A good formal writing prompt
has 5 essential components and more

A good, formal writing prompt includes all information students need to develop an appropriate response to a writing assignment without coming back to bug you for more detail.

The value of good prompts is not just that they reduce the hassle-factor (although that is certainly important). They also build students’ confidence in their ability to write competently.

If students don’t have to ask how to start writing, they are more likely to believe they can finish. Students who don’t think they can write are often unwilling to make any effort.

What do you need to put in a student writing prompt to give that sense of “you can do this”? There are five essentials for every formal prompt and two good-to-include items.

Essential Components

1. Topic

The topic is what the student is going to write about. Ideally, the topic should be a noun or noun phrase, such as:

• Research

• The cliché “love is blind.”

• Narrative poetry.

• Action verbs

To make sure the topic is clear, use it at least twice in the writing prompt – three times is even better.

Of course, expository writing topics should be connected to study topics within your curriculum.

2. Context

Put your topic and other important terms in context. Think of the opening of your writing prompt as opening a conversation. Share something from your perspective to provide a context for your question.

If you are going to have students write about scales, they need to know whether you mean musical scales, fish scales, or platform balance scales. Don’t assume students will know how you are using terms. Make your definition of terms clear from your context without insulting students by defining the terms.

Nobody likes being put on the spot. And we all like being treated as contributing members of our community. A conversational opening suggests you think students actually have something worthwhile to offer. More often than not, students rise to the occasion.

3. Potential assertions

In authentic writing prompts, the choice of potential assertions about the topic is always limited. Therefore, each you should indicate in each student writing prompt the pool of potential assertions from which students can select something to say about the topic.

For beginning writers, you might deliberately limit the pool to one or two options. That will let them write a thesis statement quickly by adding an assertion to the topic. Once students get the hang of thesis building, you can give them more freedom to choose their own assertions.

Here are some examples of language that indicates the range of potential assertions:

• What three characteristics …

• From your reading, show …

• Illustrate the truth of this maxim ….

In each case, the student’s choices of potential assertions from which to compose a thesis statement are restricted to a greater or lesser degree.

4. Audience

For most school writing, the teacher is the audience. If there is another real or imaginary audience, you need to specify the audience.

If you specify an audience other than yourself, it should be an audience students know or can easily learn about. That's part of being fair.

5. Format

Tell students what format their response should take. Should they write a paragraph? A five-paragraph essay? A 10-page sourced paper?

Even if the formatting requirements are exactly the same for every formal writing assignment for the whole year, put them into every formal prompt.

Why?

For one thing, it builds familiarity and comfort for students. Also, if someone outside your classroom needs to see your assignments, you already have everything together.

Recommended elements

In addition to these five essentials, there are two other elements I recommend you add to a prompt for major papers: resources and housekeeping details.

1. Resources

Resources are aids students can consult for help with the assignment. The number one resource in my estimation is the rubric you plan to use for evaluating the assignment. It ought to be written so students can use it as a checklist for determining whether they’ve done everything they needed to do for the assignment.

Other resources could include:

• Sample responses.

• Team members for collaborative work.

• Websites for information.

• Materials on reserve in the library.

• Notes about sections in their texts that they could use.

The list will naturally vary with the assignment.

Sometimes you may want to specify resources that are not appropriate for students to use for the assignment. For example, you may not want them using Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia Britannica, web pages or their class textbook as sources.

2. Housekeeping details

By housekeeping details, I mean things such as

• The due date.

• Whether the paper must be typed.

• If there are intermediate steps that students must submit by specific dates.

Writing a good prompt is not rocket science. You can write good prompts almost as easily as you can write crummy ones — and the good ones will greatly simplify the task of teaching writing.

Click to see a good formal prompt and one poor one.