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
Themes in Hamlet
Students will make inferences about themes from the play, use textual evidence from the play to support their inferences using the CASE model, and will make a praise and criticism for peer answers.
"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
Tackling Expository Text
The students will read and summarize expository text using a graphic organizer to aid the process.
Write, Revise, Repeat!
Students develop their perseverance skills as they continue to revise their writing for coherence. The teacher focuses on providing students with three tools to develop the students’ paragraphs for sentence-to-sentence connectedness and clarity.
Inferring the Message in Poems
Students look for meaning in poems using poetry tools and work in groups to identify how parts of poems fit together to give a message. They then independently infer the message from a poem their teacher reads.
Crime Scene Inferences
In learning stations, students use textual evidence and personal schema to generate inferences, make generalizations, and draw conclusions to support understanding about expository text.
Inferring: It’s a Beast!
Using a digital forum, seventh-grade students will collaboratively generate authentic inferences about character motivation. Students will utilize textual evidence and draw from personal schema in order to make logical connections across multiple genres.
Summarizing Expository Text
The students will watch the teacher model how to create a summary, and then work in groups to create a summary from an expository text.
Teacher with students in small group
How Authors Develop Complex Yet Believable Characters in Drama by Contrasting Characters
The students will identify characteristics of characters from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, explain why the characters are foils to each other, and use text evidence to support their understanding.
Remembering Leaders
Students will read expository text, categorize findings, and reformulate the text into an obituary.
Teacher poised for modeling
Are You Speaking Greek?
Students will be able to determine the meaning of words using Greek, Latin, or other linguistic roots and affixes.
Inferring Through Imagery and Figurative Language
Students rotate to four posters which contain a single stanza from a common poem (“Digging” by Seamus Heaney), marking key literary elements (imagery, diction, figurative language) before rotating to explain the connotation of the words and phrases selected by the previous group. After text marking, students regroup to discuss the inferential connections between literary terms and their connotative meaning to theorize thematic meaning within the poem.
Making an Inference
The class will review previous learning about how authors describe characters using speech, thoughts, effects on others, actions, and looks (STEAL). Students will make annotations on an excerpt using the STEAL strategy. We will talk them through making a guided inference. Students will complete a short-answer response on chart paper with evidence and inference for the focus question
Making Inferences to Solve a Mystery
In learning stations, students use textual evidence and personal schema to make inferences and draw conclusions about the structure and elements of poetry, and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Spying Evidence Through Text
Students will identify ideas in a text that are important to its meaning and write a letter demonstrating their understanding of the text.
Research Lesson TEKS
Earth Day: Join the Fight, for Sentences That are Right!
In this lesson, students are initially captivated by Earth Day-themed pictures, thus providing them with ideas to prewrite, and will have meaningful writing to revise. The lesson utilizes a mentor text to demonstrate the necessity of subjects and predicates. Students apply their knowledge of sentence syntax by revising a chosen sentence and rewriting the sentence to be shared with the class during a gallery walk.
Character Analysis: Traits, Relationships, and Beyond
The students will be guided through exploring how actions affect characters and their decisions. Students will put themselves in the shoes of a character and think about how they feel and why.
Informational Inferences
In learning stations, students use textual evidence and personal schema to identify and generate inferences, to support understanding of an expository text.
Did this make this happen? Is this why this happened? All About Cause and Effect Relationships
Students will use a mentor text to identify cause and effect relationships. Students will also find the missing cause or effect. They will work collaboratively to complete a graphic organizer and use teacher-created anchor charts to help them in identifying the relationships.