FREE: The Art of the Start (Complete)

by Steve Peha

Teaching That Makes Sense, Inc.

Often when I’m teaching writing, I ask kids this question: “What’s the most important part of a piece of writing: the beginning, the middle, or the end?” Interestingly, most classes give answers that are almost evenly distributed across the board. But that’s not really the right answer.

For a very simple reason, the beginning is by far the most important part of a piece of writing because if readers don’t like the beginning, it’s unlikely they’ll continue on to reach the middle or the end—no matter how good they are.

Over the years, I’ve placed special emphasis on helping kids create good beginnings. The results have exceeded my wildest dreams. A few years ago, I figured out why: every part of a piece is really a “beginning” relative to what is about to come next. Once kids have a large repertoire of good beginning strategies, they naturally start using those strategies all through their writing.

In the past, however, I’ve concentrated only on the traditional single sentence lead. That’s the best place to start but it is by no means where this kind of instruction should end. More than ever, kids need to learn to create strong opening paragraphs.

And that’s what I’ve done in my newest unit on leads called: The Art of the Start.

At 76 pages, this is the most comprehensive set of lead lessons I’ve ever produced. I organized it into three volumes of increasing complexity. Mastering even just half a dozen of the many lead paragraph styles here will dramatically improve the ability of all your students to craft energetic and engaging prose in all genres and forms.

To meet this need in my own teaching, I created a very nice slide deck devoted entirely to paragraph length beginnings. It is thoroughly documented, easy to teach, full of provocative essential questions, and ready to be taught directly to students.

Last year, I released this set in multiple volumes. But many people have written back to me saying that they missed one or two installments. And since I put them out, more than 1000 new people have signed up for the newsletter. So I’m releasing the complete set in a single PDF document. If you open the file, choose full screen or presentation mode, you’ll be able to deliver it just like you would any slide deck.