Others assumed they’d be taught this challenging skill at a younger age, and “should know it by now.Hooks in narrative writing are a fun way to introduce the elements of narrative writing. Some teachers weren’t really comfortable writing them themselves, so they definitely couldn’t give catchy examples of them. Students can rate whether they want to keep reading to the next line or not, showing just how short the average reader’s attention span is, and how they can overcome boring hooks to keep their reader going.Īs someone who wrote hooks (leads) for a living, I quickly saw that the point of contention wasn’t whether we needed better hooks (everyone does), but how to teach them. This easily lends itself to a game (we call it “Would you keep reading?”). Students are always excited to be handed a list of articles, only to learn they only have to read the first two sentences of each. The easiest answer, of course, is by reading amazing examples of them. Teachers and students alike have visited my room, not during their class time, to take pictures of these posters, and talk about the best ways to teach hooks.
The 8 hook examples have been on my wall in every classroom I’ve taught in, with a simple explainer and example for each. As readers, we all have the universal need to be drawn in–so whether a hook is a part of the latest ACT requirements or not, it’s a necessity to becoming a moving writer. To combat this, one of the first lessons I taught, and continue to teach a decade later, is the 8 specific ways to craft a catchy hook, whether you are writing a news story or analytic literature essay. They did need that, but over the years I figured out that “need a creative hook” was one of the points of contention on every graded rubric, starting at way younger grades, and persisting as a point of frustration for students and their teachers through high school. Instead, I anticipated kids needing help finding research sources, crafting strong arguments, and building outlines.
When I swapped out my newsdesk for a teacher’s desk and landed in a high school English classroom, the last thing on my mind was writing amazing hooks (also called leads or ledes in journalism).
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