The "Moon" Idea
Students will observe the teacher sorting details that she read from a book about a dog. The teacher is making groups with the details and models her thinking. Students to help determine a title for each group. The students replicate that work in collaborative small groups using details they provided to the teacher after reading a book about the moon the previous day.
Text Features are a Bear
Students are expected to work with partners and then in groups to complete a text feature (scavenger) hunt activity using the same nonfiction text.
Where am I going?
The teacher will engage the students to make inferences through visuals, pictures, and informational text using problem-solving and self-questioning strategies.
Understanding Text Features
This lesson guides students to use sentence stems to clarify their thinking as they identify and locate text features in isolation while using an interactive text features wall. Students will then transition to gaining information from text features as they search for text features in their books and share the information gained with their partners.
Inference Detectives
Students will use mystery bags and graphic organizers to identify clues and use their schema to make an inference. Students conclude this lesson by connecting text as evidence and playing a context clue game with cucumber sentences.
Writing Summaries with Get the Gist
This lesson teaches students to use the Get the Gist strategy to find the main idea of a section. Students will then put those Get the Gist statements together to begin a written summary of their text.
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.
Civil War Inferring
Students will use Social Studies Weekly newspaper to make inferences about historical events using schema and text evidence.
Analyzing Context Clues to Understand the Meaning of a Word
Students will focus on context clues in a vocabulary lesson.
Cause and Effect: The Story of Wangari Maathai
Students will be able to identify cause and effect relationships using an expository text.
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.
One Thing Leads to Another
Students apply their understanding of the text in order to retell the plot sequence.
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.
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.
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.
Texas Middle School Fluency Assessment (TMSFA)
Texas Education Code (TEC) §28.006(c-1) requires that students who do not meet the passing standard on the Grade 6 State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) reading test must be administered a reading assessment at the beginning of grade 7. The Texas Middle School Fluency Assessment (TMSFA) was developed with Texas students to be a valid and reliable instrument for determining students’ areas of instructional need.
The TMSFA is based on valid and reliable scientific research, thoroughly measures each domain of development, and is user-friendly. The following three domains of development are assessed using the TMSFA.
- Text Comprehension (Reading)
- Word Analysis
- Fluency
"C" to the "E" Can't Conquer Me
Students will explore cause and effect relationships by creating different representations of a cause or an effect from a given scenario.
Teacher introducing lesson
Summarizing as a Reading Strategy
Students work collaboratively using reading and comprehension skills to demonstrate their mastery of summarizing a text or piece of literature.
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.