Who Is the Culprit?
Engaging in a crime scene investigation, students will collaboratively examine the evidence, make inferences about their observations, and write a detailed description of the crime. Students will then read an informational text about investigating a crime scene and answer inference questions.
Paired Passages with a Purpose
Students will make inferences about the author’s purpose after reading paired passages involving the same subject.
Poetry With Purpose
Students collaborate in small groups to discuss their peers’ poetry and assess the poetry according to the student-created rubric. The rubric assesses students’ ability to make meaningful connections to the poetic devices in their poetry. Through collaboration, they are building a culture of receptiveness among their peers.
Inferring with Dr. Seuss
Students will work collaboratively in groups as they practice their inferring skills using children’s literature books.
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.
Convergent Plate Boundaries
Students will design and test models that will identify crustal features formed by convergent plate boundaries.
Full Speed Ahead
Students will use hover pucks to measure speed over a distance of six meters. Once speed has been calculated, students will determine velocity using the same data. Finally, students will be able to label all points of acceleration.
Uses of Energy Lab
Students will rotate through lab stations equipped with objects and videos as they explore the uses and conversion of five different types of energy.
Going on an Expedition
Students observe how dunes and canyons are created through agents of erosion by weathering and erosion.
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) Vertical Alignment
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Main Idea
Students will identify supporting details and the main idea in a passage.
Stop, Collaborate, and Rotate
Students will explore the Earth's rotation and its relation to the Sun and the Moon. Then, students will create a visual representation of this relationship and present it to the rest of the class.
Teacher doing Introduction
Evaluating Inferences
Students will evaluate a set of inferences to determine if they are valid or invalid and use text evidence to support their stance. The lesson incorporates best practices for English learners (ELs) and at-risk students such as the use of graphic organizers, anchor charts, and cooperative learning.
Santa Timeline Breakout
Students collaborate and critically-think to analyze resources from informational texts of various disciplines and unlock a breakout box. Once the box is unlocked, students receive a final text to summarize.
Did You Get the "Text" Message?
Students will work independently and collaboratively to recognize the theme within a variety of texts. Students will create theme topics and theme statements from texts read.
Exploring Identity and Diving Deep into the Complex Meaning of Poetry
This lesson is designed to teach students to make complex inferences, choose specific text evidence that strongly supports the inference, and develop a coherent explanation of how the evidence strongly supports the validity of the idea within the genre of poetry.
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) Related to the Unit
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Reading Between the Lines
In this lesson, students will expand their critical thinking skills by making inferences found in a short film and listening to a literary fictional text on tablets. Working collaboratively in groups, students will create anchor charts to demonstrate their understanding of making inferences and present their detailed anchor charts to their classmates.
Manifest Density
Students will design a foil boat and add mass to test relative density.
Students describing how they got their boat to float.