What it is. A literary sentence is built for its effect, not only for its meaning.
Why our test works. By Grade 7 a child's sentences are reliably correct, which is where most school writing stops. This chapter asks for the next thing — length chosen, rhythm heard, the important word placed where it lands — and the test names the distinction bluntly enough to be usable. It is also the clearest place in the year to show that the academic-vocabulary strand and the literature strand want different things from the same sentence.
Leans on. Grade 6 cut wordiness. This is what to do with the space that made.
Watch for. Shaped does not mean longer. A three-word sentence after two long ones is the most shaped thing on the page.
Read and use The Literary Sentence from The Writing of Literature, pp.107–107. The worked example is the one you build on the board: Teacher reads the key passage of The Literary Sentence aloud with the book open and models The class reads Writing Book 7, p.57 — 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 U17 set 1, U26 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 The Literary 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 The Literary 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 7 to page 57 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 The Literary Sentence to three sentences of your own, double-spaced.
You close on the exit direction — Read out one sentence that uses The Literary Sentence. — taken from every child before anyone stands, and then the line you want them to still have tomorrow: A sentence can be correct and still be doing nothing.
Shaped does not mean longer. A three-word sentence after two long ones is the most shaped thing on the page.