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.
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.
Escribir una carta persuasiva
This lesson was intended to be delivered in a face-to-face classroom environment. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, this lesson has been modified from its original design to be executed in a virtual setting.
This virtual lesson was designed to prepare students to communicate familiar topics in the presentational writing mode in the target language. Students will act as a college advisor and respond to a prospective student’s email regarding housing options. Students will then peer evaluate each other’s writing and provide meaningful feedback using a rubric.
Paired Passages with a Purpose
Students will make inferences about the author’s purpose after reading paired passages involving the same subject.
Poetry With Purpose
Students collaborate in small groups to discuss their peers’ poetry and assess the poetry according to the student-created rubric. The rubric assesses students’ ability to make meaningful connections to the poetic devices in their poetry. Through collaboration, they are building a culture of receptiveness among their peers.
Evaluating Inferences
Students will evaluate a set of inferences to determine if they are valid or invalid and use text evidence to support their stance. The lesson incorporates best practices for English learners (ELs) and at-risk students such as the use of graphic organizers, anchor charts, and cooperative learning.
Why Would They Say That?
Students will analyze multiple texts on the same topic to identify the text structures used and find each author’s purpose.
Edison: Boyhood and Teen Years
Find out how young Thomas Edison’s curiosity got him into trouble, and how, during his teen years, he lost his hearing but gained confidence as an aspiring inventor, in this video adapted from AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: Edison.
Unforgettable Elephants
In this video segment from Nature, witness the joy an elephant family experiences when a new baby elephant is born. This birth was a celebration within elephant society.
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.
4 OnTRACK English I Writing: Writing the Short Story
OnTRACK English I Writing, Module 2, Lessons 1–3 and Practice 1. Students write literary texts to express their ideas and feelings about real or imagined people, events, and ideas.
4 OnTRACK English I Writing: Writing the Expository and Procedural Essay
OnTRACK English I Writing, Module 3, Lessons 1–4. Students write expository and procedural or work-related texts to communicate ideas and information to specific audiences for specific purposes
4 OnTRACK English I Writing: Writing the Persuasive Essay
OnTRACK English I Writing, Module 4, Lessons 1–4. Students write persuasive texts to influence the attitudes or actions of a specific audience on specific issues.
4 OnTRACK English I Writing: Revising the Expository and Procedural Essay
OnTRACK English I Writing, Module 5, Lessons 1–4.
4 OnTRACK English I Writing: Revising the Persuasive Essay
OnTRACK English I Writing, Module 6, Lessons 1–4. Students write persuasive texts to influence the attitudes or actions of a specific audience on specific issues. Students are expected to write an argumentative essay to the appropriate audience.
8 OnTRACK English I Writing: Revision Strategies
OnTRACK English I Writing, Module 7, Lessons 1–3, Practice Lessons 1–5. Students revise drafts to improve style, word choice, figurative language, sentence variety, and subtlety of meaning after rethinking how well questions of purpose, audience, and genre have been addressed.