Rhyming is Out of This World!
Students will participate in stations with board games that reinforce rhyming, onset, and rimes, and blending.
Introduction to Character Foils
During this lesson, students will view video clips and read texts that have character foils examples. Students will complete a graphic organizer with evidence that supports their identification of foil characters. Once complete, students will use the information from the graphic organizer to discuss character foils.
Metacognitive Approaches to Student-based Learning
In this lesson, students will learn how to make complex inferences and draw conclusions about a work of literary fiction using a combination of text evidence and background knowledge. Using a graphic organizer and a short story, students will record both text evidence and their prior knowledge, and combine these elements to make an inference about the character.
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.
The Write Way
Students will use a graphic organizer to draft the introduction paragraph of their expository essays.
Proving an Ecosystem’s Health Through Succession
Students engage in viewing day three of ecosystem changes in lab groups to determine if the ecosystem is healthy or unhealthy based on scientific data and factors.
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.
Circuit Designers
Students will work in small groups of two to three on a structured challenge around circuits which includes requirements such as including using a switch or a conductor. They will then use that knowledge to work on a collaborative challenge to solve a relevant problem related to elephant poaching. Students will create a containment system that will have an alarm system, a lighting system, and a way to pass through. Finally, they will review the other projects and discuss similarities and differences in the design.
Analyzing the Text for Summary and Connections
Students will critically think and communicate; they will summarize a text to understand and make connections to other texts, themselves, and the world.
Communication in Space
Students will work in cooperative groups to create an accurate arrangement of mirrors that work together to relay a laser beam from a Mars space station to Earth’s Mission Control, which will model utilizing satellites in space for communication, an accommodation necessary for manned space exploration.
Teacher In Action
Hooked on Inferring
In this lesson, students use text evidence and schema to create an inference. Students read informational text and practice inferring with varying levels of support.
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.
Teacher reviewing vocabulary words.
Which Organizational Pattern Is It?
Students will read a text, identify its organizational pattern, highlight signal words, create a visual representation/graphic organizer, and present to the class.
Students during Task
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.
Mendelian Genetics Using Monohybrids
Students will work collaboratively through a fictitious, real-world scenario to determine the probability of each breeding pair of dogs producing offspring with the desired trait for a fictitious client.
Write Right
This research lesson encourages students to become better illustrators and authors. Students will work in collaborative groups and independently to develop drafts.
Earth’s Movements
Students will work in small collaborative groups to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth as it revolves around the Sun which creates a day and night cycle.
Reading on the Farm
In learning stations, students collaboratively generate inferences and make predictions about expository text.
Sparking Curiosity and Wonder: Making Complex Inferences
Students will learn how to activate their curiosity and use questioning strategies to make complex inferences and connections across texts.
Civil War Inferring
Students will use Social Studies Weekly newspaper to make inferences about historical events using schema and text evidence.