Writing with Sharon Watson-Easy-to-use Homeschool Writing and Literature Curriculum

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Fall-themed Writing Prompts

Fall-themed Writing Prompts

SHARON’S BLOG

10 Fall-themed Writing Prompts

Colorful leaves. Pumpkins. Football. Cooler weather. Raking. Apple pie. Candles. What are signs of autumn to you?

Students are more likely to write if the topics are related to something that is going on at the moment, so let’s cash in on the season by using these fall-themed writing prompts. Some of the prompts you’ll find below are simply fun prompts; others are tutorials complete with printables.

While they are enjoying these ten seasonal prompts, you are giving them practice in opinion writing, description, figurative language, poetry, and more. Shhh! It’s our secret!

These prompts {and tutorials} are appropriate for grades 5 – 12.

Ready? Fun awaits . . .

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How to Develop an Almost Painless Reading List for Teens and Tweens

How to Develop an Almost Painless Reading List for Teens and Tweens

SHARON’S BLOG

 Do you hear that thunder? It’s the crash of schoolbooks all over the country slamming shut for the summer.

As a parent, you want your children to continue using their reading skills. You know there are so many wonderful books they would enjoy reading now that it is summer and the distractions are fewer. Treasures await them. Do you have a plan to make it happen?

If not, you can use mine.

Use a Topic or Theme

A summer reading list is more fun for your tweens and teens if it’s

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Happy Birthday, Ray Bradbury!

Happy Birthday, Ray Bradbury!

HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

Ray Bradbury, author of Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, was born August 22, 1920.

Though he’s been gone for a few years, we still celebrate this man who helped make science-fiction the respected genre it is today.

Many years ago, Ray Bradbury wrote the short story “The Veldt” with an intriguing kids’ bedroom in it. Before these were even invented in the real world, flat-screen TVs were embedded in the four walls of this bedroom so the children could have experiences and feel what was going on.

When the dad, George Hadley, steps into his children’s room one day, he sees two people on the screens. This is what he encounters in the walls’ African plains.

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Explore Poetry with “Birches” by Robert Frost

Explore Poetry with “Birches” by Robert Frost

SHARON’S BLOG
Have you ever come across something unusual and wondered how it got that way?

Robert Frost in his poem “Birches” does just that. He finds some birches in the woods that are bent down and wonders what happened to make them curve down. Did a boy come by and climb them, bending them down? Did an ice storm overwhelm the branches?

Then he remembers swinging on birch trees when he was a youngster, and he misses the little boy he once was. He misses the enjoyment of being young and swinging on birches.

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Use Poetry to Cope with a Traumatic Event

Use Poetry to Cope with a Traumatic Event

SHARON’S BLOG
Has something traumatic ever happened to you or your family?

When Anne Bradstreet’s house burned down, she was heartbroken and wrote a poem about it. Read her poem below in which she pours out her grief, her pain upon losing everything, and what she learned from this terrible situation.

What is unusual about this poem is that Anne’s house burned in 1666, at a time when many people did not value poetry and did not take the time or have the time to write it. Also, it is very unusual that a woman of that time would have been recognized as a poet and have her poems published.

Anne was the wife of Simon Bradstreet, a governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Her work became so famous that her poems were printed in London as well. High praise, indeed, for a Puritan woman of that era.

Here’s her poem titled “Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 18th, 1666.” You’ll notice that some of the capitalization and spelling is different from ours today:

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6 Literature-Based Writing Prompts

6 Literature-Based Writing Prompts

SHARON’S BLOG
Literature holds an Aladdin’s cave of treasures that students can plunge their pens into.

Whether it’s imitating good writing, pondering a topic in the story, or using the story to write another, your students will gain a healthy curiosity for great works of literature as they write.

To enjoy these fun prompts, knowledge of the following stories is not necessary.

Terms covered: epiphany, spatial description, and paraphrase.

These literature-based prompts are suitable for your 5th – 12th graders.

Ready to go treasure hunting?

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Do You Have Story Writers? They Will LOVE These Fiction Prompts!

Do You Have Story Writers? They Will LOVE These Fiction Prompts!

SHARON’S BLOG

You know you have them—those story writers who won’t come out of their bedrooms, the ones who faint at writing essays but love writing stories.

They spend hours creating fictional worlds and populating them with characters in trouble who are looking for a happy ending.

Fiction is a powerful tool to influence readers’ hearts. Let’s equip our fiction writers with practices and insights that will give them success. You can read more about how authors grab readers’ hearts here.

As an added bonus, students who learn how to write more effectively in the world of fiction are absorbing communication skills they will use in their essay and research papers as well.

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein before she was 19 years old. Christopher Paolini was only 15 when he wrote the first words to his best-selling Eragon. And Jane Austen wrote her first novel at age 14. When will your student be signing autographs?

These prompts are geared for students in 7th-12th grade. Use them now or bookmark them for later.

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3 Types of Poems for Poetry Month

3 Types of Poems for Poetry Month

SHARON’S BLOG

Would you like to give your students some practice in writing poetry?

With these guided prompts, your students do not have to “sit down and write a poem” but will surprise you by creating something fun and maybe even memorable. Here goes . . .

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How Point of View Changes the Feel of a Story

How Point of View Changes the Feel of a Story

HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

A story’s point of view (POV) can affect how the story feels.

For instance, The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis is written in the third-person omniscient POV: The narrator knows everything, even things that some of the characters do not. The invisible narrator in omniscient POV can tell readers what one character is feeling or thinking and then turn right around and ramble around in another character’s heart and mind and report that to us.

The omniscient point of view is out of fashion today. It followed all the major characters and reported on their happenings. We today want to journey through a story with only one or two main characters because it feels more personal that way.

Here’s a portion of the second paragraph of “The Wood Between the Worlds” in The Magician’s Nephew. The protagonist Digory has just arrived in that forest by means of a magic ring:

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