Revising Sentences
Students will revise a simple sentence by copying it on a series of sticky notes and adding new words using glitter pens and star-shaped sticky notes.
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) Vertical Alignment
Click below to learn about the TEKS related to the unit and Research Lesson.
Scientifically Magnetic!
Students will review the steps of the scientific method and conduct an investigation that involves sorting magnetic and nonmagnetic objects.
Biodiversity
Students will explore biodiversity concepts through several activities including a video, a card sort, think-pair-shares, food webs, and four corners.
Drumming Up Some Sound Energy!
Students will explore sound energy by creating their own drums using a variety of materials. Then, students will listen for the loud and soft sounds that each of the drums creates.
Introduction of Lesson using a video of drums
Inferring: It’s a Beast!
Using a digital forum, seventh-grade students will collaboratively generate authentic inferences about character motivation. Students will utilize textual evidence and draw from personal schema in order to make logical connections across multiple genres.
My Version of the Three Little Pigs
Students will create their own version of "The Three Little Pigs" using story elements on a Beginning, Middle, End (BME) story map. First, students will draft their story map with detailed pictures in sequential order, and then go back and add their words later. Once their story is completed, students will be able to retell their story to peers and their teacher.
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) Vertical Alignment
Click below to learn about the TEKS related to the unit and Research Lesson. The highlighted student expectation(s) is the chosen focus for the Research Lesson.
Retelling Facts and Making Inferences
In learning stations, students will work independently and collaboratively to make inferences and retell important facts from multiple expository texts.
Are Letters Important?
Students will use alphabet cards to create consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words and encode and decode given CVC words.
Teacher doing Introduction
Rainforest Research Stations - Graffiti Table
The students will learn the First Research Station— Graffiti Table by watching the teacher model ‘thinking aloud,’ by looking at photographs from nonfiction books, then sketching what she is noticing.
What Mystery Family Moved into Kindergarten?
Students will identify words in a specific word family in collaborative groups.
Escaping the Nucleus
Students will work in groups to complete an escape room challenge that replicates the process of gene expression.
Sentence Structure
Students will identify different types of sentence structures within a mentor text and demonstrate the understanding of varying sentence types by creating correctly structured and punctuated compound and complex sentences from simple sentences given by the teacher.
Teacher giving instructions
Discovering Patterns in Words
Students will build words using letter tiles and discuss the spelling pattern. Students will build a new challenge word by changing the end sound, vowel sound, or making a blend according to the needs of each group.
Text Features and Creatures
This lesson incorporates the science standard of identifying basic parts of an animal and their basic needs with the kindergarten reading standard of using titles and simple graphics to gain information. The lesson is a gradual release of responsibility in which students gain as much information as possible from photographs of mammals while collaborating with a partner. Students will then compare diagrams of their animals from a previous lesson with the photographs of their animal, noticing what information is gained from each text feature and how they are different.
Synthesizing and Making Connections—Socratic Style
Students will show understanding of expository text and be able to collaborate with peers to provide evidence of their understanding.
When Readers Get in Trouble
In this lesson, students will learn how they can monitor their own reading with meaning, structure, and visual information by reading both independently and with a partner. Students will self-select books on their instructional level and reflect on how they monitored their reading with their partners and the class.