Hook ' Yer Reader, Matey! Yargh!

While I am still stressing over deciding how I'm going to have my students plan their compositions this year, I know that the next step in the writing process will be teaching them how to HOOK the reader with a fabulous lead. This has always been one of my favorite lessons of the year because you can totally play up the "hook" theme, and the fourth graders really impress me with how talented they are at crafting their own leads. Two years ago, I dressed up as a fisherman (tackle-clad hat, fishing pole, weird vest, etc.) Then came the disastrous follow-up activity where I taught FIVE ways to hook the reader at once, and each student wrote all five of their leads on different a fish die-cut. I then felt compelled to tie ALL the fish die-cuts together with fishing line and hang them from the ceiling, where you probably couldn't even read them. Did I mention I had about 70 students? I ended up laughing at myself so hard. (You have to laugh, or you'll cry.)

Last year was better. I dressed as Captain Hook and taught THREE ways to hook the reader. This was a lot less daunting to start with, and I didn't kid myself with the mess of 350 ceiling fish. Once the kids got past my distracting eye patch and on-again-off-again pirate accent, they listened to me read many catchy leads from different mentor texts. It was a mini-lesson if there ever was one. We'd only read the first couple sentences of each book, discuss why and how it "hooked" us, and then move onto the next. If you're looking to find fiction books that have great leads, Roald Dahl, Cynthia Rylant, and Judy Blume books are always a hit. I also just found a new favorite while browsing through Half Price Books:

(Eileen Spinelli is also the author of The Best Story, my favorite mentor text to teach the trait of voice!) This year, with the addition of my borderline creepy Captain Hook getup and collection of mentor texts, I'll have a new follow-up activity I've created (below) where students can read more author examples and write their own hooks in three different ways. After that, I'll have them choose their favorite hook to begin their next composition with. We'll definitely keep these in our writing folders for reference throughout the year. I got the idea of representing each hook method with a different punctuation mark from a district training, and I found the awesome pirate-y font at dafont.com, my favorite website for free fonts. I also wanted to teach three ways to hook the reader that would work for both narrative and expository writing to make things less confusing for my fourth graders, so I went with the three you'll see on the PDF...

Click here to download for FREE!

I'm interested to know how other teachers introduce leads or if there are any must-have mentor texts out there that I'm unaware of, so please feel free to comment! I will end this post with my favorite pirate joke:

Q: "What's a pirate's favorite fast food restaurant?"

A: "AAARRRRRby's!" 

You know you're laughing!

- Sarah