What it is. A text re-read after doing the work yourself gives up more than it did the first time.
Why our test works. Re-reading is the cheapest intervention in the curriculum and children resist it, because they believe a text is used up once read. Anchoring the question to the CHANGE IN THEMSELVES rather than the text makes the re-reading evidently worthwhile — and it is true: after a full project cycle they can see craft they had no equipment for in lesson 7.
Leans on. Lesson 7 read this chapter before the project.
Watch for. Have lesson 7's notes open beside them. Without the comparison this is just a second reading.
Read and use Learning to Write: General Thoughts from The Writing of Literature, pp.6–6. 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.64 — 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, U27 set 2: 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 64 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: Second time through the same chapter, with a year's more writing behind you.
Have lesson 7's notes open beside them. Without the comparison this is just a second reading.