Before you teach — read this first

Grade 6 · Lesson 34 — Explanatory — Plan the road map

Road-map project · blocked · 30 minutes · 17 slides · Launch → I do → We do → Read → You do → Closure
The language behind this lesson — read this before you teach it.
EXPLANATORY

What it is. The plan is made knowing what the last piece taught you.

Why our test works. A second cycle is only worth the days it costs if the first one informed it. Most children start the second piece exactly as they started the first, which makes the repetition pointless. Naming one specific carried-forward lesson is small enough to actually happen and is what turns two projects into a progression.

Leans on. Lessons 28-33 ran the full cycle once.

Watch for. “Write better” is not a carried-forward lesson. Make it one nameable thing.

What this lesson is

Plan the road map 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 plan the road map on the cl The class reads Writing Book 6, p.73 — our own page, so a child who was absent can still get the lesson.

Why it matters — say this in your own words, about ten seconds.
“To repeat an action without reflecting on the first is to spend the effort twice for one result.”
A different reason every lesson, on purpose. It is not on a slide and it is not a script — if you have a better reason today, use yours. What should land is the idea, not a sentence they can recite.
How it goes

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 U8 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 shows the road map with today's slot named, and models plan the road map 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 their notebooks instead, because a sentence written on a whiteboard is written once and destroyed.

They open Writing Book 6 to page 73 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: plan the road map 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: Second time round, plan for what went wrong the first time.

Exit directions — in full, standing still, before anyone moves
Notebook and pencil · Heading first · In the notebook: plan the road map for your own piece, double-spaced so there is room to correct.
Watch for

“Write better” is not a carried-forward lesson. Make it one nameable thing.

As-Suffah Academy · Writing · narrative brief