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
Retelling with Confidence
Students learn how to use the pictures in their books to retell a story in sequence. The teacher models how to use the pictures to retell the story Stellaluna by Janell Cannon. The students and teacher complete a graphic organizer using picture representations from the book. The graphic organizer is a frame for all the elements of a strong retell and requires students to include new vocabulary; the characters and setting; and the beginning, middle, and end of the book, Stellaluna. Students will apply the picture retell strategy by completing a graphic organizer for their own book and retelling the story to peers and their teacher.
Author’s Purpose: Reading for Meaning
In this lesson, students use text evidence and background knowledge to generate and evaluate inferences about the author's purpose for specific sections of a passage as well as the entire passage. The lesson is designed with English learners (ELs) and students from families that speak nonstandard dialects of English in mind. The lesson provides scaffolded instruction through the use of strategies designed to make input comprehensible: visuals, graphic organizers, sentence frames, hand gestures, and collaborative learning.
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
![TALA logo TALA logo](https://d1yqpar94jqbqm.cloudfront.net/styles/resource_icon_small/s3/images/TALA_Logo_Epsilen_1.jpg?itok=5XZTJAkB)
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.
Who Ate More - Fractions on a Number Line
In this activity, students will consider a real-world scenario requiring them to compare two fractional amounts using a number line. Through the use of the number line and peer collaboration, students will recognize equivalency in the two fractional quantities and effectively communicate their understanding of this concept.
The Write Way
Students will use a graphic organizer to draft the introduction paragraph of their expository essays.
Una Reseña de un Restaurante
Students describe a restaurant in restaurant review form using simple phrases and sentences. As they write, students focus on noun-adjective agreement and sentence structure.
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.
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.
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.
It’s More Than Just Sounding It Out
Students will be able to understand vowel digraphs (ai/ay pattern).
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.