Motion Pictures
In this lesson, students will be introduced to the concept of motion representation using distance vs. time graphs. Students will recognize labeling of axes, steepness related to speed, horizontal lines as non-motion, and downward slope as return to origin.
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills Related to the Unit
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Earth: A Tilted Affair
After a brief review of direct and indirect sunlight, students will arrange heat maps and globes around a drawing of the Sun based on the tilt of Earth and how it affects Earth’s temperature.
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) Related to the Unit
Click below to learn about the TEKS related to this unit.
Modeling the Path of Digestion
Students model the path of digestion using household items.
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.
Remembering Leaders
Students will read expository text, categorize findings, and reformulate the text into an obituary.
Teacher poised for modeling
The Golden Touch
Students will practice using a protocol to create a summary of an expository text.
Are You Speaking Greek?
Students will be able to determine the meaning of words using Greek, Latin, or other linguistic roots and affixes.
Can You Summarize?
Students will work with partners, as well as independently, to create and evaluate summaries of expository text.
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
Biodiversity
Students will explore biodiversity concepts through several activities including a video, a card sort, think-pair-shares, food webs, and four corners.
Biotic and Abiotic Factors of an Ecosystem
Students will explore abiotic and biotic factors in various ecosystems by working through stations. Students will be able to identify and describe abiotic and biotic factors within an ecosystem.
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.
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
Gravity in Space
Students will participate in stations that reinforce their understanding of gravity, especially gravity in space.
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.
Escaping the Nucleus
Students will work in groups to complete an escape room challenge that replicates the process of gene expression.
What's going on with our plates?
The students will work collaboratively in small, ability-based groups in stations that will require them to use their academic vocabulary, academic language, and self-assessment to generate a product showing what they have learned.
Let's FIND Speed!
This research lesson requires students to distinguish between speed, distance, and time. Students will use formulas to calculate the three using a checklist. Students will also create their own speed, distance, or time word problem using the knowledge gained in this lesson.
Sentence Structure
Students will identify different types of sentence structures within a mentor text and demonstrate the understanding of varying sentence types by creating correctly structured and punctuated compound and complex sentences from simple sentences given by the teacher.
Teacher giving instructions
Summarizing Fiction
Students will analyze effective and ineffective summaries of a fictional text and identify the characteristics that classify the summaries as either effective or ineffective.
Teacher giving task