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As Meatloaf almost sang "7 out of 10 ain't bad"

 “Just wanted to say a genuine thank you. Your course is magnificent.”

That arrived on Friday, from someone who downloaded the scheme of work. Week 1 is now up — click here.

I changed week one a lot. It needed to be right. It wasn't.

My original plan had learners working out the IELTS test format from a matching task “through active discovery rather than lecture”. It sounded right. It wasn’t.

Rosenshine’s evidence base includes Kirschner, Sweller and Clark on precisely why minimal guidance fails. And his seventh principle asks for roughly 80% correct during guided practice. A worksheet set cold on unfamiliar content delivers neither. So the stage now presents the material in two small chunks — Listening and Reading, then Writing and Speaking — with the same handout used after each chunk as practice rather than before it as discovery. Same materials. Same twelve minutes. Opposite logic.

What’s in the lesson:

Stage 1 · Welcome and prior knowledge. A first lesson has no previous lesson to review, so the opening elicits what learners already believe about IELTS, sorted into “sure” and “not sure”. Those become the reference points I return to later. It also establishes the retrieval routine that opens every subsequent lesson.

Stage 3 · Test format. Two chunks, each followed by practice and a whole-class check. Then a worked band-score calculation on the board before learners attempt three of their own.

Stage 4 · How Writing is marked. The heart of it. Four assessment criteria introduced in one go will swamp anyone, so I name all four and model only one — Coherence and Cohesion — thinking aloud as I compare two sample answers. Not the verdict. The questions. Does the writer tell me where they’re going? What words join the ideas? Does each sentence lead to the next? Learners then apply the remaining three criteria themselves, with a comparison grid and sentence stems to lean on.

Stage 6 · Preparing for independent practice. Rosenshine asks us to prepare learners for independent work, not just assign it. The homework handout includes a set-up checklist, because learners routinely write a “timed” essay across three evenings with a dictionary open and then wonder why their exam timing collapses.

I’ve been honest in the plan about what isn’t there. Weekly and monthly review can’t appear in lesson one; that is at scheme-of-work level. Seven out of ten principles are present.


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