Super Sequencing Strategies
Students will explore the informational text structure of sequencing in multiple contexts, as a reader and a writer, in order to improve their comprehension of informational text and their ability to analyze the author’s purpose. They will make connections between sequencing and events in their everyday life and use pictures and time order words to write their own informational text using sequencing.
Giving Meaning to Multiple Meaning Words
In this lesson, students identify and use keywords in a paragraph to infer the relevant meaning of multiple-meaning words. Students build a deep understanding of words by creating semantic maps that show relationships among words. The lesson was designed with English learners in mind and utilizes instructional strategies such as cooperative learning, visuals, graphic organizers, and sentence frames.
Conversations in Art
In this lesson, students will learn the critique process using description, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation. Students will create an evaluation of artwork using the critique process and communicate their understanding through written responses and discourse.
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.
Growing Our Vocabulary Goals
Students will use a variety of vocabulary strategies to apply their knowledge of unknown and multiple-meaning words.
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.
Who Ate More - Fractions on a Number Line
In this activity, students will consider a real-world scenario requiring them to compare two fractional amounts using a number line. Through the use of the number line and peer collaboration, students will recognize equivalency in the two fractional quantities and effectively communicate their understanding of this concept.
Una Reseña de un Restaurante
Students describe a restaurant in restaurant review form using simple phrases and sentences. As they write, students focus on noun-adjective agreement and sentence structure.
Many Stripes of Inferring
Students will infer character feelings and motivations and support their inference with text evidence.
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.
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.
Spending Money
In this lesson, students use the Understand, Plan, Solve, and Evaluate (UPSE) problem-solving model to first identify and organize relevant information, and then devise and carry out a plan to solve one-step mathematics word problems with a missing addend. The lesson was designed with English learners (ELs) in mind and includes instructional strategies designed to make linguistic and content input comprehensible: a focus on vocabulary, manipulatives, visuals, cooperative learning, anchor charts, graphic organizers, technology applications, and sentence stems/frames.
Traditional vs. Contemporary: "The Three Little Pigs"
Students will compare a contemporary version of "The Three Little Pigs" to a traditional version with respect to characters, setting, and plot. In a small group, students will analyze story elements on a t-chart to determine which parts of the stories are the same and which are different.
Solving Equations and Inequalities
Students will be divided into four groups and work on their assigned task to become an expert. They will match vocabulary terms with definitions and examples, use the “Pass the Pen” strategy to create and solve equations or inequalities, or write a real-world problem for an equation given. The experts will then teach these concepts to their peers.
Revision Rally
Students will use the ARMS (add, remove, move, and substitute words and phrases) revision strategy to revise a procedural passage.
Human Paragraphs
Students assume roles of paragraph parts, including the main idea and supporting details, in order to reassemble a text that has been divided into pieces based on textual purpose.
Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic Cells
Students will categorize cells as prokaryotic or eukaryotic by identifying the presence or lack of a nucleus.
Teacher Summing Up Lesson
Mission Possible—The Hierarchy of Polygons
The students participated in three missions that required them to independently classify two-dimensional quadrilaterals in a hierarchy of sets and subsets using a graphic organizer based on their attributes and properties.
Math at the Carnival
As students rotate through engaging learning stations, they utilize concrete objects, pictorial models, mnemonic devices, and strip diagrams to solve real-world, two and three-digit subtraction word problems, with and without regrouping.
Lights, Camera, Action!
Students compare and contrast potential and kinetic energy by creating a real-world model through a movie.
Get the Gist on the Main Idea
In this lesson, students use the Get the Gist Strategy to analyze text and identify the main idea. The lesson was designed with English learners in mind and utilizes strategies such as cooperative learning, visuals, graphic organizers, cloze reading, and sentence frames.