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.
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.
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.
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.
Rise Over Run! Let’s Have Fun!
Students will collaboratively practice identifying and graphing slope and y-intercept.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Making Inferences and Drawing Conclusions in an Anne Frank Digital Challenge
Students will work collaboratively on a digital challenge activity by reading short excerpts of nonfiction text and explore an online webpage where they will learn more about the life of Anne Frank and the World War II era. By answering inferential and organizational structure questions, regarding those topics, students will be in a race against each other to crack the code to a lockbox.
Can We Get There?
Students will calculate the rate of change and y-intercept from a real-world problem represented in a graph, a table, and/or an equation. They will then display and present their findings to the class.
No Interest If Paid in Full: How Much Do I Owe?
Students will write a linear equation from a real-world situation, identify the components of the equation, and interpret their meanings in the problem’s context.