I love to start lessons with quick writing prompts. With my face-2-face students, we had “Monday Musings” where students could respond to a prompt as a way to jumpstart our learning for the week.
While there are tons of great prompts you can find online, I want to give you my strategies for creating writing prompts tailored to your students… and do it in less time than a GimKit game!
1- Use a theme
… like astrology, favorite foods, favorite Easter candy.
The first step is to choose a theme. Try a theme based on a holiday or special occasion, a particular genre, or a specific topic or idea that interests your students.
When creating writing prompts, it’s important to consider the interests and experiences of your students. Using themes or topics that are relevant and engaging to them can help increase their motivation and investment in the writing process.
Consider incorporating popular culture references, current events, or personal experiences into your prompts. You can also ask your students for input on what topics they would like to write about. By making the prompts more relatable and interesting, you can help your students develop a love for writing.
Tech Content:
Have students continue with the writing prompt theme as they create a multi-medium piece of writing or design a social media graphic to share key ideas from their writing.
2- Try ChatGPT
… and ask it to create a list of writing ideas based on ____.
If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to generate writing prompts that align with specific standards or learning objectives, consider using an AI tool. There are several options available online that can help you generate prompts based on keywords or phrases.
Simply copy and paste the standards you want to target, and the tool will generate a list of writing prompts for you to choose from. This saves you a ton of time and ensures your prompts are aligned with your teaching goals.
You can also generate prompts based on learning interests. Ideas can be broad like “nature” or “colors”. Or, try specific prompts like this one for my next enrichment week: “Imagine you are a storm chaser who is trying to capture footage of a tornado. Write a story about your experience chasing a tornado and what you saw and felt during the storm.”
Tech Content:
If your students have access to ChatGPT, have them copy and paste the writing the created into the AI platform. Then, they can ask ChatGPT for feedback and suggestions to make it even better!
3- Organize your prompt ideas in a visual map
… to plan for a whole week, month, or, dare I say, year!
The first step is to choose a topic or theme that you want to explore with your students. This might be a particular genre, a historical event, a science topic, etc. Write the topic or theme in the center of your map.
Once you have a list of ideas, create subtopics for each idea. These subtopics will become the writing prompts for your students. Write the subtopics on branches or bubbles that connect to the main ideas on your map.
You can also ask students to help generate subtopics for the map. This is a great way to get them thinking critically about their topic or standard of learning.
Once you have your visual map, use it to create writing prompts for your students. You might assign each student a different subtopic or let them choose their own. Encourage them to use the prompts to guide their writing and to explore the topic or theme in their own unique way.
Tech Content:
Using their writing prompt, students can illustrate the main ideas or theme of their writing in a platform like Book Creator or Genial.ly.
4- Story Coins
… for spontaneous writing prompts.
One fun and effective way to create writing prompts quickly is to use games like Story Coins. This game involves creating a set of coins with different images or icons on them.
Students draw a few coins at random and use the images (or what the image makes them think) to create a story or writing prompt. This encourages creativity and critical thinking, while also making the writing process more engaging and fun for students.
Story Coins are a fun, collaborative, and an accessible way to tell stories. With just a single coin, you can lower the barrier to entry when starting a writing project. Students can also explore new perspectives and points of view.
Most importantly, they encourage critical thinking and support communication through a variety of mediums.
Tech Content:
As they work to create their writing using the coins, they can record their process using Flip or screencastify. This is a great way for students to revisit ideas they had and document all their thinking throughout the writing process.
