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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
45-45-90 Triangles
To learn the pattern of the side lengths of a 45-45-90 triangle, students complete a gallery walk, a card sort activity starting with using the Pythagorean theorem, and activity to locate if there is an error in a presented problem and if so to identify what the error is.
Crime Scene Investigations through Text Structures
Students participate in an activity where they must solve a crime. Students visit different stations that include surveillance tape, tips, eyewitness statements, and a crime scene. Each station is formatted as a different organizational pattern allowing students to practice creating summaries reflecting the structure used.
Creating Connections Across Literary Texts
Students will explore organizational patterns in short passages and use signal words/phrases as evidence to support the main idea and their understanding.
Teacher Introducing the Lesson
What’s Your Feature?
Students will learn how to use text features to locate information and verify answers within an expository text.
Crime Scene Two Steppers: Two-step word problems using multiplication and division
Students will collaboratively solve two-step real-world word multiplication and division problems by using a checklist. Students will also solve a two-step word problem by completing a hands-on group activity.
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.
Uncovering Tone in Poetry
Students will interpret the tone of a poem, cite text evidence to justify their response, and research a synonym for the word they chose to expand their understanding of Tier 2 vocabulary.
Teacher introducing the poem
Critiquing and Creating Compound and Complex Sentences
Students will create compound and complex sentences with proper comma usage and present their explanations to the class.
Student work