C4E lessons: what the structure actually is

C4E, short for Communication 4 Everyone, builds lessons out of two things: paragraphs that carry real academic content, and a question set that is the same shape every time. The second half is the part that distinguishes it. Most letterboard methodologies let the question mix vary paragraph by paragraph. C4E fixes it, and gets something useful in return.

This page describes the structure rather than showing a generated example, because the sample lessons we publish cover the other methodologies. What follows is the shape a C4E lesson takes and what each part is for.

The paragraph

A C4E paragraph is three to six sentences of substantive content. Not a hook, not a simplified summary, and not two sentences of scene-setting. It should contain facts and concepts that can actually be questioned four different ways, because that is what is about to happen to it.

Vocabulary tracks the learner rather than the topic. The usual move is to use the real academic word and then gloss it in the very next sentence, so the learner meets the word instead of being handed an easier substitute. Sentence structure carries the readability; the vocabulary carries the content. Those two dials are separate, and treating them as one is how material ends up written several years below the person reading it.

Each paragraph stands on its own while adding to the topic. A lesson of six paragraphs should build, so that by the last one the learner is being asked about something the earlier paragraphs made possible.

The four question types

C4E uses exactly four, and no others. In the product they carry their own colors, the same way each methodology's types do.

• Two Choices is a reasoning question with exactly two options. The learner picks one. Unlike an attention check, this one is meant to take thought: the options are both credible, and the paragraph gives you what you need to choose between them. Questions about what a word means in context work well here.
• Predictable is a fill-in-the-blank with one expected answer, usually written with a blank line for the learner to complete. The answer is specific and not in doubt. This is the question type that asks for production without asking for judgment.
• Range accepts many valid responses. It typically asks the learner to name one example from a category, or to connect the topic to something they know. There is no single key, but there are wrong answers, which puts it between the predictable question and the open one.
• Open-Ended asks for an opinion, a thought, or a reason. There is no answer key and there is not meant to be. It always comes last.

Why the order is fixed

The four types always appear in that order: Two Choices, Predictable, Range, Open-Ended. Support comes down one step at a time. The first question hands the learner both possible answers. The second asks them to supply a specific word. The third asks them to supply something the paragraph never gave them. The fourth asks for something only they can provide. That is a ramp, and it runs again at every paragraph, so the learner always knows where in the ramp they are.

The predictability matters more than it sounds. A learner who spells every letter of every answer is spending real effort on each response, and a session where the demands arrive in a known order is a session where none of that effort goes into working out what is being asked of them next.

A paragraph's worth of questions

Suppose the paragraph explained that hurricanes form over warm ocean water, and that the calm center of the storm is called the eye. The four questions after it would look something like this:

• Two Choices: if the center of a hurricane is calm, is the eye the quiet part or the windiest part? Options: the quiet part, the windiest part.
• Predictable: hurricanes form over water that is warm, not ______________. Expected answer: cold.
• Range: name one other kind of severe weather. Many answers are correct.
• Open-Ended: what would you want to know if a storm was coming toward your town? No answer key.

Notice that the first question is answerable from the paragraph but still requires the learner to reason about what calm implies. That is the difference between a C4E two-choice question and a simple attention check, and it is the most common thing to get wrong when writing these by hand.

What C4E does not include

There is no spell-only warm-up and no creative writing closer in a C4E lesson. Both belong to other methodologies, and importing them because they seem helpful changes what the lesson is. If you want a warm-up before the first question, the paragraph-based approaches on the letterboard lessons page are built around one.

If your learner needs the motor demand held constant across every question, RPM lessons do that by making every question a two-option choice. And if you are weighing the methodologies against each other rather than working inside one you already trained in, the AAC lesson plans page lays out the trade-offs side by side.

Writing them, or generating them

A C4E lesson is honest work to write. Six paragraphs of real content at a specific reading level, then twenty-four questions where four different types each land correctly on the same paragraph, is an evening. The fixed structure helps a little, because you always know what you are writing next, but it also means every paragraph has to be rich enough to support all four demands. A thin paragraph produces a thin two-choice question and an open question with nothing behind it.

SpellerLessons generates the whole thing from a topic and a learner profile: paragraphs at the right length and reading level, then the four question types per paragraph in order, with the counts set to whatever you enabled. You keep the editing pass. What comes back is a draft that already has the structure right, which is the part that takes the longest by hand.