What it is. A writer reads for the choices another writer made.
Why our test works. The whole reason MCT sits inside a writing block is that reading as a reader and reading as a writer are different acts. Children default to the first because it is what every other subject asks of them. The two-part test forces the second: naming the choice is half of it, and asking what would be LOST is what stops the answer being *the author used a metaphor* with no account of why it mattered.
Leans on. Grades 1-3 did this with Poodle. The text is harder; the move is the same.
Watch for. A summary of the plot is the wrong answer, however accurate. The subject of the sentence must be the author.
Read and use Learning to Write: General Thoughts from The Writing of Literature, pp.5–5. The worked example is the one you build on the board: Teacher reads the key passage of Learning to Write: General Thoughts aloud with the book o The class reads Writing Book 7, p.46 — 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 Learning to Write: General Thoughts 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 Learning to Write: General Thoughts 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 7 to page 46 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 Learning to Write: General Thoughts to three sentences of your own, double-spaced.
You close on the exit direction — Read out one sentence that uses Learning to Write: General Thoughts. — taken from every child before anyone stands, and then the line you want them to still have tomorrow: Read it as a writer: not what happened, but what the author did.
A summary of the plot is the wrong answer, however accurate. The subject of the sentence must be the author.