Never start your essay… Hello … I am going to tell you about …. In this essay …

1. Never start your essay… • Hello… • I am going to tell you about…. • In this essay… • I am going to talk about… • Today in English we have to write about….. • This assignment…. • Hello, today in English class we have this assignment so I am going to tell you about

2. Intense Introductions and Colossal Conclusions Whether you know how to write Intros and Conclusions or you’re still lost in the world of starting and ending, these tips and tricks will help you improve your writing! As we go through this lesson, you’ll see some of my examples in boxes at the bottom. The topic I wrote about was this: “Explain challenges that people face when their town receives twenty inches of snow.”

3. What’s the purpose of an intro and conclusion? • To introduce readers to your topic at the beginning • To remind them of your ideas before you end

4. Introduction

5. Hook • Grab your readers’ attention • A well-developed hook is composed of multiple sentences • 4options: Imagine, Quote, Simile, or Sound • NOTE: The question hook is NOT an option. Imagine waking up on a Wednesday morning, looking out your window, and seeing nothing but white for as far as the eye can see. You immediately bundle up and bolt for the door. Outside, your teeth begin to chatter as you breathe in the cold, wintery wonderland that you’ve never experienced before. All up and down neighborhood streets, kids are building snowmen and launching snowballs at each other.

6. Connect • Bridge the gap between the hook and thesis/claim • Try starting a sentence with “Manypeople…” Imagine waking up on a Wednesday morning, looking out your window, and seeing nothing but white for as far as the eye can see. You immediately bundle up and bolt for the door. Outside, your teeth begin to chatter as you breathe in the cold, wintery wonderland that you’ve never experienced before. All up and down neighborhood streets, kids are building snowmen and launching snowballs at each other. Many people have never experienced twenty inches of snow before, but residents of Northwest Arkansas now know what it is like to be bombarded by a blizzard.

7. Claim/Thesis • What is the paper about? • CSRQ the prompt and list your body paragraph points. • DON’T give away all your ideas, but DO give a hint about what’s going to happen in the body paragraphs. Imagine waking up on a Wednesday morning, looking out your window, and seeing nothing but white for as far as the eye can see. You immediately bundle up and bolt for the door. Outside, your teeth begin to chatter as you breathe in the cold, wintery wonderland that you’ve never experienced before. All up and down neighborhood streets, kids are building snowmen and launching snowballs at each other. Many people have never experienced twenty inches of snow before, but residents of Northwest Arkansas now know what it is like to be bombarded by a blizzard. When that much snow falls, people are going to have to deal with certain challenges like closed roads, childcare, and missing school and work.

8. Conclusion

9. Restate Claim • Flip the sentence • Change some words – DO NOT copy it word for word from the Intro! Roadclosings, babysitters, and being absent from school and jobs are just a few of the challenges that people are faced with when their community receives twenty inches of snow.

10. Summarize Points • Remind me what I learned in the body paragraphs. Roadclosings, babysitters, and being absent from school and jobs are just a few of the challenges that people are faced with when their community receives twenty inches of snow. Snow causes roads to be closed, which can make getting everyday essentials difficult. It also means that parents of small children will have to arrange for someone to care for their kids and parents and kids alike will have to do make up work from being gone from their jobs for a whole week.

11. Refer Back to Hook • End back where you began – circle! • Look at your hook. • Find a way to talk again about that sound or scene you described earlier. • If you’re really stumped, try starting a sentence with, “So next time….” Roadclosings, babysitters, and being absent from school and jobs are just a few of the challenges that people are faced with when their community receives twenty inches of snow. Snow causes roads to be closed, which can make getting everyday essentials difficult. It also means that parents of small children will have to arrange for someone to care for their kids and parents and kids alike will have to do make up work from being gone from their jobs for a whole week. So next time you are sitting in English class, daydreaming of the cold, white fun you could have on a snow day, remember that you just might get more than you bargained for and when that happens, EVERYBODY will have to figure out how to overcome the challenges that a blizzard brings.