Classroom Activity – Creating Titles that Hook

Ever heard that you never get a second chance to make a first impression?  That’s true when you write.  Often, students overlook titles for their essays.  During the semester, I spend a class going over titles and having fun with them to show students ways to be creative and hook the reader.

One of the activities I begin with is sharing headlines I created for fairy tales and nursery rhymes.  One of the ones I use is “Rodent Terrified by Time Piece.”  At first students scratch their heads and try to think back to the nursery rhymes they remember.  Then if I’m lucky, one student will guess “Hickory Dickory Dock.”  It is a little difficult with the current generation because many of them were never read nursery rhymes, but they soon get into the activity and enjoy trying to figure out each story.  Another one I use is “Downtrodden Woman Escapes for the Evening:  Saved by Authorities.”  That’s “Cinderella.”

We talk some about the titles I offer because they are written more in the newspaper genre than for essays or stories.  We then talk about how even though they are writing academic essays, they should still try to make the title hook the reader and the introduction interesting to the reader.

Then I flip the tables on them and give them five more fairy tales and ask them to write their own titles to hook the reader.  When they are finished, I look for volunteers to share.  This is one time when students are more eager to share, and we get some good laughs from what they have written.  With this portion of the activity, I offer a site with brief summaries of the fairy tales because more and more often fewer students are familiar with all of those tales.  And even if they are familiar, it is sometimes nice to review.  I found when I developed this activity, I ended up rereading of the stories and seeing details I had forgotten or missed.

I think the most startling thing they realize from this exercise is that they should consider the audience they are writing for even if it’s just the teacher and try to make their writing interesting.