PRISM Library
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The Language of Operations
Students learn the precise vocabulary for all four arithmetic operations (sum, difference, product, quotient, factor, dividend, divisor) and connect these terms to real-world situations while building confidence through familiar contexts.
Heredity - Vocabulary
A robust Grade 7 genetics vocabulary reference aligned to heredity, dominant and recessive traits, genetic variation, and mutation.
Inside the Cell: Anatomy and Function of Plant and Animal Cells
A comprehensive lesson on the anatomy and function of plant and animal cells. Students explore every major organelle, learn how each contributes to cell survival, compare plant and animal cell structures, and check their understanding throughout with embedded assessments covering all components of the cell.
States of Matter and Phase Changes
Students learn how particle arrangement and motion differ across solids, liquids, and gases, explore all six phase changes and the role of thermal energy, and interpret heating curves to understand what happens at each plateau.
Reading the Rock Record
Students learn to read Earth's history from rock layers using the Law of Superposition, index fossils for correlation, relative and absolute dating methods including radiometric dating and half-lives, the geologic time scale, and additional geological evidence from ice cores, faults, and igneous intrusions.
Graphing Motion
Students learn to create and interpret position-time graphs, calculate speed from slope, identify periods of rest, constant speed, and acceleration from graph shape, and compare the motion of multiple objects on the same graph.
Predicting Traits
Students learn how to use Punnett squares to predict the probability of offspring inheriting specific traits, understanding dominant and recessive alleles, genotypes, and phenotypes.
Evidence for Evolution
Students explore four major lines of evidence for biological evolution: the fossil record (including transitional fossils), comparative anatomy (homologous, analogous, and vestigial structures), embryology, and molecular biology (DNA comparisons). Students also learn how modern classification systems reflect evolutionary relationships.
Weather and Climate Unit Introduction
A 45-minute introduction lesson where students differentiate weather from climate, explain air masses and fronts, interpret weather maps, and connect the water cycle to weather patterns.
Matter and Its Interactions - Remix
A fast-paced review of the first three lessons covering atoms and subatomic particles, phases and properties of matter, and elements and the periodic table. Designed to get students caught up and re-oriented after absences.
Adaptation and Speciation
Students explore the three types of adaptations (structural, behavioral, physiological), learn how directional, stabilizing, and disruptive selection shape populations differently, trace the steps of speciation through geographic isolation, and survey adaptations across Earth's major biomes.
Food Webs & Energy Flow
A 30 minute Grade 8 lesson on how energy enters ecosystems (mainly sunlight), how producers convert it to chemical energy, and how energy is transferred and lost as heat through a food web.
Matter and Its Interactions Unit Introduction
A 60 minute unit introduction where students model atomic structure, use periodic table patterns to predict properties, distinguish elements/compounds/mixtures, and explain chemical reactions and conservation of mass using models and data.
Why Charlotte Doesn't Freeze in June: Seasons & Earth's Tilt
Students watch the Generation Genius 'Causes of Seasons' video and build a mental model of how Earth's axial tilt, not its distance from the Sun, drives seasonal changes in temperature, daylight hours, and sunlight intensity across the hemispheres. The lesson connects abstract orbital mechanics to students' lived experience of seasons in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Properties of Matter
Students learn to distinguish intensive properties (density, melting point, boiling point, solubility) from extensive properties (mass, volume, weight), calculate density using d = m/V, and understand how physical properties identify substances.
Fractions and Decimals: Two Languages, One Idea
Students discover that fractions and decimals are two representations of the same value, master equivalent fractions and simplifying using GCF, convert between improper fractions and mixed numbers, understand the reciprocal, and connect fraction-to-decimal conversion to the division meaning of a fraction.
Number Relationships and Place Value
Students deepen their understanding of factors and multiples, distinguish prime from composite numbers, find GCF and LCM, and extend place value knowledge through thousandths, building the vocabulary and number sense needed for fraction and decimal operations.
Unit Review - Heredity: Inheritance and Variation
Comprehensive unit review covering heredity and genetics: inherited vs. acquired traits, DNA/chromosomes/genes, alleles and dominance, genotype vs. phenotype, Punnett squares, sexual vs. asexual reproduction, genetic variation and survival, and environmental effects on inheritance.