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Grade 5

• Strand 1

  • 5.1.A
  • 5.1.B
  • 5.1.C
  • 5.1.D

• Strand 2

  • 5.2.A
  • 5.2.A.i
  • 5.2.A.ii
  • 5.2.A.iii
  • 5.2.A.iv
  • 5.2.A.v
  • 5.2.B
  • 5.2.B.i
  • 5.2.B.ii
  • 5.2.B.iii
  • 5.2.B.iv
  • 5.2.B.v
  • 5.2.B.vi
  • 5.2.C

• Strand 3

  • 5.3.A
  • 5.3.B
  • 5.3.C
  • 5.3.D

• Strand 4

  • 5.4

• Strand 5

  • 5.5

• Strand 6

  • 5.6.A
  • 5.6.B
  • 5.6.C
  • 5.6.D
  • 5.6.E
  • 5.6.F
  • 5.6.G
  • 5.6.H
  • 5.6.I

• Strand 7

  • 5.7.A
  • 5.7.B
  • 5.7.C
  • 5.7.D
  • 5.7.E
  • 5.7.F
  • 5.7.G

• Strand 8

  • 5.8.A
  • 5.8.B
  • 5.8.C
  • 5.8.D

• Strand 9

  • 5.9.A
  • 5.9.B
  • 5.9.C
  • 5.9.D
  • 5.9.D.i
  • 5.9.D.ii
  • 5.9.D.iii
  • 5.9.E
  • 5.9.E.i
  • 5.9.E.ii
  • 5.9.E.iii
  • 5.9.F

• Strand 10

  • 5.10.A
  • 5.10.B
  • 5.10.C
  • 5.10.D
  • 5.10.E
  • 5.10.F
  • 5.10.G

• Strand 11

  • 5.11.A
  • 5.11.B
  • 5.11.B.i
  • 5.11.B.ii
  • 5.11.C
  • 5.11.D
  • 5.11.D.i
  • 5.11.D.ii
  • 5.11.D.iii
  • 5.11.D.iv
  • 5.11.D.v
  • 5.11.D.vi
  • 5.11.D.vii
  • 5.11.D.viii
  • 5.11.D.ix
  • 5.11.D.x
  • 5.11.D.xi
  • 5.11.E

• Strand 12

  • 5.12.A
  • 5.12.B
  • 5.12.C
  • 5.12.D

• Strand 13

  • 5.13.A
  • 5.13.B
  • 5.13.C
  • 5.13.D
  • 5.13.E
  • 5.13.F
  • 5.13.G
  • 5.13.H

TEKS ELA Standard: 5.12.C

compose argumentative texts, including opinion essays, using genre characteristics and craft

Order and Chaos: Recipe or Instinct?

Two cooks make the same dinner. One follows the recipe to the exact gram. The other just throws things in by feel. Whose food turns out better — the ordered cook or the chaotic cook?

Gr 1-8

Order and Chaos: The Perfect Heartbeat

A heartbeat sounds steady, but a perfectly regular one is a warning sign — healthy hearts speed up and slow down a little. Is a healthy heart ordered or chaotic?

Gr 1-8

Order and Chaos: The Shuffle

To shuffle a deck you follow exact steps to make the cards random. Are you creating chaos, or doing something very orderly?

Gr 1-8

Order and Chaos: No Traffic Lights

One town runs its intersections with signals. Another has no lights at all — drivers just work it out. Which town’s traffic is more orderly?

Gr 1-8

Order and Chaos: The Snowflake

A snowflake builds a perfect six-sided pattern, and no one designs it. Did that order come from inside the water, or from outside in the cold?

Gr 1-8

Systems: Grandpa’s Axe

Grandpa’s axe broke, so he put on a new head. Years later the handle cracked, so he replaced that too. Now no original piece is left. Is it still the same axe, or a new one?

Gr 1-8

Systems: The Thermostat

A thermostat fights to keep a room the same — open a window and it just cranks the heat to undo you. In a system that pushes back like that, can you ever really change just one thing?

Gr 1-8

Systems: Watch vs. Forest

A watch stops dead if one tiny gear breaks. A forest can lose a whole species and barely notice. Which is the better-built system — the one where every part matters, or the one where no part is essential?

Gr 1-8

Systems: The Traffic Jam

Picture a jam where no one crashed and no one even stopped on purpose — everyone crawls for an hour, then it clears for no reason. Did anyone actually cause this traffic jam?

Gr 1-8

Systems: Pull One Thread

A sweater is really one long thread looped a thousand times. Pull the right loose end and the whole thing unravels in seconds. So is a system like that strong or fragile?

Gr 1-8

Change: The Caterpillar’s Bargain

To become a butterfly, a caterpillar doesn’t just sprout wings — inside the cocoon it dissolves into liquid first, almost nothing left, then rebuilds. Would you trade everything you are now to become something far greater?

Gr 1-8

Change: The Sealed Jar

You love a flower so much you seal it in a jar to keep it exactly as it is, forever. A month later it’s brown and crumbling. Did sealing it stop the change, or just hide it?

Gr 1-8

Change: The Tree’s Scar

A nail got hammered into a young tree. The tree didn’t push it out — it grew around it, sealing the nail inside a knot of new wood. Was that change the tree healing, or the tree getting damaged?

Gr 1-8

Change: One Domino

You nudge one domino. It tips the next, which tips two more, which tip four, until a thousand have fallen. Did you cause one change, or a thousand?

Gr 1-8

Change: Canyon vs. Earthquake

It took a river six million years to carve the Grand Canyon. An earthquake can drop a cliff into the sea in ten seconds. Which one changed the land more — the slow river or the fast quake?

Gr 1-8

Earth’s Layers: Who Contributes The Most?

Earth’s layers will disagree about which one contributes the most to the planet’s success.

Gr 1-8

Holiday Shuffle – Day vs Date

Wouldn’t some holidays be better on a certain day of the week? Should Thanksgiving have a set date?

Gr 1-8

Change A Story’s Genre

What if we rewrote a story’s climax into a totally different genre?

Gr 1-8

Discussing An Important Decision from History

How would people with two different perspectives discuss a decision from history?

Gr 2-8

Chess Variant: Monster Chess

What if you had really weak chess pieces, but you could always move twice?

Gr 1-8

Charge of the Light Brigade – Chess Variant

What if one side played with THREE QUEENS and the other had SEVEN KNIGHTS!? What if?

Gr 2-8

Horde Chess Variant

What if one player had, say, 32 pawns?

Gr 2-8

Propaganda and Logical Fallacies

Let’s see how propaganda techniques can make even something great seem bad.

Gr 1-8

Teaching Criticism

Ask students to go beyond “I don’t like it” and form critical opinions based on a set of criteria. Students can produce written arguments or turn their opinion into oral presentations.

Gr 1-8