Read enough student papers, and you’ll start to notice the same opening line over and over: “This essay is about…” or “I think that…”
It doesn’t matter the topic or the student… that sentence (or a close cousin of it) shows up constantly. It’s not because those kids don’t have anything to say. They just don’t know yet that a lead is allowed to do more than announce the topic.
So how do you actually teach that?
Let me give you a hint… it’s not telling them to “make this more interesting!” in the margin of their writing piece.
That note doesn’t give a 9-year-old anything they can act on! What works is showing them, side by side, exactly what changes when a lead does its job: hooking the reader.
Don’t just tell them… show them! Compare two passages with everything identical EXCEPT for the opening lines.
Weak lead: “I think that schools should have recycling programs. There are many reasons why I think this. Recycling is good for the environment. It helps reduce waste. It also teaches students to be responsible.”
Strong lead: “Picture this: 40 trash bags stuffed with paper, plastic, and cardboard sitting on the curb of your school every single week. Now picture half of those bags disappearing, not into a landfill, but back into something useful. That is exactly what a school recycling program can do. Every school should be required to have a recycling program because it reduces waste, protects natural resources, and teaches students to be responsible.”
Passage A announces the topic with “I think that…” and then lists its reasons in three short, choppy sentences. Passage B opens with a scene the reader can picture, then combines the reasons into one clear claim. That opening is a scene-setting hook, one of the four types below.
The only thing that changed in the passage was those first few sentences, which were written to create engagement and combine choppy sentences, and yet the whole piece reads completely differently because of it. That’s the moment you want students to notice on their own before you hand them a label for it.
Display both passages and just ask what’s different here, and what does the second one do that the first one doesn’t? Kids are surprisingly good at naming this once you point them at it directly.
Hold off on the label. Let students name the difference in their own words first.
This task works the same way whether you’re teaching leads for informational writing or opinion writing! The mechanics don’t change even though the content does.
When students have named the difference, give them the four types. These work for informational writing too, but here they are with the school recycling topic from the example passages.
QUESTION: ask something that makes the reader stop and think
What if the trash your school throws away every day could become something useful?
BOLD STATEMENT: state your opinion strongly right from the jump
Throwing a plastic bottle in the trash is a choice, and it’s the wrong one.
SURPRISING FACT: share a fact the reader probably doesn’t know that points toward your opinion
The average American generates about 4.9 pounds of trash every day.
SCENE-SETTING: paint a picture the reader can see or feel
By the end of lunch, the cafeteria garbage cans are overflowing with paper, plastic bottles, and food wrappers.
Have students pull out something they’ve already written, any draft- it doesn’t have to be finished. Ask them to read just their first sentence and decide: does it grab the reader’s attention, or does it just announce the topic?
If it’s just announcing, that’s the paper to work with. Have them try out one of the strong leads. (Nothing else on the page needs to change yet.)
It doesn’t have to be an elaborate lesson! Getting them to notice when a lead could be stronger is the first step.
Print it and use it as an anchor chart, hang it in your writing center, or have students include it in their notebooks for a reference.
And if you want the whole thing, not just the poster, check out my Strengthen Your Lead units, which walk students from noticing weak vs. strong leads in real passages, to writing and comparing two leads of their own, to revising an assessment piece using everything they’ve learned.
They are built to teach both informational and opinion writing!
