Word Wisdom

One slide a day is all it takes to build real thinking. The standard slide deck sets from the Writing Academy give your students five days of structured practice on a single Texas standard, moving from foundational thinking all the way to reflective mastery. Every set is a triplet, a slide deck, a teacher script, and a student tracking sheet that work together so nothing is left to chance. Here is what a triplet looks like.

The slide deck has ten slides, one cover, and one slide for each day of the week, plus a practice assessment and bonus activities. The teacher script tells you exactly what to say and do for every single slide. And the student tracking sheet gives each student a place to write, think, and show what they know, front and back. Let us walk through a week.

On Monday, students are at the foundational level. The thinking job is notice. The slide gives a sentence from a science or social studies passage, and the student finds the context clue. The tracking sheet has a notice row where students write their answer.

This is the entry point. Every student can do this. On Tuesday, the thinking level rises to developing. The thinking job is choose.

Now students read a sentence and choose the correct meaning from three options. The task is a little harder because students have to compare possible meanings, not just find a clue. Wednesday is the independent level. The thinking job is show.

Students explain what the clue does and how it helps them understand the word. They are not just finding or choosing anymore. They are showing their reasoning in writing. Thursday moves to advanced.

The thinking job is own. Students use the sentences around the word to write both the meaning and the clue that help them. This is where students prove they can figure out an unfamiliar word on their own. Friday is the highest level.

The thinking job is defend. Students explain which meaning of a multiple meaning word fits and defend their answer with evidence from the text. This is reflective thinking. Then the week ends with a show-what-you-know practice assessment question with four answer choices and a written explanation.

Now let us look at the teacher script. Every page has three parts. At the top, you see the actual slide that students are looking at. At the bottom left is the teacher says and does card.

It tells you exactly what to say in quotation marks and what to do in italicized directions. It even has an answer key and prep notes. At the bottom right, you get extra support boxes. These might say context clues in the reading, check for understanding, raise the thinking, common misconception, or RPLD evidence and advice.

You do not have to guess what to teach or how to teach it. The student tracking sheet is two-sided. The front has five rows, one for each day of the week. Monday is notice, Tuesday is choose, Wednesday is show, Thursday is own, and Friday is defend.

Each row has a colored thinking level tile and writing lines for the student's answer. At the bottom is a show-what-you-know strip with bubble letters A, B, C, and D. The back of the tracking sheet has four sections. Your turn asks students to go back to the passage, find a new word, name the clue type, and write the meaning.

Show-what-you-know gives space to bubble an answer and explain why. Word Detective challenges students to find two more unfamiliar words and identify the clue type. And Self Check is a skills checklist where students rate themselves, I can do this, almost, or not yet. All passages in these decks are science or social studies based.

If your school uses the Writing Academy Writing System, the passages correspond to the module you are working on. That means your reading instruction and your writing instruction are pulling from the same content. Students see the same vocabulary and the same ideas across the day. The five thinking levels in every deck, notice, choose, show, own, and defend, are aligned to the range performance level descriptors: foundational, developing, independent, advanced, and reflective.

Students build stamina across the week, reaching higher each day, and the Friday practice question mirrors the format they will see on the STAAR/SST. Thank you for watching. Visit tbase.teachbig.com to try a standard slide deck set for free.