Rhyming is Out of This World!
Students will participate in stations with board games that reinforce rhyming, onset, and rimes, and blending.
Retelling with Confidence
Students learn how to use the pictures in their books to retell a story in sequence. The teacher models how to use the pictures to retell the story Stellaluna by Janell Cannon. The students and teacher complete a graphic organizer using picture representations from the book. The graphic organizer is a frame for all the elements of a strong retell and requires students to include new vocabulary; the characters and setting; and the beginning, middle, and end of the book, Stellaluna. Students will apply the picture retell strategy by completing a graphic organizer for their own book and retelling the story to peers and their teacher.
Author’s Purpose: Reading for Meaning
In this lesson, students use text evidence and background knowledge to generate and evaluate inferences about the author's purpose for specific sections of a passage as well as the entire passage. The lesson is designed with English learners (ELs) and students from families that speak nonstandard dialects of English in mind. The lesson provides scaffolded instruction through the use of strategies designed to make input comprehensible: visuals, graphic organizers, sentence frames, hand gestures, and collaborative learning.
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.
The Write Way
Students will use a graphic organizer to draft the introduction paragraph of their expository essays.
The Bucket Brigade
In this lesson, students rotate to various learning stations and work with a partner to complete tasks that require them to generate inferences, infer the theme of short reading passages, write personal narratives or stories that exemplify a selected theme, and develop Tier Two high utility vocabulary. The lesson incorporates best practices for English learners (ELs) and at-risk students such as the use of collaborative learning, graphic organizers, anchor charts, and technology applications.
It’s More Than Just Sounding It Out
Students will be able to understand vowel digraphs (ai/ay pattern).
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.
Morphology Mania
Students will discover and use knowledge of Greek and Latin roots to determine the meaning of unknown words.
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.
Locating Facts and Details in Text Features
First-grade students will rotate through engaging learning stations and read portions of expository texts to identify facts and details embedded within text features.
Drawing Conclusions and Making Inferences With Expository Text
Third grade students will identify and discuss facts and details from expository text and draw conclusions using textual evidence in learning stations.
Revising for Coherence
Students will use a checklist to peer edit a composition. They will check for coherence through the proper use of transition words and conjunctions.
Flying High with Inferences
In this lesson, students integrate background knowledge and textual clues to respond to inferential questions that were generated by the students themselves. The lesson utilizes instructional strategies that have been identified as best practice for teaching inference such as: generating questions, identifying keywords, and activating prior knowledge. Additionally, the lesson is designed to support English learners and utilizes visuals, graphic organizers, sentence frames, and cooperative learning.
What’s Your Feature?
Students will learn how to use text features to locate information and verify answers within an expository text.
Choose Your Words Wisely!
Students will create a collection using objects, participate in a read-aloud, create another collection using sight word cards, and present their collections to the class.
Teacher reviewing vocabulary words.
Stellar Sentences
Students will read a group of words, arrange them to make sense as a complete thought, and recognize and use capitalization at the beginning and a period as the ending punctuation mark.
Journalists Research, Too!
Students will research information in order to create a newspaper article about the topic.
Revising and Editing Escape Room
Students will collaboratively apply revising and editing skills to make their way through passages and a series of questions to decode a lock. If groups successfully complete the tasks, they will escape the room and win a prize.