Writing the Beginning Paragraph

Your beginning paragraph starts with a lead that gets your reader's attention, includes detail sentences that explain the cause-effect relationship, and ends with a focus statement that tells readers just what your essay will be about.

1. Ask a question.

   What did you eat for lunch today?

2. Relate the topic to your own experience.

   Last year, school lunches changed in a big way.

3. Start with a thought-provoking fact or statement.

   School districts are taking a closer look at school lunches.

Lead Sentence

Detail Sentences

Focus Statement

Prewriting for Topics

Cause-effect essays explain how one thing leads to another. To brainstorm cause-effect essay topics, think about changes to your school, community, or environment. Also consider important events in history.

1. What changed or is changing in my school or community?
2. What changed or is changing in the world?
3. What changed or is changing in the environment?
4. What is one event or invention that changed history?

1. What cause-effect relationship does the paragraph explore?
2. Does the paragraph focus mostly on the causes or effects of the topic?

Warm-Up for Cause-Effect Essays

Everything that is going on around you right now has one or more causes that came before. And everything that will happen in the future is the effect of something that is happening now, sometimes resulting from choices you make!

Editing Possessives

In writing, possessives are used to show ownership. Read the following rules and examples about forming possessives.

• To form the possessive of a singular noun or an indefinite pronoun, add ’s. (Indefinite pronouns include one, anybody, nobody, somebody, anyone, no one, someone.)

• To form the possessive of most plural nouns (those that end in s), add only the apostrophe.

• To form the possessive of irregular plural nouns (those that do not end in s), add ’s.

1. Joes train has been delayed. Joe’s train has been delayed.
2. My books pages are stuck together. My book’s pages are stuck together.
3. The mens’ locker room is down the hall. The men’s locker room is down the hall.
4. The women basketball game lasted two hours. The women's basketball game lasted two hours.
5. I poured the cat food into Henry’s bowl. I poured the cat food into Henry’s bowl. (correct)
6. The party is at the Green’s house. The party is at the Greens’ house.
7. The outcome of the election is anybodys’ guess. The outcome of the election is anybody’s guess.
8. The closet was full of children’s toys. The closet was full of children’s toys. (correct)
9. The first baseman missed the coachs’ sign. The first baseman missed the coach’s sign.
10. Alisha met her friends at Janets’ house. Alisha met her friends at Janet’s house.

Writing the Beginning Paragraph

The first sentence in your narrative should grab the reader’s attention. It is called a lead. The following strategies will help you write an effective lead.

• Start in the middle of the action.

  I stepped into my first debate meeting, and my whole world changed.

• Start with someone speaking.

  “There's no better time than now to try something new,” said my mother.

• Ask readers a question.

  Do you know what it feels like to step outside your comfort zone?

• Begin with a surprising statement or an interesting fact.

  Before the winter of my 7th grade year, I wore a shell.

Beginning Paragraph

Prewriting to Select a Topic

The topic of your narrative should be a period in your life in which you learned something important about yourself or your world.

Topic 1:

Topic 2:

Reading a Phase Autobiography

Before writing about an important phase in your life, you should see how another writer wrote about his life. As you read the paragraph and full phase autobiography below, think about how the writer put ideas together and how you might use some of the same strategies in your own writing.

Reading an Autobiographical Paragraph

An autobiographical paragraph has three main parts. The topic sentence states the topic and focus of the story. The body sentences explain the main actions of the story. The ending sentence shares a lesson learned.

Sample Paragraph

1. What lessons did the writer learn from the experience? What details in the body sentences reflect these lessons?
2. What details did you find most interesting in the story? Name at least three.

Warm-Up for Phase Autobiographies

We all go through special phases that shape who are we and who we will become. This unit will show you how to write a compelling narrative about an important phase in your life.

What Is a Phase Autobiography?

© Thoughtful Learning 2016

A phase autobiography is a special form of narrative writing in which you write about a period in your life when you changed or grew in important ways. All people—especially young people like you—go through changes. A move to a new city may force one person to become more outgoing and personable in order to make new friends. The arrival of a baby brother or sister may cause another person to take on more responsibilities in the family. Learning how to play an instrument may show still another person the value of dedication and hard work.

You can write about a life-changing week, month, season, or year. Your biggest challenge may be choosing what to include in your writing and what to leave out. If you try to tell everything, your writing will go on and on, and may even become boring. Instead, plan to share just the key encounters, actions, and places as well as their effect on you. By doing so, you will create an effective narrative that readers can enjoy and learn from.

Thinking About Narrative Structure

The best narratives (stories) display a common structure characterized by rising action that builds interest to a peak before falling again toward a satisfying resolution. This structure mirrors the shape of the most rewarding experiences in life, so it is not surprising that phase autobiographies often follow this structure.

The following graphic shows how narratives build suspense through a series of actions that raise the stakes, leading to a critical moment or climax, when the main character confronts the central struggle.