Before you teach — read this first

Grade 1 · Lesson 23 — A word worth stealing

Literature · Poodle Knows What · blocked · 30 minutes · 17 slides · Launch → I do → We do → Read → You do → Closure
The language behind this lesson — read this before you teach it.
A WORD WORTH STEALING

What it is. The tapping method works on any three-sound word, not only the ones already met.

Why our test works. Returning to the same test on unfamiliar words is what proves the method transferred rather than the words being memorised.

Leans on. Lesson 11 — this is its spiral return.

Watch for. These are new words on purpose. If they can only do the taught ones, the method has not landed.

What this lesson is

Find the one word on the page the author chose carefully — not the longest, the most exact — and use it in a sentence of your own. Using Poodle Knows What. The worked example is the one you build on the board: Teacher reads the page from Poodle Knows What aloud with the book open, then models the mo 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.

Why it matters — say this in your own words, about ten seconds.
“Knowledge that only works on what you have already seen is not yet knowledge.”
A different reason every lesson, on purpose. It is not on a slide and it is not a script — if you have a better reason today, use yours. What should land is the idea, not a sentence they can recite.
How it goes

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. Before anything new, sixty seconds of retrieval on U2 set 3: ask, take the answers from boards rather than hands so you see all thirty, and do not re-teach — note who has lost it and carry on.

Then you do one yourself, building it on the board and leaving it up: Teacher reads the page from Poodle Knows What aloud with the book open, then models the move on one sentence from it. 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 does the same move together on a second sentence, checking against the author's own. 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: A word worth stealing — on the sheet, using the page we just read.

You close on the exit direction — Read out your sentence from Poodle Knows What. — taken from every child before anyone stands, and then the line you want them to still have tomorrow: Same sounds, new words.

Exit directions — in full, standing still, before anyone moves
Notebook and pencil · Heading first · A word worth stealing — on the sheet, using the page we just read.
Watch for

These are new words on purpose. If they can only do the taught ones, the method has not landed.

As-Suffah Academy · Writing · narrative brief