For the featured breakout Round and Round: Day, Night, and Shadows and the Grade 5 concept set — aligned to the 2021 Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Science (§112.7). Pitched to upper-elementary: model, sequence, gather evidence, and name.
Recurring themes: patterns, cause & effect, systems & models, scale & proportion.
| Lock | Skill / thinking move | TEKS (aligned to) | Teacher move |
|---|---|---|---|
| L1 · Sequence A shadow through the day | Order how a shadow changes from morning to evening. | 5.9 Earth's rotation changes shadow position & shape; 5.5(A) patterns. | Track a real shadow outside |
| L2 · Multiple choice Why the Sun seems to move | Reason that Earth's spin (not the Sun) causes the Sun's apparent path. | 5.9 rotation causes day/night & the Sun's apparent motion. | Model with a globe & lamp |
| L3 · Evidence sort True about Earth's spin | Keep only true rotation facts; leave out a true-but-off-topic one. | 5.9; 5.1(B) use evidence. | Sort fact cards together |
| L4 · Word Name the spin | Name Earth's daily spin on its axis. | 5.9 / 5.3(A) observe & describe. | Say it, then type it |
Pair the breakout with the hands-on Shadow Tracker & Sundial — stand a stick in the sun and mark its shadow every hour to watch it move and change length, then use it to tell time. Anchored in 5.9 plus engineering practices 5.1(B), 5.1(G), 5.2(D).
The More Grade 5 breakouts add one short activity per key concept: separating mixtures (5.6B), matter is made of particles (5.6D), equal & unequal forces (5.7A), energy transformations (5.8A), how light behaves (5.8C), sedimentary rock & fossil fuels (5.10B), landforms (5.10C), changes in ecosystems (5.12B), humans & ecosystems (5.12C), and instinct vs. learned behavior (5.13B).
Design every lesson for all learners: UDL supports (CAST v3.0), ELPS supports for emergent bilingual students, and a lesson-plan guide — each in all seven languages. See also the full standards correlation.
Standards are aligned to, not reproduced from, the official TEKS.