Grade 7

In grade seven instructional time should focus on four critical areas:

(1) developing understanding of and applying proportional relationships, including percentages;

(2) developing understanding of operations with rational numbers and working with expressions and linear equations;

(3) solving problems involving scale drawings and informal geometric constructions and working with two- and three-dimensional shapes to solve problems involving area, surface area, and volume; and

(4) drawing inferences about populations based on samples. Students also work towards fluently solving equations of the form px + q = r and p(x + q) = r.

Grade 8

In grade eight, instructional time should focus on three critical areas:

(1) formulating and reasoning about expressions and equations, including modeling an association in bivariate data with a linear equation, and solving linear equations and systems of linear equations;

(2) grasping the concept of a function and using functions to describe quantitative relationships;

(3) analyzing two- and three-dimensional space and figures using distance, angle, similarity, and congruence and understanding and applying the Pythagorean Theorem.

Students also work towards fluency with solving simple sets of two equations with two unknowns by inspection.