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Teach sentence openers and textual cohesion with this comprehensive teacher slide deck, designed to explicitly show students how authors use sentence beginnings to connect ideas, maintain focus and guide readers through a paragraph.

Built around the I Do, We Do, You Do model, this lesson sequence takes students from explicit teacher modelling to guided practice and independent application. Students explore how sentence openers introduce, revisit and develop a topic, creating cohesive paragraphs with a clear flow of ideas.

These teacher slides can be used independently. Note: Where the teacher slides reference printable independent activities, these are available in the full lesson bundle here.

Through model texts, collaborative discussion and structured learning experiences, students identify sentence openers, analyse how they create cohesion across sentences and investigate how pronouns, connectives and purposeful language choices strengthen paragraph writing. Students then apply their understanding by writing cohesive paragraphs using effective and varied sentence openers.

What's included in this lesson sequence?

• Clear learning intentions and success criteria focused on sentence openers and textual cohesion
• Explicit teaching of how sentence beginnings guide readers and connect ideas
• Modelled examples demonstrating cohesive paragraph writing
• Guided analysis of sentence openers in authentic texts
• Explicit teaching of pronouns, connectives and cohesive language choices
• Structured practice writing cohesive paragraphs with purposeful sentence openers
• Built-in check-ins for learning to monitor understanding
• A reflective exit ticket to inform next-step teaching and differentiation

Perfect for upper primary classrooms, this lesson sequence helps students develop cohesive writing, strengthen paragraph structure and confidently use sentence openers to create clear, connected and engaging texts.

Format: PowerPoint Slides

Aligned to Australian Curriculum Outcome: Understand how texts can be made cohesive by using the starting point of a sentence or paragraph to give prominence to the message and to guide the reader through the text. (AC9E5LA04)

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