4 ways with writing prompts – fun writing activities

Looking for some extra inspiration for your writing lessons? Here’s some fun ideas to give them a kickstart! Writing prompts are perfect for getting the creative juices flowing and helping students practise their skills! Use the Seven Steps Writing Prompts to help students practise and master one element of writing at a time – an essential strategy to scaffolding students to become confident writers. So, whether you use them to start your lesson off with these quick Step 2: Sizzling Starts activities or you build a whole lesson plan around them, here are our top 4 tips for using the prompts.

Below, we’ve created a super-sized writing prompt pack (with 50 narrative, persuasive and informative picture writing prompts across each Step) ready for you to download and take straight into the classroom. 

1. A quick way to start your lesson

Get your students engaged straight away with a quick writing prompt to start your lesson.

💡 Show a prompt a day for the Step you are focusing on to build your students’ confidence and muscle memory.

• Give your students 2 minutes to write a Sizzling Start, Tightening Tension, Exciting Ending, etc.
• Ask them to vote for their favourite amongst their classmates

2. Watch videos and brainstorm

There are a variety of extra activities within each of your writing prompt downloads. You can search for them in the Resource Library on Teacher Hub. Check out the references down the left-hand side of the prompt, to find links to related videos or books.

• Watch the videos as a class.
• In small groups, ask your students to imagine if they were there and note down anything they can see, hear, smell, feel and taste!
• Share what they’ve written down and discuss as a class – they can then use these observations to build a powerful piece of writing.

3. Thinking questions

Within each writing prompt in Teacher Hub, you’ll see reflection questions for that particular image. We’ve given you a sneak peek at some of them below!

💡 Here’s how you can use the reflection questions:

• Use them to start an interesting discussion as a class.
• Break students into smaller groups to discuss ideas within their group.
• Ask students to brainstorm Who, What, When, Where, Why and How while looking at the image. This can help generate lots of ideas!

4. Put students ‘In the Moment’ with the Brainstorming Template

Each of our writing prompts has an editable ‘In the Moment’ Brainstorming Template.