Circuit Designers
Students will work in small groups of two to three on a structured challenge around circuits which includes requirements such as including using a switch or a conductor. They will then use that knowledge to work on a collaborative challenge to solve a relevant problem related to elephant poaching. Students will create a containment system that will have an alarm system, a lighting system, and a way to pass through. Finally, they will review the other projects and discuss similarities and differences in the design.
Quality Questioning
In this lesson, students analyze, rate, and revise questions generated in response to their reading of a short story. They use the questions in student-led conversations and activities, helping them understand the connection between strong questioning, inferring, and communicating during reading.
Analyzing the Text for Summary and Connections
Students will critically think and communicate; they will summarize a text to understand and make connections to other texts, themselves, and the world.
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
Fractions with Multi-Step Problems
Students will be able to work collaboratively while baking to find the least common multiples of fractions with unlike denominators and create equivalent fractions, then add or subtract.
Got Force?
Students use various surfaces and a weighted car to see how far the car will travel using balanced and unbalanced forces.
Earth’s Movements
Students will work in small collaborative groups to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth as it revolves around the Sun which creates a day and night cycle.
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.
Civil War Inferring
Students will use Social Studies Weekly newspaper to make inferences about historical events using schema and text evidence.
Sticky Note Summarizing
Students will determine the important parts of a story and recognize and compose an individual summary by using color-coordinated sticky notes and the Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then (SWBST) strategy. Students will practice correctly identifying the parts of the SWBST strategy during a read-aloud. Students will work in groups and read a short story together, identify key components, and compose a written summary. Students will demonstrate their ability to recognize a good summary by writing two components of summarization on an exit ticket.
Put on Your Detective Cap: Making Inferences
Students pretend to be detectives while being presented with various pictorial and textual clues that lead them to make an overall inference about what happened on Tuesday.
Particular Polygons
Students will be able to classify 2D figures by analyzing their attributes.
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.
Roll With It
Students will experience a hands-on lesson regarding ratios. While doing this, students will deepen their understanding of the concepts of ratios.
Teacher during Introduction
Analyzing Bar Graphs: Candy Machines
Working in groups, students will examine a bag of candy to determine if the machine that bags the candy is working properly. They will organize data on the colors of the candy in a frequency table and a bar graph. They will calculate the fraction of each color in the bag and compare the fractions to a quota set up by the factory to determine if the machine needs maintenance. Students will create a report about their findings, write a question that requires students to interpret data represented in a bar graph, and reflect in their journals.
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.
How Does the Cookie Crumble?
Students will self-discover how to multiply mixed numbers by using background knowledge of estimation, computations, and real world application of a recipe.
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills Related to the Unit
In fifth grade, students will be able to multiply and divide whole numbers, which will lead into multiplication and division of decimals in sixth grade. That same year, they will model products and quotients of decimals to the hundredths place. This concrete model will lead them to a better understanding of the algorithm in fifth and sixth grade.
As fifth graders, students will model multiplication and division of a fraction and a whole number. The following year, students are expected to multiply and divide all types of fractions.
In addition, during sixth grade, students are introduced to integers (negative whole numbers) and will be able to model and solve all operations with integers. All of the skills previously stated will lead students to be able to perform all operations of rational numbers without models (positive and negative fractions, decimals, and whole numbers) in seventh grade.
Click below to learn more about the TEKS related to this unit. The highlighted standards have been chosen for this research lesson.
Using Measures of Center and Spread to Summarize Data
Students will be able to use the measures of center and spread of a set of data to make summary statements regarding the applications of the data.
Biotic and Abiotic Factors of an Ecosystem
Students will explore abiotic and biotic factors in various ecosystems by working through stations. Students will be able to identify and describe abiotic and biotic factors within an ecosystem.
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.