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.
Analyzing Context Clues to Understand the Meaning of a Word
Students will focus on context clues in a vocabulary lesson.
Planting the Seeds of Perimeter
Students will create planters that meet specific perimeter dimensions. The students will need to determine the number of sides and the perimeter for their planter.
Cause and Effect: The Story of Wangari Maathai
Students will be able to identify cause and effect relationships using an expository text.
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.
Utilize Strip Diagrams to Solve Multi-step Multiplication and Division Word Problems
Students will utilize manipulatives to create concrete and pictorial strip diagram representations in order to solve multi-step multiplication and division word problems.
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
Decoding Word Problems
This lesson focuses on multi-step word problems involving division along with addition or subtraction. The students chunk word problems into each individual step and learn how to choose a familiar strategy.
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.
Models of Multiplication
Students will solve one-step multiplication problems using various multiplication strategies such as objects, pictorial models, arrays, equal groups, repeated addition, and number lines.
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) Vertical Alignment
Click below to learn about the TEKS related to the unit and Research Lesson. The highlighted student expectation(s) is the chosen focus for the Research Lesson.
Up, Up, and Away
Students will determine an appropriate tabular/graphic/formulaic linear solution given 3 sets of data points.
Distributive Property
Students break an array apart to represent the sum of two multiplication facts, showing the distributive property.
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) Related to the Unit
As we looked at the vertical alignment document available to teachers through the Texas Education Agency and regional TEKS resource pages, it became evident why students struggle with this standard. The skills and knowledge within this standard are not addressed in the second-grade TEKS. Students are also required to use multiple skills to correctly calculate the answer using the distributive property. The chosen standard is identified as a third-grade readiness standard, which means that the intent is to help students develop a deep understanding of how to effectively use these skills in mathematics. This deep understanding is desired to help students at the fourth-grade level since the standard is identified as a supporting standard.
Click below to learn about the TEKS related to this unit.
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.
Analyzing Data Using a Dot Plot
Students will construct a dot plot using data collected on the faces of a cube after it is rolled. Students will then use a key to change the data to represent a larger population.
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) Vertical Alignment
Click below to learn about the TEKS related to the unit and Research Lesson. The highlighted student expectation(s) is the chosen focus for the Research Lesson.
From Dogs/Not Dogs to Prisms/Not Prisms
Students will work in pairs, groups, and independently to sort and classify 2D and 3D shapes using formal geometric language. Students will have opportunities to explore the work of other groups to expand their thinking and find new ways that shapes can be sorted and classified. Students will engage in multiple conversations using accurate geometrical language to ask questions, explore a variety of reasonings, and share generalizations about shapes.
What Goes In, Must Come Out
Students will learn how to use an input-output table using real-world examples.
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.