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.
Revision is in the Details
Students receive the same pre-generated sentence and discuss with a partner how to revise that sentence, adding details either by writing or drawing.
The Great Classroom Escape
Students will work collaboratively to solve six real-world multiplication problems and earn puzzle pieces they can put together to reveal a phone number they can call to escape the classroom.
Students working together
Rise Over Run! Let’s Have Fun!
Students will collaboratively practice identifying and graphing slope and y-intercept.
What Can You Infer?
Students will learn how to use textual evidence to make inferences and to support their understanding.
Lines of Symmetry
Students will work collaboratively with a partner to discover what is a line of symmetry.
Teacher Introducing Lesson
Welcome to the Jungle!
This lesson offers an engaging format for fourth graders to spend time working with different cause-and-effect situations and text to help move them toward the objective of correctly identifying an implicit cause-and-effect relationship within a text.
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.
The "Moon" Idea
Students will observe the teacher sorting details that she read from a book about a dog. The teacher is making groups with the details and models her thinking. Students to help determine a title for each group. The students replicate that work in collaborative small groups using details they provided to the teacher after reading a book about the moon the previous day.
Text Features are a Bear
Students are expected to work with partners and then in groups to complete a text feature (scavenger) hunt activity using the same nonfiction text.
Where am I going?
The teacher will engage the students to make inferences through visuals, pictures, and informational text using problem-solving and self-questioning strategies.
Understanding Text Features
This lesson guides students to use sentence stems to clarify their thinking as they identify and locate text features in isolation while using an interactive text features wall. Students will then transition to gaining information from text features as they search for text features in their books and share the information gained with their partners.
Inference Detectives
Students will use mystery bags and graphic organizers to identify clues and use their schema to make an inference. Students conclude this lesson by connecting text as evidence and playing a context clue game with cucumber sentences.
Writing Summaries with Get the Gist
This lesson teaches students to use the Get the Gist strategy to find the main idea of a section. Students will then put those Get the Gist statements together to begin a written summary of their text.
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.
Analyzing Context Clues to Understand the Meaning of a Word
Students will focus on context clues in a vocabulary lesson.
Planting the Seeds of Perimeter
Students will create planters that meet specific perimeter dimensions. The students will need to determine the number of sides and the perimeter for their planter.
Cause and Effect: The Story of Wangari Maathai
Students will be able to identify cause and effect relationships using an expository text.
One Thing Leads to Another
Students apply their understanding of the text in order to retell the plot sequence.
It’s More Than Just Sounding It Out
Students will be able to understand vowel digraphs (ai/ay pattern).
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.