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
Planning a Draft
Students will employ critical thinking skills to order details logically and become more effective at communicating their ideas to readers. The lesson will guide students toward using critical thinking in the planning phase of drafting to purposefully include details that interest readers.
Pack Your Bags!
Students learn to determine the difference between topic, central idea, and details using mystery bags, graphic organizers, and short passages.
The Characteristics of the Mystery Letter "H"
Students will identify and apply characteristics of an alphabetical letter (mystery letter Hh) through various hands-on activities and cooperative group work.
Adventures in Inferring
Students will infer the message the author is trying to convey using schema and evidence from the text. Readers use this strategy, known as making inferences, to think about what they are reading.
Students progress from a surface-level understanding of text to a deeper understanding by processing and expressing details and examples to support their understanding of observations through background knowledge and textual evidence.
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Character Traits
Students will be able to identify characters, their traits, and the reason for their actions.
Author’s Purpose in a Bag
Students will infer from text evidence the author’s purpose and explain their thinking.
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
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Rhyming with Visuals
The teacher will model how to recognize rhyming words by hearing them, seeing them, reading them, and writing them. Then the students will practice hearing, seeing, reading, and writing “at” word family words.
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) Related to the Unit
This unit connects to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) by fostering a continuance in the area of phonological awareness as begun in previous lessons and introducing the exploration of nursery rhymes, poetry, and lullabies through literature and language play.
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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.
A Lesson in Kindness and Thematic Complexity
Students explore their internal definition of kindness, using visual and textual evidence to collaboratively expand that definition and perform a close reading of a poem. Students then use internal text to express the author’s complex and subtle thematic message.
Text Feature Fun!
Students will locate and identify text features in non-fiction books while matching the purpose to the appropriate text feature.
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.
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.
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
Sensing Poetry
Students locate sensory details and create their own sensory detail poem.
Teacher discusses the sensory details that correspond with the five senses
Using Captions to Infer
The students will be shown a picture with a caption. The students will partner up and discuss what they see and have read in the caption. The students must make an inference based off of the evidence and write an inference statement. Students will upload image and inference statements to a class sharing app for others to read and comment on.
Inferences with Wolfie and Dot
In this lesson, students use text evidence and background knowledge to make inferences. Students infer during each phase of the lesson using a variety of literary sources and activities.
Digging in with Text Features
Students will read an expository text and apply text features by comparing and contrasting information regarding two animals’ homes.
Teacher models how to use a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast two things