Seeking a daily writing prompt?
Dozens are as close as your curriculum

 

Many teachers seek writing prompts that they can use to get students doing a little writing every day. They may not know they have a whole curriculum full of prompts to draw on.

Let me begin by asking you a question.

What do you understand by the term daily writing prompt? Please answer in no more than three sentences. You have one minute.

There's a clock at the right and an on-site word processor at the end of this link. Have fun!

What you just did (you did do it, didn't you?) was respond to an informal writing prompt that's part of the "lesson" on this web page. It represents a easy, authentic way to use use writing in teaching.

Daily prompt requirements

For daily use, you need writing prompts that:

• Don't require lengthy "prewriting."

• Can be answered briefly.

• Are worth writing about.

Informal writing prompts, often called write-to-learn activities, are expository writing prompts that meet each of those criteria. You can use them once (or more!) every class day to help you meet your annual writing objectives.

By preparing your own daily writing prompt instead of downloading some from the Internet, you get far more mileage from each prompt. You can not only have students write, but also:

• Require writing in formats that reinforce your writing instruction.

• Require writing on topics that reinforce what students are learning in their classes.

• Use student responses as formative evaluations.

The little effort that you need to spend to prepare your own prompts is well worth those benefits, don't you agree?

Characteristics of informal prompts

Informal prompts offer students opportunities to reflect on what they are studying by forcing them to respond to a specific question about it. Such prompts require responses that are . . .

• Short — a few sentences at most.

• Quick — a first reaction, not a thoughtful, studied response.

• Timed — typically 1 to 5 minutes by the clock or an ordinary kitchen timer.

• Ungraded — responses are submitted or not; quality of answers and writing isn't evaluated.

• Focused — directed to the lesson being studied.

• Written in sentences.

You haven't time enough to grade informal writing. Don't even try. However, encourage students to check their work quickly before they turn it in.

A very good way to do that is to tell students 30 seconds before the timer goes off to check their work for one particular error that's on your hit list for the year. You might be working on starting every sentence with a capital letter or using the correct spelling of there/their/they're. If you have five errors on your annual list, you can work on each one for six weeks.

Not every student will have one of your "counts off" list items in every daily writing prompt. If you want to make the writing situations authentic, you have to allow time for situations to arise in which students need to address the errors you are targeting.

Without much effort on your part, your daily writing prompt can prepare students to write sensibly on demand with a minimum of stress. As a bonus, you'll see gains in comprehension of other course content as well.

Learn about various ways to incorporate daily informal writing in your classroom and take an informal writing "quiz."