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.
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.
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.
Building a Watershed
Students will model the effects of human activity on watersheds.
Modeling the Path of Digestion
Students model the path of digestion using household items.
Crime Scene Inferences
In learning stations, students use textual evidence and personal schema to generate inferences, make generalizations, and draw conclusions to support understanding about expository text.
Inferring: It’s a Beast!
Using a digital forum, seventh-grade students will collaboratively generate authentic inferences about character motivation. Students will utilize textual evidence and draw from personal schema in order to make logical connections across multiple genres.
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.
Remembering Leaders
Students will read expository text, categorize findings, and reformulate the text into an obituary.
Teacher poised for modeling
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.
Are You Speaking Greek?
Students will be able to determine the meaning of words using Greek, Latin, or other linguistic roots and affixes.