12 Writing Prompts to Engage Your Students
Many teachers in 2nd-6th are wondering what kind of writing assignments to assign the when students are at home working online. Well, in this article I’m giving you 12 writing prompts to engage your students. Hopefully, you will be able to provide a small bit of instruction on structure and format even if they are learning online right now.
Writing Prompts to Engage Your Students
Quick Writes
But often, you are just searching for some simple “quick writes” to get their imagination and “juices” flowing. So, here are some topics to consider:
- Alphabetical Order
- A picture prompt (it’s worth a thousand words)
- I’m passionate about
- Dear future me
- Dear baby me
- One minute story
- Where would you like to travel to?
- Critique something
- What’s in the box?
- What’s your favorite season and why?
- Make a story with these five words; grape, tiger, hat, truck, broom
- What would you buy with $1,000?
Before I get into the explanations of each prompt above, I want to give you an opportunity to have this FREE downloadable PDF that I created on 101 Teacher Tips. Just complete the form below and I will zip it right over to your email.
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Now for the Explanations of each one
And now for a brief explanation of each:
-1- Alphabetical order – Think of a simple topic (such as animals or places) and have students think of a word in that category that begins with each letter. Often you will need to excuse obscure letters such as Q and X since those words may not exist; if you can’t think of one, don’t expect that your students can either.
-2- A picture prompt – Show the class a photograph and have them write a quick paragraph about it. You can assign either a descriptive writing or a fictional story. Just be sure to remind them – no violence or x-rated stories.
-3- I’m passionate about – Have your students write about something they are passionate about. You may need to provide about 7 examples of what a child their age might be passionate about. For example – sports, their pet, a hobby, a vacation spot their family goes to, a favorite TV show, etc.
Encourage them to be creative
-4- Dear future me – Ask your students to tell what they would want to tell their future self about what they are thinking and doing right now. Again, it’s always a good idea to give a few examples. Even if most students use one of your examples, their stories will be different + they are writing, which is the whole idea.
-5- Dear baby me – On the flip side of the prompt above, ask your students to give some constructive advice to themselves when they were a baby. Something they wish they had known ahead of time. Give a few examples again.
-6- One minute story – This prompt is actually a bit harder and I wouldn’t recommend that you use it with any grade younger than 4th grade. Basically, it’s asking your students to write as quickly and as much as they can about a story for a minute. I would suggest you, the teacher, provide the beginning sentence… then ask them to continue. For example, “One dark November night I stepped outside my front door and it was pouring rain.” The students copy this sentence to begin their writing and then write more BUT stop at a minute.
More Quick Write Explanations
-7- Where would you like to travel to? – For younger students this may be a bit more difficult if they don’t have previous experience going places with their family. You could have the class brainstorm some places and list them on the board for students to choose from.
-8- Critique something – For your students to be able to do this one, you would need to do a little pre-teaching on what a critique is, how advertisers use critique to sway customers, how critiques can be either positive, negative, or a pro/con list, etc. I would recommend this, also, for older students.
-9- What’s in the box? – Show the class a box (big or small) and have them write a “quick write” on what they think is in there and a little description of the item(s). You may want to give 2-3 clues the first few times you use this quick write idea.
My final three suggestions
-10- What’s your favorite season and why? – Write the names of the seasons on the board (list both fall and autumn for exposure to both terms). Ask students to tell which one is their favorite and why. I would recommend that you ask for a certain number of reasons (for example – 3 reasons). This requires them to go a bit deeper into their thinking and reasons.
–11- Story with these five words; grape, tiger, hat, truck and broom. – This quick write is supposed to be funny. You should teach this concept first using five other “non-connected” words and show an example. After the students write theirs, it would be fun to have groups of four read theirs to each other.
-12- What would you buy with $1,000? – Kids like thinking about this. You might want to brainstorm first as a group. For older students you might want to increase the amount to $100,000. That way some can list a car they like of other more costly items. If you want to expand on this, you can ask them to explain WHY they chose that particular item(s).
Remember these are “quick write” activities. You shouldn’t spend more than 15 minutes on any of these (except the ones where you need to offer a brief explanation). These is not meant to be a writing lesson, but just a quick activity for filling extra time or to get students writing.
If you are interested in how I taught writing in Elementary school, I wrote another article about that which you can read here:
How I Teach Writing in Elementary School
Teaching writing was a challenge to me as a young teacher. I tell about that in the linked article above. If your school has a writing program you should be happy because we never did when I taught – so I had to figure it out on my own. And guess what? I ended up learning it from another excellent teacher! Teachers are so good about sharing with each other.
Enjoy these quick writing prompts to engage your students. If you have a few others, I’d love to hear what they are and share them with others.
Until Next Time,
