Got Force?
Students use various surfaces and a weighted car to see how far the car will travel using balanced and unbalanced forces.
Solving Equations and Inequalities
Students will be divided into four groups and work on their assigned task to become an expert. They will match vocabulary terms with definitions and examples, use the “Pass the Pen” strategy to create and solve equations or inequalities, or write a real-world problem for an equation given. The experts will then teach these concepts to their peers.
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
Perfectly Proportional Percents
Students will collaborate to explain verbally how to solve percent proportions and scaling while showing their thinking.
Express Yourself
Students determine which expression is a truth or a lie by generating equivalent expressions.
Keep Your Balance!
Students are introduced to solving one-variable, one-step equations using addition and subtraction through models and hands-on activities. The students will learn the substitution method of checking answers.
Perfecting Percents
Students will engage in an activity that allows them to explore the different parts of percents: part, whole, and percent, and develop conceptual understanding of percents through the Concrete, Representational, Abstract (CRA) method of instruction.
Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic Cells
Students will categorize cells as prokaryotic or eukaryotic by identifying the presence or lack of a nucleus.
Teacher Summing Up Lesson
Lights, Camera, Action!
Students compare and contrast potential and kinetic energy by creating a real-world model through a movie.
Does it have Potential?
Students will work with partners to investigate how mass, potential energy, and kinetic energy act on objects dropped from varying heights.
Video of the lesson being taught
Finding Clues to Solve Equations and Inequalities
Students will solve one variable two-step equations and inequalities using a variety of materials while working independently and collaboratively in learning stations.
Strike a Pose
The students will solve two-step equations through modeling, expressing algebraically, and writing out the steps to their solutions.
Rational Number Stations
Students will visit two different stations and work as a group to add, subtract, multiply, and divide rational numbers.
Stages of Ecological Succession
Students will collaborate on a electronic slideshow presentation and observe, record, and describe the role of ecological succession including both primary and secondary succession.
Roll With It
Students will experience a hands-on lesson regarding ratios. While doing this, students will deepen their understanding of the concepts of ratios.
Teacher during Introduction
How Does the Cookie Crumble?
Students will self-discover how to multiply mixed numbers by using background knowledge of estimation, computations, and real world application of a recipe.
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills Related to the Unit
In fifth grade, students will be able to multiply and divide whole numbers, which will lead into multiplication and division of decimals in sixth grade. That same year, they will model products and quotients of decimals to the hundredths place. This concrete model will lead them to a better understanding of the algorithm in fifth and sixth grade.
As fifth graders, students will model multiplication and division of a fraction and a whole number. The following year, students are expected to multiply and divide all types of fractions.
In addition, during sixth grade, students are introduced to integers (negative whole numbers) and will be able to model and solve all operations with integers. All of the skills previously stated will lead students to be able to perform all operations of rational numbers without models (positive and negative fractions, decimals, and whole numbers) in seventh grade.
Click below to learn more about the TEKS related to this unit. The highlighted standards have been chosen for this research lesson.
Biodiversity
Students will explore biodiversity concepts through several activities including a video, a card sort, think-pair-shares, food webs, and four corners.
Using Measures of Center and Spread to Summarize Data
Students will be able to use the measures of center and spread of a set of data to make summary statements regarding the applications of the data.
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.
Building a Watershed
Students will model the effects of human activity on watersheds.