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.
Equations in the Real World
Students will create and solve equations with variables on one side before comparing the equation with another to determine at what rate they will be equal.
Quality Questioning
In this lesson, students analyze, rate, and revise questions generated in response to their reading of a short story. They use the questions in student-led conversations and activities, helping them understand the connection between strong questioning, inferring, and communicating during reading.
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.
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.
Lights, Camera, Action!
Students compare and contrast potential and kinetic energy by creating a real-world model through a movie.
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.
: Students will analyze primary sources, images, and speeches to form opinions about causal relationships and compare and contrast those opinions with historical documents.
Organized Authors: Name That Structure
Students will read a text passage, looking for and highlighting key words that indicate the appropriate organizational pattern of the text.
As students rotate through learning stations, they analyze the Magna Carta, Mayflower Compact, and the English Bill of Rights. Students interpret the historical documents and draw conclusions as to how these docuemnts have influenced the U.S. system of government.
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.
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.
Connecting Author’s Purpose and Organizational Patterns
Students explore and analyze how the author can achieve a specific purpose by using a variety of organizational patterns.
In this lesson, students will learn about the implementation of the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears. Students will engage with primary and secondary sources to build a comprehensive understanding of the events.
Newton's Second Law
Students will work in partners to investigate Newton’s second law by testing a series of experiments with varying conditions.
Does it have Potential?
Students will work with partners to investigate how mass, potential energy, and kinetic energy act on objects dropped from varying heights.
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.
Students analyze an interactive map and discuss whether those that colonized Latin America made a positive or a negative impact.