What it is. Heading, margin and spacing are done first, and then the thinking starts.
Why our test works. Setting up while composing splits attention at the worst moment. Doing it first makes it automatic, and it is the most common real-classroom failure: a child who cannot transpose a task onto a page loses two minutes and their place, every single lesson.
Leans on. Lessons 1-3 together.
Watch for. Time it. Thirty seconds by the end of the week is the target, and children enjoy beating it.
Set up a page independently: heading, margin, numbering, spacing. The worked example is the one you build on the board: Teacher sets up a page start to finish at normal speed, narrating only briefly. 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 sets up a page start to finish at normal speed, narrating only briefly. 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 sets up a page alongside, teacher checking the four heading pieces on each desk. 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: Set up a fresh page and copy four numbered sentences, double-spaced.
You close on the exit direction — Hold up your page with all four heading pieces. — taken from every child before anyone stands, and then the line you want them to still have tomorrow: Set the page up before you think about the work.
Time it. Thirty seconds by the end of the week is the target, and children enjoy beating it.