This course is aligned with Florida’s Next Generation Sunshine State Standards for 7th grade science. This class focuses mainly on life sciences, with additional discussions of scientific inquiry and energy. The students will review the nature of science and how to design an effective experiment. They will practice using the scientific method in order to answer a question about their lives. The students will then learn about sound and light, including why light reflects and why some materials allow light to pass through while others do not. They will then learn about energy transformations and the first and second laws of thermodynamics. The rock cycle and the types of rock, including what they tell us about the Earth’s history, are then discussed. The students will learn how and why the Earth changes through events like earthquakes and volcanoes. They will then learn about ecosystems, how much they can support and why, and how they can be damaged. The students will also learn about how organisms can interact with each other in terms of biodiversity and symbiosis. The flow of energy in ecosystems is explained through the interpreting of food chains and food webs. The students will then learn about how organisms and species evolve over time through natural selection and in response to changes in the environment. Finally, the students will learn about heredity and reproduction, including how to use a Punnett square to predict the traits of offspring.