What it is. The level of formality is set by who will read it and why.
Why our test works. Children treat formality as a dial that only goes up — more formal is assumed to be better, which produces the strangled prose that middle-school writing is known for. Anchoring the question to the READER makes formality a judgment with a right answer in both directions, and gives the teacher grounds to say a sentence is too formal, which otherwise sounds arbitrary.
Leans on. Unit 1 gave the formal vocabulary. This decides when to use it.
Watch for. *I shall endeavor to* is the failure of this lesson, not its success.
Read and use Formality from Essay Voyage, pp.69–74. The worked example is the one you build on the board: Teacher reads the key passage of Formality aloud with the book open and models the move it The class reads Writing Book 6, p.56 — 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.
Then you do one yourself, building it on the board and leaving it up: Teacher reads the key passage of Formality 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 Formality 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 6 to page 56 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 Formality to three sentences of your own, double-spaced.
You close on the exit direction — Read out one sentence that uses Formality. — taken from every child before anyone stands, and then the line you want them to still have tomorrow: Formality is a choice about your reader, not about yourself.
*I shall endeavor to* is the failure of this lesson, not its success.