Writing Good Beginnings and Great Leads

A good beginning (or great lead) can draw your readers in to your book like nothing else can. A bad beginning might cause them to close your book and go find something better to do! If you want your readers to keep reading and learn the oh-so-very-important things that are on your mind, you need to grab them from the get-go.

Almost every grade level has writing standards which address the need for a well-crafted introduction. These introductions are needed in narratives, nonfiction, persuasion pieces, and other writing forms.

As you complete this binder of Good Beginnings / Great Leads, it will become an invaluable resource to you and your students.

Begin by introducing a few techniques at a time. Discuss the technique, read some examples, and look for more examples in the reading material that you have available.

Think of topics and write some great leads together. Let students work in pairs to come up with different leads for a single topic. Then praise and share when you see students using these techniques in their own writings.

A page is included to write down student and teacher examples of each technique.

Keep the binder available to your students during writing time, and continue to add more and more techniques as needed.

This product includes 11 "poster" pages for different types of writing leads. Each lead includes multiple examples from children's literature. Also included is a page for writing teacher and student examples of each type of lead, a student practice paper, and a poster with all techniques listed.

Bonus: 1" binder spine label and 11 page tabs (one per lead type).