Middle School Science Freebie

Okay folks, I must admit, I'm just a little out of my comfort zone here.  I don't have any experience with middle-schoolers.  I was asked to write a content-area literacy lesson for this age roup for my foundations of literacy class.  So, here is the result!  It asks students to make connections between their own knowledge, other texts, and a digital article from Time for Kids magazine.  And, there's a little science at its core.  The article touts the amazement of finding a complete, dead whale whose species had only appeared as bone fragments in the past.  I wanted students to connect this discovery of a current species to the inferences that scientists make about dinosaurs and other fossil evidence.  At the end, there's an extended writing activity where students make inferences about an animal skeleton image before seeing the picture of the actual animal, which is an African lion.  For those of you that teach at the secondary level, or even upper elementary, feel free to try it out and let me know what worked, and what didn't.  Please also let me know if the images aren't present, and I will Email them to you. 

Enjoy!