What it is. A paper begins with a decision, and the decision is the writer's.
Why our test works. The book opens here for a reason children find strange: the first step of a paper is not research but a DECISION. A writer who has not decided reads endlessly and writes nothing, which is the commonest way an independent assignment fails. Forcing the decision into one sentence makes it testable, and an undecided writer cannot produce that sentence at all — which is the information the lesson exists to surface.
Leans on. Grade 7's opening asked a question. This answers it before writing.
Watch for. “I'm going to write about X” is a topic, not a decision. Push until there is a claim in the sentence.
Read and use You Begin with a Decision from Advanced Academic Writing, pp.1–1. The worked example is the one you build on the board: Teacher reads the key passage of You Begin with a Decision aloud with the book open and mo The class reads Writing Book 8, 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 U1 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 You Begin with a Decision 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 You Begin with a Decision 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 8 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 You Begin with a Decision to three sentences of your own, double-spaced.
You close on the exit direction — Read out one sentence that uses You Begin with a Decision. — taken from every child before anyone stands, and then the line you want them to still have tomorrow: Before you write anything, you decide what you are doing.
“I'm going to write about X” is a topic, not a decision. Push until there is a claim in the sentence.