problems involving percentages and proportions; explain operations with positive and negative numbers; change fractions to decimals and explain when a fraction will be a decimal that end or repeats; recognize and analyze proportional relationships in tables, graphs, and equations; connect ratios to the concept of slope.
• Algebra and Functions: Create equations and inequalities for real-life situations.
• Data, Statistics, and Probability: Find the probability of an event and connect probability to sampling; explore the importance of randomness when creating a sample; describe a population based on data from a random sample; compare two different populations using averages and measures of variability.
• Geometry: Create drawings to scale; find the measures of angles formed by the intersection of lines; explain how to tell if two triangles are congruent; explore shapes created when slicing a three-dimensional object; calculate the area and circumference of circles.

Throughout 7th Grade You May Find Students:

• Finding the wholesale price of a shirt with a 12% markup.
• Determining a 20% tip for dinner at a restaurant.
• Exploring when a $20 discount is better than a 20% discount.
• Calculating the temperature after a 7 degree drop from -15 degrees.
• Explaining why negative two multiplied by negative six equals positive twelve.
• Creating scale models of a zoo to connect the concept of scale to proportions.
• Conducting a study to determine if the average height of seventh-grade boys is different from the average height of seventh-grade girls.
• Calculating the probability of getting heads when flipping a coin or getting the sum of seven when tossing number cubes.
• Explaining the meaning of a weather forecast with a 50% chance of rain.
• Describing shapes formed when slicing a variety of fruit.
• Using the unit price of apples to determine the cost of purchasing 4 pounds of apples using either a table or graph.
• Solving a variety of equations and inequalities for “x”, such as -5x + 18 = 43.

Music (adopted 2022)

Instead of being organized by grade level, the music standards are organized into ranges that describe the progression of learning a student should experience as they grow from novice learners to an accomplished learner. 

Read the music family and community guide for secondary (middle school and high school) here.

Physical Education (adopted 2018)

The physical education standards in the middle school years focus on enhancing health-related and skill-related components of fitness and demonstrating knowledge and applying fitness principles and movement skills and strategies in a variety of physical activities. In each grade, the standards ask students to refine various movement concepts, strategies, and skills, analyze performance and provide feedback to peers, set and assess fitness goals, recognize diversity in skills of others, collaborate with students with varying abilities, and utilize safety procedures during physical activities.

Expectations for 7th Grade Students:

• Movement Competence and Understanding: Combine the critical elements of movement and skills concepts; demonstrate beginning offensive and defensive strategies for individual and team physical activities and sports.
• Physical and Personal Wellness: Understand and apply principles of physical fitness to create a personal fitness plan and set personal physical fitness goals; demonstrate fitness knowledge and skills that maintain a health-enhancing lifestyle, while actively engaging in the participation of lifetime physical activities.
• Social and Emotional and Wellness: Demonstrate inclusiveness in and out of classroom settings.
• Prevention and Risk Management: Understand and utilize safe and appropriate warm-up, pacing, and cool-down techniques for injury prevention and safe participation.

Throughout 7th Grade You May Find Students:

• Designing and performing movement sequences that combine traveling, balancing, and weight transfer into smooth, flowing sequences with changes in direction, speed, and flow.
• Diagramming and demonstrating basic offensive and defensive strategies for individual and dual physical activities.
• Identifying elements that comprise an age-appropriate fitness plan, according to an individual’s age, level of fitness, and goals.
• Maintaining involvement in physical activity, twice a week, outside physical education class.
• Making suggestions to the instructor on how to modify a game to allow all members with varying skill abilities to participate.
• Explaining that warm-up and cool-down activities prepare the body for physical activity and help to prevent injuries.

Reading, Writing, and Communicating for Middle School (adopted 2018)

The reading, writing, and communicating standards in the middle school grades ask students to be critical readers of complex literary and informational texts. The standards require that students develop the writing skills necessary to convey their experience in the world, to produce thoughtful analyses of academic and real-world topics, and to develop well-reasoned arguments on relevant topics in their lives. The standards foster opportunities for students to work collaboratively with others as they develop the literacy skills to be academically successful and prepared for life after high school.

Expectations for 7th Grade Students:

• Oral Expression and Listening: Speak and use multimedia to present claims and findings while emphasizing major points in a focused, clear manner with strong descriptions, facts, details, and examples; analyze a speaker's main ideas and supporting details and explain how the ideas clarify a topic, text, or issue under study; collaborate in discussions, listen actively, and pose questions.
• Reading for All Purposes: Read literary, informational, and persuasive texts from a variety of sources and authors; summarize, analyze, and evaluate different themes, characters, key ideas/events, points of view and claims; analyze multimedia adaptations and fictional vs. historical accounts of an event; analyze the impact word choice and text structures have on meaning; cite several pieces of textual evidence in support of all analyses.
• Writing and Composition: Use technology to shape, produce, and publish grammatically correct writing that makes an argument or explains the analysis of a topic; craft writing that includes an introduction, logical development, and a concluding statement; write narratives that develop real or imagined experiences through the use of an engaging opening, narrative techniques that capture the action, and a conclusion that effectively ends the piece.
• Research Inquiry and Design: Conduct short research projects to answer a question and generate additional focus questions; gather information from several sources; use search terms effectively; assess the credibility of sources; follow a standard format for citation; evaluate the soundness of reasoning and the relevance/sufficiency of evidence.

Throughout 7th Grade You May Find Students:

• Reading works of literature in order to develop an understanding of the techniques authors use to develop characters, reveal conflict, and express universal themes; doing research to understand how the media uses words and images to influence perceptions and shape behavior around themes and ideas; analyzing how information is structured and delivered in various forms and using that understanding of the writer’s craft to make informational brochures, write editorials, or produce public service announcement videos.
• Researching and discussing relevant issues, in collaborative groups, in order to write a narrative from the perspective of a child/teenager from another culture; writing personal narratives to convey their own experiences regarding a relevant issue, using imagery and dialogue to develop narrative effects; writing in different genres and using multimedia to share their narratives as an audio or video recording for a class website geared towards raising awareness about relevant teen issues.
• Comparing and contrasting a particular text with a different version of the text (film, television, play); analyzing each medium's portrayal of a subject, explaining the similarities and differences; analyzing and writing an informational essay on the decisions authors and directors make in producing different versions.

Science (adopted 2018)

The Colorado Academic Standards for middle school science are presented as a single 6-8 band of standards, rather than broken down by grade level. This means that your child's school district and teacher are responsible for organizing the middle school science standards into courses that best suit their needs and resources.

Read the middle school science family guide.

Social Studies (adopted 2022)

Building on the social studies skills developed in the elementary grades, students in the middle school years begin with a study of people, cultures, and ideas in the Western Hemisphere and move from there to explorations of the Eastern Hemisphere, ending with the early history of the United States. In each grade, students investigate historical events, examine geographic features and resources, consider economic decision-making processes, and understand types of governments and civic responsibility.

Visual Arts (adopted 2022)

Rather than being divided by grade levels, the middle school visual art standards are described by levels of experience with art. The visual arts standards in the middle school years build on the general art knowledge and skills developed at the elementary level. In addition, students explore the role of design and technology in making, documenting, and presenting works of art. Students create, reflect on, and compare works of art across historical periods and cultures in more complex ways. Art careers and art related issues that are important to communities are also examined. At this level, middle school art students extend their artistic vision beyond self and look at their artistic practice as part of a much larger community. 

World Languages (adopted 2018)

Instead of being organized by grade level, the world languages standards are organized into ranges that describe the progression of learning a student should experience as they grow from novice language learners to an advanced user.

Read the world languages family and community guide for middle school here.