In Writing Workshop, students have been working hard to create leads for their personal narrative.We’ve learned different ways to begin our story including describing the setting, using dialogue, or even writing an action. A lead helps your reader get into your story. It needs to ‘hook‘ your reader so they want to keep on reading!

Here, students are sharing their 2 leads with a partner and using their partner to help them decide which one is stronger.

We can learn a lot from what we call ‘mentor texts‘ which are texts written by published authors. Students listened to several examples of leads written by authors they are familiar with (ie. Charlotte’s Web author E.B. White, Ramona Quimby author Beverley Cleary). We can use these authors to help show us what are things that WE can try, too!

Do you have a lead of your own or from an author you like that really ‘hooked’ you to keep on reading? If so, please share it with us!