What it is. A paragraph is a group of sentences that belong together for a reason.
Why our test works. Children think a paragraph is a length — you write some, you indent, you carry on. Asking what the sentences share replaces a rule about size with a rule about MEANING, which is the whole argument of the book.
Leans on. Grade 4's topic sentence work.
Watch for. Never ask what happened in the chapter. Ask what the WRITER did.
Read and use Fishmeal, Queequack, and the Sentence from Paragraph Town, pp.5–9. The worked example is the one you build on the board: Teacher reads the key passage of Fishmeal, Queequack, and the Sentence aloud with the book The class reads Writing Book 5, p.48 — our own page, 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 U7 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 key passage of Fishmeal, Queequack, and the Sentence aloud with the book open and models the move it teaches on one sentence. 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 applies the move from Fishmeal, Queequack, and the Sentence to two sentences together, checking against the book's own example. If the answer is a whole sentence rather than a word, take it on their notebooks instead, because a sentence written on a whiteboard is written once and destroyed.
They open Writing Book 5 to page 48 and read it with you. Stop at the worked example and let them look at it.
Exit directions in full, standing still, before anyone moves. Then they work alone: In your notebook: apply Fishmeal, Queequack, and the Sentence to three sentences of your own, double-spaced.
You close on the exit direction — Read out one sentence that uses Fishmeal, Queequack, and the Sentence. — taken from every child before anyone stands, and then the line you want them to still have tomorrow: A paragraph is a town, not a pile of houses.
Never ask what happened in the chapter. Ask what the WRITER did.