What it is. A sentence starts with a capital, tells one whole thing, and ends with a period.
Why our test works. Capital and period are visible and easy to check, so children learn to add them to anything. The middle criterion is the real one, and it is the only one that cannot be faked — a group of words with a capital and a period is still not a sentence if it does not finish a thought.
Leans on. Lesson 7 — spaced words are what a sentence is made of.
Watch for. Read the fragment aloud and stop dead at the end. The class hears that something is missing before they can explain it.
Recognize that a sentence starts with a capital, tells one thing, and ends with a period. The worked example is the one you build on the board: Teacher writes a three-word sentence and names the three parts as each appears: the capita The class reads the teaching page printed at the top of the sheet — our own writing, so a child who was absent can still get the lesson.
You open by saying where this sits — what it follows and what it is part of — in one sentence, and then you give them the reason it matters, in your own words, for about ten seconds.
Then you do one yourself, building it on the board and leaving it up: Teacher writes a three-word sentence and names the three parts as each appears: the capital, the words that tell one thing, the period. The board copy is what they look back at when they stall, so it stays there for the whole lesson.
The We-do is the main whiteboard moment of the lesson — short answers, boards up on your signal, every child visible at once. Class checks two sentences against the three parts and finds the missing one in each. If the answer is a whole sentence rather than a word, take it on the printed sheet instead, because a sentence written on a whiteboard is written once and destroyed.
They read the teaching page — printed at the top of today's sheet — with you, either read-aloud or FASE, never round robin. Stop at the worked example and let them look at it.
Exit directions in full, standing still, before anyone moves. Then they work alone: Copy two three-word sentences exactly, capital to period: The dog ran. Birds can fly.
You close on the exit direction — Point to the capital and the period in one sentence. — taken from every child before anyone stands, and then the line you want them to still have tomorrow: Big letter, whole idea, period.
Read the fragment aloud and stop dead at the end. The class hears that something is missing before they can explain it.