Writing an essay - Hooks

Writing an essay - Hooks

Multiple Choice

What is a hook in an essay?

• a tool used to catch fish

• a sentence that gets the reader's attention

• a sentence that shows the essay is complete

Hooks are...

• interesting

• catch the attention of the reader

• related to the topic you are writing about

Hooks are not...

• questions

• boring

• unrelated to what you are writing about

If a hook cannot be a question, what can it be?

• A quote from an article

• An interesting fact

• A statement that makes people think

• But it is NEVER, and I mean NEVER, a question.

Multiple Choice

Select the best hook from the choices below.

• Have you ever wondered what it would be like to survive a shark attack?

• There are an average of 16 shark attacks each year in the United States.

• My favorite animal is a shark.

• Sharks are purple.

Multiple Choice

Read the hook and decide the kind of hook it is:

More people die from falling coconuts than they do from shark attacks.

(aims.gov.au)

• fact

• quote

• interesting statement

Multiple Choice

Read the hook and decide the kind of hook it is:

"It happened in a split second. The mouth’s opened up and she’s hit me in the guts with her nose. I thought: Oh, here we go."

(The Guardian)

• fact

• quote

• interesting statement

Multiple Choice

Read the hook and decide the kind of hook it is:

One October morning in 2003, 13-year-old Bethany Hamilton was just trying to catch some waves with a friend on a Kauai beach in Hawaii. While she was lying on her board, a tiger shark suddenly came up from below and bit her left arm clean off.

(wideopenspaces.com)

• fact

• quote

• interesting statement

Multiple Choice

Read the hook and decide the kind of hook it is:

"Experienced spear fishers say the shark that is going to bite you is the one you don’t see, and I certainly didn’t see this shark at all. "

(The Guardian)

• fact

• quote

• interesting statement

Tips for writing a good hook

• Sometimes facts about your topic from another source provide an interesting background. You can google things like "Number of children with cancer in the US." and then find something interesting to use as a hook. IT MUST BE CITED.

• Sometimes you can use quotes in an article you read if you think it is interesting and relates to your topic.

• You can also just think a little bit about what you read and try to come up with an interesting way to summarize what you want to talk about in your essay.

• If you were thinking about a question, you can try to re-phrase it so that it is a statement and not a question.

Making a question... NOT a question

• Some times people like to ask questions like: "Have you ever wondered what it would be like to ____?

• You could rephrase that: "Many people have wondered what it would be like to ______. Max understands, because ...."

• 
  

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Multiple Choice

Your hook MAY NOT contain

• a question

• a fact

• a quote

• an interesting statement

Multiple Select

If you use a fact or quote, or any words that are not your own words must be

• in quotations

• the article must be cited

• written as though it is yours

CITING SOURCES

• This is another lesson for another day, but be aware of a few things:

• 1. Keep track of the websites where you got your information

• 2. Use quotation marks any time you use all the words that came from someone else.

• 3. Even if you paraphrase (put someone else's words into different words) you need to keep track and give credit to the people who wrote those words.

Open Ended

Let's practice writing a hook. Write a new hook for your essay about Max.