Rhyming is Out of This World!
Students will participate in stations with board games that reinforce rhyming, onset, and rimes, and blending.
Super Sequencing Strategies
Students will explore the informational text structure of sequencing in multiple contexts, as a reader and a writer, in order to improve their comprehension of informational text and their ability to analyze the author’s purpose. They will make connections between sequencing and events in their everyday life and use pictures and time order words to write their own informational text using sequencing.
Product and Quotient Properties of Exponents
This lesson helps students understand two foundational exponential properties: The Product and Quotient Properties of Exponents. Students will collaborate to formulate a rule for these properties. Ultimately, students should conclude that when the same bases are being multiplied, exponents will be added; and when the same bases are being divided, exponents will be subtracted. As the lesson progresses, students will apply these rules to simplify expressions of various difficulties.
Giving Meaning to Multiple Meaning Words
In this lesson, students identify and use keywords in a paragraph to infer the relevant meaning of multiple-meaning words. Students build a deep understanding of words by creating semantic maps that show relationships among words. The lesson was designed with English learners in mind and utilizes instructional strategies such as cooperative learning, visuals, graphic organizers, and sentence frames.
Introduction to Character Foils
During this lesson, students will view video clips and read texts that have character foils examples. Students will complete a graphic organizer with evidence that supports their identification of foil characters. Once complete, students will use the information from the graphic organizer to discuss character foils.
Let's Analyze and Compute Fractions!
Students will compare fractions with unlike denominators to determine whether a given answer to a real-world problem is correct using context and computational skills.
Teacher during Introduction
Growing Our Vocabulary Goals
Students will use a variety of vocabulary strategies to apply their knowledge of unknown and multiple-meaning words.
Metacognitive Approaches to Student-based Learning
In this lesson, students will learn how to make complex inferences and draw conclusions about a work of literary fiction using a combination of text evidence and background knowledge. Using a graphic organizer and a short story, students will record both text evidence and their prior knowledge, and combine these elements to make an inference about the character.
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.
The Write Way
Students will use a graphic organizer to draft the introduction paragraph of their expository essays.
Many Stripes of Inferring
Students will infer character feelings and motivations and support their inference with text evidence.
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.
Proving an Ecosystem’s Health Through Succession
Students engage in viewing day three of ecosystem changes in lab groups to determine if the ecosystem is healthy or unhealthy based on scientific data and factors.
Analyzing and Using Organizational Patterns
Students used organizational patterns (compare and contrast, argumentative, cause and effect, problem and solution, chronological) to create anchor charts. Students then worked in groups to analyze text and plan a composition, using the anchor charts to complete the tasks. Ultimately, students created a plan from a self-generated topic to demonstrate an understanding of the use of organizational patterns.
Spending Money
In this lesson, students use the Understand, Plan, Solve, and Evaluate (UPSE) problem-solving model to first identify and organize relevant information, and then devise and carry out a plan to solve one-step mathematics word problems with a missing addend. The lesson was designed with English learners (ELs) in mind and includes instructional strategies designed to make linguistic and content input comprehensible: a focus on vocabulary, manipulatives, visuals, cooperative learning, anchor charts, graphic organizers, technology applications, and sentence stems/frames.
Multiplication Matters: Justifying Mathematical Reasoning in Problem Solving
Students solve one-step and multi-step problems, including multiplication and remainders, by engaging in a real-world story problem, using a graphic organizer of their choice.
Revising for Coherence
Students will use a checklist to peer edit a composition. They will check for coherence through the proper use of transition words and conjunctions.
Traditional vs. Contemporary: "The Three Little Pigs"
Students will compare a contemporary version of "The Three Little Pigs" to a traditional version with respect to characters, setting, and plot. In a small group, students will analyze story elements on a t-chart to determine which parts of the stories are the same and which are different.
Revision Rally
Students will use the ARMS (add, remove, move, and substitute words and phrases) revision strategy to revise a procedural passage.
Communication in Space
Students will work in cooperative groups to create an accurate arrangement of mirrors that work together to relay a laser beam from a Mars space station to Earth’s Mission Control, which will model utilizing satellites in space for communication, an accommodation necessary for manned space exploration.
Teacher In Action