Hooks and Leads

I subbed in a sixth grade class yesterday. The writing assignment was on argumentative introductions. The students were to pick a topic sentence and then to write six introductory sentences, one for each of six types:

1. Question
2. Anecdote
3. Strong statement
4. Statistic or fact
5. Unusual detail
I can't remember the sixth.

Some students struggled with coming up with a topic sentence; they would just write down a topic, like bullying, instead of a sentence like: Bullying is a major problem in schools today. Then to come up with different leads for that statement took some quite a long time.

I told them that as a newspaper and magazine journalist, hooks or leads are very important. They're perhaps that hardest part of the article to write, in many cases. If we want someone to read what we've written, however, we have to lure them in with an intriguing hook.