Before you teach — read this first

Grade 7 · Lesson 29 — Explanatory — Draft the middle

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. Each body paragraph makes one point and attributes its support.

Why our test works. This is the lesson where Unit 27 stops being vocabulary. A point with support the reader cannot trace is the same as a point with no support, and children do not feel that until it is put as a question about the READER. It is also the last cheap moment to catch a fabricated source — at drafting, in class, where it can be treated as a mistake rather than as dishonesty.

Leans on. Grade 6 lesson 30 built the point-plus-support paragraph.

Watch for. Check one source per child, live. Doing it once, publicly and calmly, does more than any warning.

What this lesson is

Draft the middle 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 draft the middle on the cla The class reads Writing Book 7, p.68 — 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.
“A chain that cannot be traced does not strengthen what it carries.”
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 U17 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 draft the middle 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 7 to page 68 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: draft the middle 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: State it, prove it, and say where the proof came from.

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

Check one source per child, live. Doing it once, publicly and calmly, does more than any warning.

As-Suffah Academy · Writing · narrative brief