2 Texas Middle School Fluency Assessment: Administering and Interpreting Results
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.
The Write Way
Students will use a graphic organizer to draft the introduction paragraph of their expository essays.
Escribir una carta persuasiva
This lesson was intended to be delivered in a face-to-face classroom environment. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, this lesson has been modified from its original design to be executed in a virtual setting.
This virtual lesson was designed to prepare students to communicate familiar topics in the presentational writing mode in the target language. Students will act as a college advisor and respond to a prospective student’s email regarding housing options. Students will then peer evaluate each other’s writing and provide meaningful feedback using a rubric.
Analyzing and Using Organizational Patterns
Students used organizational patterns (compare and contrast, argumentative, cause and effect, problem and solution, chronological) to create anchor charts. Students then worked in groups to analyze text and plan a composition, using the anchor charts to complete the tasks. Ultimately, students created a plan from a self-generated topic to demonstrate an understanding of the use of organizational patterns.
Revising for Coherence
Students will use a checklist to peer edit a composition. They will check for coherence through the proper use of transition words and conjunctions.
Analyzing Author’s Purpose: Argumentative Text
Students will read a pre-Civil War speech and write author’s purpose statements using the argumentative verbs explain, urge, convince, and encourage.
Teacher in Action
Communication in Space
Students will work in cooperative groups to create an accurate arrangement of mirrors that work together to relay a laser beam from a Mars space station to Earth’s Mission Control, which will model utilizing satellites in space for communication, an accommodation necessary for manned space exploration.
Teacher In Action
Figuring out Figurative Language
Students will work collaboratively to infer the implied meaning of a metaphor used in a poem. Students will complete a graphic organizer in which they discuss with their peers the two items being compared in the metaphor, write and illustrate the literal meaning of each word being compared, and use this information to infer the implied meaning of the metaphor. The lesson has a strong focus on vocabulary development and is designed with English learners (ELs) in mind.
Which Organizational Pattern Is It?
Students will read a text, identify its organizational pattern, highlight signal words, create a visual representation/graphic organizer, and present to the class.
Students during Task
Hooked on Inferring
In this lesson, students use text evidence and schema to create an inference. Students read informational text and practice inferring with varying levels of support.
Revising and Editing Escape Room
Students will collaboratively apply revising and editing skills to make their way through passages and a series of questions to decode a lock. If groups successfully complete the tasks, they will escape the room and win a prize.
Newton's Second Law
Students will work in partners to investigate Newton’s second law by testing a series of experiments with varying conditions.
How Newton's Laws Apply Every Day
Students collaboratively determine how the characteristics of a real-world job correlate with each of Newton’s Laws and why that is relevant to their own lives.
Glaciologist in Action (Lab)
Students participate in a hands-on lab in which glacier (ice) effects on the Earth’s surface is demonstrated.
Circuit Designers
Students will work in small groups of two to three on a structured challenge around circuits which includes requirements such as including using a switch or a conductor. They will then use that knowledge to work on a collaborative challenge to solve a relevant problem related to elephant poaching. Students will create a containment system that will have an alarm system, a lighting system, and a way to pass through. Finally, they will review the other projects and discuss similarities and differences in the design.
Analyzing the Text for Summary and Connections
Students will critically think and communicate; they will summarize a text to understand and make connections to other texts, themselves, and the world.