Grade 7 Math Curriculum in North America: What Children Learn

Grade 7 extends everything from Grade 6 into the world of rational numbers — positive and negative fractions and decimals — and deepens the treatment of proportional reasoning. It is the year that separates children who truly understand fractions from children who were memorizing rules.

Rational number operations

• Adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing positive and negative rational numbers.
• Understanding opposites and absolute value.
• Solving word problems involving rational numbers.

Proportional relationships

• Recognizing proportional relationships in tables, graphs, and equations.
• Finding the constant of proportionality.
• Solving multi-step ratio and percent problems including tax, tip, markup, discount, simple interest.

Expressions, equations, and inequalities

• Applying properties to generate equivalent expressions.
• Solving multi-step equations of the form px + q = r and p(x + q) = r.
• Solving word problems leading to inequalities.

Geometry

• Scale drawings.
• Circumference and area of a circle.
• Surface area and volume of three-dimensional figures.
• Angle relationships in triangles and intersecting lines.

Statistics and probability

• Random sampling and drawing inferences from samples.
• Comparing two populations informally.
• Theoretical and experimental probability of simple and compound events.

What to focus on at home

Grade 7 is a great year to connect math to the real world. Calculating a tip at a restaurant is proportional reasoning. Working out a sale discount is percent word problem. Talking through whether the Weather Network's "70 percent chance of rain" actually means anything is probability. The more your child sees these ideas outside the classroom, the more durable the learning.