The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 7 partially meet the expectations for the supporting content enhancing focus and coherence simultaneously by engaging students in the major work of the grade. To determine this, the connections that the teacher guide stated were considered, and the student lessons were reviewed to validate the connections from the teacher guide as well as determine if there were missed opportunities to make strong connections.

Some examples include:

• The strongest support comes from geometry and statistics supporting the major work of Expressions and Equations. Units 14 (Angles), 15 (Scale Factor), and 16 (Surface Area) support 7.EE.A and 7.EE.B. All of these require the students to use formulas/equations to solve problems.
• Unit 15 also has a strong connection to computation concepts (7.NS.A).
• There were instances where the supporting work missed opportunities to connect to major work such as Unit 15, which could have developed the connection to Ratios/Proportions related to the scale factors.
• In Packet 13, Lesson 3, standards 7.RP.A, 7.SP.A, and 7.SP.B are connected as students make inferences about populations of fish in a lake after a sampling experiment. Four days are allotted for this lesson. However the connection does not extend beyond the “fish in a lake” example and there is concern that students would not be able to transfer the learning just from one specific problem.
• In Packet 7, all seven days of the unit are devoted to supporting work (7.SP.C), but on only three out of seven of those days (in Lesson 3) are students engaged in connecting the supporting work to the major work of the grade level.
• Many of the packets contain below grade-level content, which limits the opportunity for supporting content to enhance the major work of the grade.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 7 partially meet the expectations for the amount of content designated for one grade level being viable for one school year in order to foster coherence between grades.

The Teacher’s Guide offers six different pacing plans –

• Three for traditional schedules.
• Three for block schedules.
• Each has the Modified Plan for students who require extensive review.
• The Basic Plan for students who require some review.
• The Enriched Plan for students who only need minimal review.
• All of them plan for 32 weeks of instruction.

For the report the Traditional Enriched Plan was used because it best represented a focus on grade-level work.

The pacing provided by the publisher is reasonable for lessons to be completed in the time suggested.

• Lessons plus a catch-up day (built into each unit) and the assessment day equal 155.5 days
• Falls within the 140-190 range suggested
• According to the Scope and Sequence, all Grade 7 standards are included.

However, there are concerns:

• There is concern that the depth of learning would not adequately prepare students for the next grade level.
• The packets take a surface approach to standards – they meet the standard, but without developing the depth of understanding that allows students to apply and transfer the learning.
• In addition, there is concern about the three pacing suggestions.
  • Students needing more review early in the year spend equal or less time on units later in the year, which is new material.
  • It is not clear how students who need Modified Plan A could finish all packets in the same amount of time as students on Enriched Plan C, though there are suggestions about items that could be omitted.

Overall, the number of days suggested is viable, but the depth and pacing creates cause for concern.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 7 partially meet the expectations for the material to be consistent with the progressions in the CCSSM. Content from prior grades is clearly identified, although materials do not always relate grade-level concepts explicitly to prior knowledge from earlier grades within each lesson. Connections are not made to content in future grades. Overall, the materials in Grade 7 identify the progressions from prior grades in the standards.

• The teacher guide includes a page delineating how the major work standards for Grade 7 intersect with major clusters in grades 5-8.
• Each packet lists an overview of standards being addressed including foundational standards that have been taught and learned previously.
• In general, lessons are taught as a series of three, where each builds or connects to the one before.

· Teachers are provided with sufficient information to help see the connections in the standards, tasks, packets and lessons.

· There are standards where the materials are only partially representative of the progressions. For example: 7.RP is included in four units (Units 6, 11, 12, and 13). In Units 11 and 12, 7.RP is addressed with 7.NS, 7.EE and 6.RP as students use proportional reasoning to solve a variety of problems. The work with ratios and proportional reasoning is very specific to certain tasks throughout the units. Overall understanding of the concept of proportionality as a whole and representation of proportionality in various forms is limited because of lack of depth.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 7 partially meet the expectation of giving all students extensive work with grade-level problems. Overall, the materials do not consistently give students of varying abilities extensive work with grade-level problems.

• Not all students have the opportunity to engage deeply with problems related to grade-level standards as the material is not as rigorous as needed and doesn't have the depth that is needed to truly master the standards.
• Each packet primarily contains problem sets designed to help develop students' procedural skill/fluency.
• Some of the performance tasks and proficiency assessments do allow for more application and rigorous engagement with the standards.
• It is recommended in the teachers guide that struggling students spend the majority of time on basic lessons, skill builders and review and to avoid extensions and more challenging questions. This is limiting their interaction and mastery of grade-level standards.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 7 partially meet the expectation of relating grade-level concepts explicitly to prior knowledge from earlier grades. Overall, materials only generally relate grade-level concepts explicitly to prior knowledge from earlier grades.

• Each module lists the foundational standards at the beginning of the module to explicitly connect prior learning to current learning.
• It is more beneficial to see these connections listed in the lessons as they occur.
• Connections to lessons and/or topics from previous grade levels that will be helpful in upcoming lessons are frequently reviewed in the “warm-up” at the beginning of a given topic, though no explicit connections are made for the students.