Main Idea
Students will identify supporting details and the main idea in a passage.
Did You Get the "Text" Message?
Students will work independently and collaboratively to recognize the theme within a variety of texts. Students will create theme topics and theme statements from texts read.
Reading Between the Lines
In this lesson, students will expand their critical thinking skills by making inferences found in a short film and listening to a literary fictional text on tablets. Working collaboratively in groups, students will create anchor charts to demonstrate their understanding of making inferences and present their detailed anchor charts to their classmates.
Intelligible Inferences
Students will work in cooperative learning groups that foster empathy to make inferences from pictures and text. They will discuss the differences between inferences made from pictures and inferences made from text.
Students working on poster
Inference in the Real World: Using Clues to Identify Key Details
Students will actively read as a critical component; they will infer in expository text.
Analyzing Online Sources for Credibility
The students will analyze online sources for credibility and reliability while respecting others opinions through collaboration.
It’s All in the Details
This lesson demonstrates a small group intervention that scaffolds instruction of main idea for native English or Spanish speaking students. This lesson is scripted in both languages.
Sound Effects, Poetic Elements, and Analysis, Oh My! Visualizing the Text to Gain Meaning Out of Poetry
Students will be asked to use metacognition as they analyze a poem, make inferences, and draw conclusions about the overall meaning of a text.
Empowered by the Evidence: Making Inferences with Confidence
A mini-lesson on how to select the best text evidence to support an inference or draw a conclusion is presented. Teachers use the think-aloud method to model how to use a checklist in order to identify the strongest support provided in the text. Students are then asked to work with a group to discuss and support a given conclusion drawn from a self-chosen text. They are encouraged to use the checklist to ensure the best evidence is identified
A Trip to the Hospital
Students participate in a set of stations about the work done in different areas of a hospital. During each station, students revise paragraphs based on word choice, clarity, and transitions while also looking at introductions and adding or deleting sentences.
Stop, Collaborate, and Listen. Poetry is Our Mission! Thinking Deeply About Poetry
Students will actively engage with poetry in a blend of collaborative and independent analysis of poetic devices and an author’s use of devices to communicate a deeper meaning. Students will use their analysis to infer the meaning of a variety of poems.
Building Vocabulary with a Morphing Mindset
Students will explore vocabulary words from other content areas and apply their learning of word parts to find meaning.
Teacher working with students
Sound Detectives
Through the application of mentor text, various poetry, cooperative learning, self and peer-evaluation, and sound devices, students will build self-motivation to better appreciate and understand the author’s usage of sound devices in poetry.
Example of What Students Hear
4 Using Reading and Writing to Support Learning Across the Content Areas
This resource presents instructional writing and reading practices that support the content area learning of adolescent learners.
The Write for Texas guiding principles of effective writing instruction, developed for all teachers across disciplines, focus on building every student's understanding and ability to read, write, and think like experts—historians, mathematicians, scientists, and literary critics.
7 OnTRACK English II Reading: Reading and Vocabulary Development Across Genres
OnTRACK English II Reading, Module 1 Lessons 1–6 and practice lesson. Students will understand new vocabulary and use it when reading and writing.
10 OnTRACK English I Reading: Understanding and Analysis of Informational Text
OnTRACK English I Reading, Module 5, Lessons 1–8, Practice 1 and 2. Students analyze, make inferences and draw conclusions about the author's purpose in cultural, historical, and contemporary contexts and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
3 OnTRACK English I Reading: Analysis of Media Literacy
OnTRACK English I Reading, Module 4, Lessons 1 and 2, and Practice Lesson. Students use comprehension skills to analyze how words, images, graphics, and sounds work together in various forms to impact meaning. Students will continue to apply earlier standards with greater depth in increasingly more complex texts.
19 OnTRACK English I Reading: Understanding and Analysis of Literary Text
OnTRACK English I Reading, Module 3, Lessons 1–13 and Practice Lessons. Students analyze, make inferences and draw conclusions about theme and genre in different cultural, historical, and contemporary contexts and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
5 OnTRACK English I Reading: Reading Comprehension Across Genres
OnTRACK English I Reading, Module 2, Lessons 1–3 and Practice 1 and 2. Students analyze, make inferences and draw conclusions about theme and genre in different cultural, historical, and contemporary contexts and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
2 OnTRACK English I Writing: The Writing Process
OnTRACK English I Writing, Module 1, Lessons 1 and 2. Students use elements of the writing process (planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing) to compose text.