Conversations in Art
In this lesson, students will learn the critique process using description, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation. Students will create an evaluation of artwork using the critique process and communicate their understanding through written responses and discourse.
2 Texas Middle School Fluency Assessment: Administering and Interpreting Results
![TALA logo TALA logo](https://d1yqpar94jqbqm.cloudfront.net/styles/resource_icon_small/s3/images/TALA_Logo_Epsilen_1.jpg?itok=5XZTJAkB)
This binder details how to score and interpret the results of the Texas Middle School Fluency Assessment (TMSFA). This course is Unit 4 of the Texas Adolescent Literacy Academy (TALA). These materials are available for view only; no credit or certificate is provided.
Una Reseña de un Restaurante
Students describe a restaurant in restaurant review form using simple phrases and sentences. As they write, students focus on noun-adjective agreement and sentence structure.
Got Force?
Students use various surfaces and a weighted car to see how far the car will travel using balanced and unbalanced forces.
Quality Questioning
In this lesson, students analyze, rate, and revise questions generated in response to their reading of a short story. They use the questions in student-led conversations and activities, helping them understand the connection between strong questioning, inferring, and communicating during reading.
Solving Equations and Inequalities
Students will be divided into four groups and work on their assigned task to become an expert. They will match vocabulary terms with definitions and examples, use the “Pass the Pen” strategy to create and solve equations or inequalities, or write a real-world problem for an equation given. The experts will then teach these concepts to their peers.
Human Paragraphs
Students assume roles of paragraph parts, including the main idea and supporting details, in order to reassemble a text that has been divided into pieces based on textual purpose.
Creating Connections Across Literary Texts
Students will explore organizational patterns in short passages and use signal words/phrases as evidence to support the main idea and their understanding.
Teacher Introducing the Lesson
Perfectly Proportional Percents
Students will collaborate to explain verbally how to solve percent proportions and scaling while showing their thinking.
Express Yourself
Students determine which expression is a truth or a lie by generating equivalent expressions.
Keep Your Balance!
Students are introduced to solving one-variable, one-step equations using addition and subtraction through models and hands-on activities. The students will learn the substitution method of checking answers.
Perfecting Percents
Students will engage in an activity that allows them to explore the different parts of percents: part, whole, and percent, and develop conceptual understanding of percents through the Concrete, Representational, Abstract (CRA) method of instruction.
Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic Cells
Students will categorize cells as prokaryotic or eukaryotic by identifying the presence or lack of a nucleus.
Teacher Summing Up Lesson
Lights, Camera, Action!
Students compare and contrast potential and kinetic energy by creating a real-world model through a movie.
Crime Scene Investigations through Text Structures
Students participate in an activity where they must solve a crime. Students visit different stations that include surveillance tape, tips, eyewitness statements, and a crime scene. Each station is formatted as a different organizational pattern allowing students to practice creating summaries reflecting the structure used.
Does it have Potential?
Students will work with partners to investigate how mass, potential energy, and kinetic energy act on objects dropped from varying heights.
Video of the lesson being taught
Critiquing and Creating Compound and Complex Sentences
Students will create compound and complex sentences with proper comma usage and present their explanations to the class.
Student work
Layers to Understanding Poetry
Students will apply their analytical skills to different types of poems by reviewing the devices used in poetry, reading and analyzing two poems, and creating a poster to demonstrate their learning.
Texas Courses Update
![Gateway Classic](https://d1yqpar94jqbqm.cloudfront.net/styles/resource_icon_small/s3/images/Classic%20Gateway%20Icon%2050%20x%2050%20%28no%20text%29_0.png?itok=Jcj37l2L)
Professional development courses for CPE credit are transitioning to a new course platform—TEALearn; professional development courses are no longer available through the Texas Gateway. As part of this process, TEA has reviewed courses that were previously offered through the Gateway. This resource provides an update on current status and availability of Classic Gateway courses.