Do you sometimes tell your students that they need a better start to their story or opinion letter, or that they need an ending with more pizzazz? Do you tell them to add more details when they hand you their sparse informational piece? Of course you do!! Then why do your students have such a difficult time following through on this seemingly simple directive? It is likely that they need a little more modeling and instruction on the SPECIFIC WAYS to write leads, endings and details.
Just as a woodworker uses many tools and techniques to CRAFT a piece of furniture, a skilled author uses tools and techniques of language and storytelling to CRAFT a piece of writing. We, as teachers of writing, need to directly teach our students some of these tools and techniques. Since we may not consider ourselves to be expert writers, this seems like an overwhelming task...but it need not be. If we give our students some direct instruction on only a few different types of leads, endings and details, they will have the tools to drastically improve their writing in all three text types: narrative, informational and opinion writing!
In this post I have created a quick and dirty reference for the different types of LEADS, ENDINGS AND DETAILS (listed by text type) that you can and SHOULD teach your students to use in their writing!
