What it is. The opening names the topic in one sentence.
Why our test works. Children open with the most interesting detail and lose the reader by line two. Naming the topic first uses `topic` — the academic noun from Grade 1 — and makes everything after it readable.
Leans on. Lesson 31.
Watch for. Point at the road map, not the draft. The opening should match the box they planned.
Draft the opening of the explanatory project. The worked example is the one you build on the board: Teacher shows the road map with today's slot named, and models draft the opening on the cl 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 U1 set 2, U1 set 4: 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 shows the road map with today's slot named, and models draft the opening on the class piece — one slot only, so the model is followable. 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 works the same slot on the shared piece, then reads two versions aloud and says which is clearer and why. 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: On the worksheet: draft the opening for your own piece, double-spaced so there is room to correct.
You close on the exit direction — Read the one sentence you are most sure of. — taken from every child before anyone stands, and then the line you want them to still have tomorrow: Say what it is about, first.
Point at the road map, not the draft. The opening should match the box they planned.