7th grade Science: how to help at home
What your child learns in 7th grade science in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), and simple things to try at home.
Focus areas this year
- Elements, compounds, solutions, and physical and chemical change
- Speed, velocity, Newton's first law and thermal energy
- The solar system, plate tectonics, and watersheds and oceans
- Energy pyramids, body systems, reproduction, selection and classification
Easy ways to practice science at home
- Turn everyday questions into investigations: “Which paper towel holds the most water?”
- Read a science news story together and ask what evidence it gives.
- Look up how a household machine works, such as a bike gear, a lamp or a fridge.
- Have your child draw and label a diagram of something they just learned.
What each unit covers
Atoms & Elements
Elements versus compounds and mixtures, chemical symbols (H, O, Na, Cl, Fe, Au…), counting atoms in formulas like H₂O and C₆H₁₂O₆, metals and non-metals, and the basics of the periodic table.
Physical or Chemical?
Telling a physical change from a chemical change, spotting the signs of a new substance, and how making and throwing away everyday products affects the environment.
Solutions & Separating
Solutes, solvents and solubility, what makes things dissolve faster, saturated and unsaturated solutions, concentration, why water is called the universal solvent, ways to separate mixtures, and some environmental effects of industrial separation.
Motion, Forces & Newton’s Laws
Practices speed, velocity, acceleration, forces, friction, gravity and Newton's three Laws of Motion, with stability. It follows the Grade 8 science skill descriptors on motion and stability and the Laws of Motion in the New Brunswick curriculum.
Moving Heat
How heat is transmitted by conduction, convection and radiation, how the Sun's radiation heats different surfaces, and technologies such as insulation and double-pane windows that reduce heat loss.
Heat & Particles
Heat as energy linked to particle motion, temperature, expansion and contraction, changes of state, and the ways heat is generated (friction, electricity, burning, chemical reactions and the Sun).
Our Solar System
The planets in order, rocky versus giant planets, reading a table of planet data, moons, dwarf planets, comets and the asteroid belt.
Natural Selection
Variation, inherited versus acquired traits, adaptations, and how natural selection changes populations over generations, with fossils and other evidence. Includes reading data from a predator–prey model.
Food Chains & Energy
Producers, consumers and decomposers, food chains and webs, how energy shrinks as it passes up a chain (about 10% each step), and what happens when part of a chain changes.
Human Body Systems
The main jobs of the respiratory, circulatory, digestive, excretory and nervous systems, how they work together, and what affects healthy function, such as exercise and air quality.
Heart, Bones & Muscles
The heart and blood vessels, bones, joints, muscles and tendons, how body systems work together, and heart-rate data.
Cells, Tissues & Organs
Why cells are the basic unit of life, how plant and animal cells differ, how materials move into and out of cells, and how cells form tissues, organs and systems. Includes working out microscope magnification.
Sorting Living Things
Telling mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish apart, vertebrates from invertebrates, the kingdoms, and the levels of classification.
Speed, Velocity & Motion Graphs
Practices calculating average speed from distance and time, telling speed from velocity (which includes direction) and distance from displacement, and reading distance-time graphs.
Solar System Tour
Practices the properties, locations and movements of objects in the solar system (the Sun, planets, moons, meteors, asteroids, comets, the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud), how gravity governs their motion, and what makes Earth able to support life.
Watersheds & Oceans
Practices how human activity helps or harms groundwater and surface water in a watershed (aquifers such as the Edwards and the Ogallala, runoff, pollution, conservation) and how people depend on and affect ocean systems, using Gulf Coast examples.
Asexual & Sexual Reproduction
Practices comparing asexual reproduction (budding, runners, cuttings, splitting) and sexual reproduction (two parents) in plants and animals, how each affects variety in offspring, and why variety matters for a population over time.
Plate Tectonics
Practices the evidence that Earth has changed over time (fossils, matching continents, superposition of rock layers) and how plate tectonics causes ocean basins, earthquakes, mountain building and volcanic eruptions, including hot spots and supervolcanoes such as Yellowstone.
What the report card levels look like at home
- Beginning
- Just getting started with this idea. Short, regular practice with lots of support helps most.
- Approaching
- Understands parts of it and is building confidence. Keep practicing the tricky parts.
- Meeting
- Has it! Mixed review now and then keeps it strong.
- Exceeding
- Applies it confidently, even in new or harder situations. Try challenge mode and real-life problems.
Your child’s teacher decides the level on the report card. Read the Texas report card guide.
Common questions
Turn everyday questions into investigations: “Which paper towel holds the most water?” Read a science news story together and ask what evidence it gives. Keep sessions short, about 10 to 15 minutes, and stop on a success.
The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) 7th grade science units include Atoms & Elements, Physical or Chemical?, Solutions & Separating, Motion, Forces & Newton’s Laws, Moving Heat, Heat & Particles.
Free printable 7th grade science practice sheet
Questions from every unit, with an answer key.