Get the Gist on the Main Idea
In this lesson, students use the Get the Gist Strategy to analyze text and identify the main idea. The lesson was designed with English learners in mind and utilizes strategies such as cooperative learning, visuals, graphic organizers, cloze reading, and sentence frames.
Crime Scene Investigations through Text Structures
Students participate in an activity where they must solve a crime. Students visit different stations that include surveillance tape, tips, eyewitness statements, and a crime scene. Each station is formatted as a different organizational pattern allowing students to practice creating summaries reflecting the structure used.
Reading Strategies: Choose, Monitor, and Comprehend with Nonfiction Texts
Students will engage in activities that allow them to take a book walk and use criteria to choose a good-fit book, use strategies to self-monitor their own comprehension while independently reading, and use partner talk criteria to reflect on their strategies collaboratively.
Composing Like Beethoven
Students will review music vocabulary, name notes using flashcards, and create and present a 4/4 composition using rhythm sticks and other available instruments.
Music flash cards
Critiquing and Creating Compound and Complex Sentences
Students will create compound and complex sentences with proper comma usage and present their explanations to the class.
Student work
Layers to Understanding Poetry
Students will apply their analytical skills to different types of poems by reviewing the devices used in poetry, reading and analyzing two poems, and creating a poster to demonstrate their learning.
The Next Steps to Great Writing
Students will write a draft that is sequenced and logical after brainstorming.
Teacher introducing lesson
Connecting Author’s Purpose and Organizational Patterns
Students explore and analyze how the author can achieve a specific purpose by using a variety of organizational patterns.
Organized Authors: Name That Structure
Students will read a text passage, looking for and highlighting key words that indicate the appropriate organizational pattern of the text.
Students working
Write Right
This research lesson encourages students to become better illustrators and authors. Students will work in collaborative groups and independently to develop drafts.
The Battle Between Editing and Revising
Students will apply revision strategies to mentor texts. They also will have the opportunity to create a new book.
Discovering the Power of a Complete Sentence
Students will discover the necessary components of a complete sentence and use the complete subject and complete predicate in their own writing through a process called ratiocination.
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) Vertical Alignment
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The Key to Key Signature
Students will review previous learning about half steps, whole steps, and enharmonics and will begin to learn the construction of tetrachords using the whole and half step sequence.
Painting With Expository Writing
After students examine an image by Faith Ringgold, they will write supporting sentences when given a central idea sentence.
Summarizing with Sarah at the ER
The purpose of this lesson is to sequence the events of a story chronologically and be able to summarize the major events.
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) Vertical Alignment
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Mapping Out Our Learning
Students will participate in a workshop-style lesson that includes partner and small-group work, teacher modeling, and independent reflection to not only label and identify text features within informational text, but to also connect the feature to its purpose.
Rolling into Compound Sentences
Students will create compound sentences from simple sentences.
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.
It's a Maniac Breakout
Students will work together and problem-solve in a timed breakout session to gather clues and answer questions involving cause-and-effect, sequential, and comparative relationships in text.
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.
Our Best Day
In this lesson, students will write about a classmate’s best day. They will then add details to the writing to support the central idea. This lesson integrates the instruction of the main idea in reading and writing.
Reading on the Farm
In learning stations, students collaboratively generate inferences and make predictions about expository text.