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.
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.
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.
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.
Syncing with Inferences
In this lesson, students integrate relevant text evidence and background knowledge to generate valid inferences when reading a historical fiction text. The lesson was designed with English learners in mind, so it includes instructional strategies designed to make linguistic and content input comprehensible: a focus on vocabulary, visuals, cooperative learning, anchor charts, graphic organizers, and sentence stems/frames.
Figuring out Figurative Language
Students will work collaboratively to infer the implied meaning of a metaphor used in a poem. Students will complete a graphic organizer in which they discuss with their peers the two items being compared in the metaphor, write and illustrate the literal meaning of each word being compared, and use this information to infer the implied meaning of the metaphor. The lesson has a strong focus on vocabulary development and is designed with English learners (ELs) in mind.
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.
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.
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.
Bulldogs “Paws” for a Good Summary
This lesson helps students summarize information in expository text using logical order. The lesson begins with students using a T-chart to categorize information as they summarize a text. By the end of the lesson, students will independently summarize information. As students transition through activities in the lesson, they will work both in groups and independently using a variety of best practices and a checklist to heighten intrinsic motivation, increasing chances for success.
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.
Revision is in the Details
Students receive the same pre-generated sentence and discuss with a partner how to revise that sentence, adding details either by writing or drawing.
What Can You Infer?
Students will learn how to use textual evidence to make inferences and to support their understanding.