SPO & Paragraph

Writing at length places significant demands on executive functions and working memory.
Teaching pupils to plan before writing helps alleviate the cognitive load that extended writing imposes on the brain.
To create an effective plan, pupils first need to identify the topic, audience, and purpose of their writing.
Single Paragraph Outline (SPO) is a linear and simple outline that offers numerous benefits. Important to decide whether your school/cluster is going to follow this structure or another, e.g. PEE. Other structures can be substituted in to the activities as needed.
It provides a clear structure with a beginning, middle, and end, eliminating repetition and improving pupils’ ability to stick to the topic.
Its scaffolding activities help pupils understand the concept of a topic sentence and learn to organize and sequence details effectively.
It enables pupils to organize ideas logically and promotes analytical thinking.
Teachers should continually revisit SPO scaffolding activities to reinforce specific skills needed to create an SPO independently.

In Year 2, practise creating Single Paragraph Outlines (SPOs) and paragraphs as a class.

From Year 3, create a narrative SPO as a whole class using time and sequence transitions, and SPO for expository texts. Brainstorm details (written as key words and phrases) for a topic sentence. Distinguish topic sentences and detail sentences (or P and E in PEE structures). Generate a topic sentence (or P in PEE) from given details using the sentence types. Select relevant details from a list to support a given topic sentence (TS).

From Year 4, create whole class SPOs for narrative, opinion and expository. Practise the 2 (or 3 when appositives taught) of writing a TS or concluding sentence (CS). Given topic/prompt, generate a TS. Given a TS and details, generate a CS. Given a topic/prompt, construct an SPO independently. Draft a paragraph based on SPO.

From Year 5, create SPOs for problem/solution and cause/effect. Create pro SPOs and con SPOs.