Organization
Mini-Lesson: Rate-A-Lead
Goal: Students will explore different leads and rate their effectiveness. Students will have the opportunity to discover and analyze leads in books.
TEKS:
3.14C write to communicate with a variety of audiences
3.17D compose sentences with interesting, elaborated subjects
3.18B develop drafts
3.19B respond constructively to others' writing
Source: Creating Writers (Spandel), p. 182-183
Trait-Based Mini-Lessons for Teaching Writing (Sloan) Scholastic.
pg. 26
Lesson Procedure:
- Introduce the purpose of the lesson. Tell students that they are going to look at examples of how different writers begin their writing. The lead is critical because it determines whether or not the reader will continue reading a piece. An effective lead grabs the readers attention from the beginning.
- Show an overhead transparency of six different ways to lead into a story about a teacher who frightens her class. Students decide which of the leads are most effective and discuss their opinions.
- Divide the students into groups of 3 or 4. Give each group a selection of 5 books to evaluate. Using the Rate-A-Lead chart , Each student is responsible for reading the 5 examples of leads and deciding if the lead is a plus (+), check (a), or minus (-).
+ I would definitely keep reading
a I might keep reading
- I would stop right here
Tip: Try to choose examples of books that have obvious, very strong leads, and some that are not as engaging.
- Bring
students back and have each group share one or two examples of leads that definitely "reel in the
reader".
What Do You Think?
Read
the following possible leads for a story about a new teacher who terrorizes a
class! Decide which lead is the most
effective and discuss the differences
"She stood six feet tall and ate whole
apples, core and stem included..."
"Our
class got a new teacher yesterday."
"Her
voice was a weapon, capable of paralyzing anything that moved."
Ms.
Doe is our new teacher. She doesn't seem
very nice.
"We
could feel her coming before we heard her."
"The
new teacher scared the class."