What it is. Sentences are heard as well as read, and writers choose sounds on purpose.
Why our test works. Poodle Knows Poetry is the poetics volume, so this is the lesson it exists for. Nothing in the technical strand teaches the sentence as something HEARD — repeated sounds, a short line after long ones — and a child who never hears writing will never write rhythm on purpose.
Leans on. Lesson 27.
Watch for. Read it ALOUD twice before asking. A child cannot hear a line they have only seen.
Read the line aloud twice. Find the sound the author repeated, or where the line is short and where it is long. Using Poodle Knows Poetry. The worked example is the one you build on the board: Teacher reads the page from Poodle Knows Poetry aloud with the book open, then models the 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. Before anything new, sixty seconds of retrieval on U4 set 1: 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 Poetry 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: How it sounds — on the sheet, using the page we just read.
You close on the exit direction — Read out your sentence from Poodle Knows Poetry. — taken from every child before anyone stands, and then the line you want them to still have tomorrow: Listen to the line.
Read it ALOUD twice before asking. A child cannot hear a line they have only seen.