What it is. You have met these and used them; now you use them where they actually belong.
Why our test works. The Grade 6 failure is not ignorance but settling: a child reaches for the word they already own rather than the one the sentence needs, and the writing stays where it was. Naming that habit is most of the cure, because the child can usually retrieve the better word once asked.
Leans on. Grades 4 and 5 built the habit of reaching past the first word that came to mind. Grade 6 asks it of longer phrases.
Watch for. Do not accept a word that is merely not wrong. Ask what it does that the everyday word would not.
Use 8 school words in sentences of your own, and choose which version suits who is reading. The worked example is built on They put the change down to rainfall., ringing put down to. The class reads Writing Book 6, p.50 — 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 U6 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, on screen, one click per piece: the word put down to alone first, and you wait — let them look at it before you give them the meaning. Then explain by arrives beside it, and you point from one to the other with your hand. Then the sentence underneath: They put the change down to rainfall.. Three clicks, three things said. Do not let the whole slide arrive at once — a slide that arrives whole gives the answer before the question is asked.
The We-do is the main whiteboard moment of the lesson — short answers, boards up on your signal, every child visible at once. Class rewrites two everyday sentences into school-word, then judges one case where the everyday version is BETTER. Discuss in pairs using the frames. 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 6 to page 50 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 through the five steps — match, choose, frame, write their own. The frames stay on screen while they write: You may use the frame for two of your three. Try the third without it. Say both halves of that — the frame is there if they need it, and it is better writing without it. Walk and note who used it; that is your group for tomorrow, not a mark against them today.
You close on the exit direction — Say one sentence using put down to. — taken from every child before anyone stands, and then the line you want them to still have tomorrow: Use the one that carries the meaning, not the one that sounds heaviest.
Do not accept a word that is merely not wrong. Ask what it does that the everyday word would not.