Inspiring Students With the Right Writing Prompts

Just imagine you went in to work one day and the principal handed you a piece of paper and asked you to write about a particular topic, like what you did that weekend. Then, imagine that you were told you only had 10 minutes to complete the task. You probably wouldn’t produce a particularly creative piece of work. Yet this is exactly what we do to our students on a daily basis. We give them a writing prompt, and expect them to do great things. In addition, we impose a time limit, and then are surprised if they falter. If we struggle with it, why shouldn't they?

What's Your Philosophy? 

It all starts with your personal writing philosophy. It might not be an easy thing to do, but you should evaluate your philosophy before deciding on the best way to encourage your students. Some of the things you might want to consider are why you write, what makes you want to write, and what you think is important. I love to write, but I find that I only do great things when I find the topic interesting. For me, finding something I can get excited about makes all the difference. Once you identify the things that you feel are important about writing, like using correct and descriptive language, you can start developing meaningful writing experiences for your students. Instead of assigning activities in which they have to write about the same topic or write from a list of generated topics, you can provide a variety of prompts/assignments, in an effort to be sure there is at least one thing that every learner can get excited to write about. This simple alteration can lead to good writing and the results you would like to see. Perhaps your writing philosophy is different, what is it? And how could you incorporate it into your writing classes? 

How Do You Inspire Your Writers?

Here is one way you can provide inspiration for your writers: Have everyone make a list of their favorite activities. They may write skateboarding, surfing, reading, gardening, etc. (You could incorporate math into this activity by having students make a graph of their results after they are done.) Then, you can use this information to provide visual writing prompts. Bring in a variety of pictures that show scenes related to the students’ favorite activities, show videos of people engaged in the activities, or provide a list of websites they can visit. The next step is to teach your young writers how to use these prompts to develop a story.

How Do You Set a Foundation?

But before you send them to the desks to write, you need to set the groundwork for their work. Pick one of the pictures and have the class suggest a variety of words, phrases, and sentences that could describe the scene. If the picture is of a surfer, students might say, “She is getting tubed by a wave on the Big Island of Hawaii. It is awesome!” Once you’ve gotten students to start using their imagination, you can have them start to write a class story to go with the picture. By doing this as a class, you model how you want them to push the envelope. Maybe one of your students will suggest that the surfer in the picture is really a young woman who is trying to break into the pro circuit: "She's from Kansas and saved all the money she had to move to Hawaii when she graduated from college . . .” In this way, you can use a simple picture as a way to encourage pupils to come up with creative stories.

How Do Your Writers Know Your Expectations?

Make sure you develop a rubric outlining what you expect, and describing how you will evaluate student work. Identify the length of the story, and the elements you will be looking for. Their writing should be evaluated on both content and mechanics. Depending on the areas that are important to you, you might want to focus on different elements.

Once students have an idea of what you expect, have them work in groups based on their interests, and let them work together to describe their picture. Ask each group to come up with at least ten words or phrases to describe it. If you think a group is on the right track, you can have them start their stories. Once the group work is rolling, I like to have students write at least one individual story page, encouraging them to be as imaginative as possible. Sometimes the quieter kids have great ideas that will come out in their individual stories, but not necessarily in the group.

Here are some more lessons to get your young authors thinking about writing as a fun, rather than a torturous, activity.

Writing Prompts:

The "Write" Stuff: Strategies and Conventions for Imaginative Writing

Pupils practice how to write creative fictional stories using motivational writing prompts.

Collage to Writing

Young scholars design collages using pictures from magazines and other sources. They then use these pictures as a means to spark creative writing.

Ten Prompts for Student Writing

If you are looking for some easy ways to spur your pupils to write, here are some suggestions.

Creative Writing Lesson Plan

Have your kids explore a website about animals as a means of coming up with some fun and interesting suggestions for writing about imaginary animals.