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.
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
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
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.
Rise Over Run! Let’s Have Fun!
Students will collaboratively practice identifying and graphing slope and y-intercept.
Equations in the Real World
Students will create and solve equations with variables on one side before comparing the equation with another to determine at what rate they will be equal.
Finding Clues to Solve Equations and Inequalities
Students will solve one variable two-step equations and inequalities using a variety of materials while working independently and collaboratively in learning stations.
Strike a Pose
The students will solve two-step equations through modeling, expressing algebraically, and writing out the steps to their solutions.
Rational Number Stations
Students will visit two different stations and work as a group to add, subtract, multiply, and divide rational numbers.
Stages of Ecological Succession
Students will collaborate on a electronic slideshow presentation and observe, record, and describe the role of ecological succession including both primary and secondary succession.
Four Representations of Linear Relationships
Given one representation of a linear relationship, students will create a poster displaying the other three representations of linear relationships.
Concert Trip to Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado
Students will evaluate and interpret data from both tabular and graphical forms to create a linear equation in either the form of direct variation (y=kx) or slope-intercept form (y = mx + b). Students will then use their findings to interpret the meaning of both slope and y-intercept using a real-world relationship in word form.
Biodiversity
Students will explore biodiversity concepts through several activities including a video, a card sort, think-pair-shares, food webs, and four corners.
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.