SHARON’S BLOG
The beginning of a new year is a special time when your students can look back on their past year and cherish their hopes and dreams for the future. But do they know how to express those?
Here are five prompts geared to help them express their ideas through opinion, personal narrative, personification, and so on, as they think about and evaluate their lives.
Suitable for students in grades 5 – 12.
Let’s do this . . .
5 Prompts for the New Year
1. Remember
Look around you: this room, this day, these people, those possessions or items, that music.
In 15 years, what will you remember about today? Write your impressions and ideas.
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2. Change
Think about a recent holiday and how you celebrated it. List two ideas of how you’d like to do it differently the next time it rolls around. Give an explanation of how or why you would like to change those two things.
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3. Do it again
If you could live one day over again, which one would you choose? Describe what happened that day (or didn’t happen), how you reacted to the events, and so on.
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4. Not ever again
We’d like to forget about some days. Maybe we did something we regret, or things happened that troubled us. Whatever the reason, we would be very happy to erase that day from our memories. What day last year would you like to erase?
Write a letter to that day. Personify the day with your letter by acting as though the day can hear you or read your letter. Perhaps you’d like to begin your letter like this: “Dear October 12, I never want to see you again.” Something like that.
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5. Learn something new
“Vigorous self-training, to enable me to do remarkable things with my body, to make not one muscle or a group of muscles,
but every muscle, a responsive worker, quick and sure…” –Harry Houdini
Harry Houdini, the famous escape artist, constantly worked on mastering his body and his escapes. He often had his brother tie him up so he could practice escaping, and he taught himself how to tie and untie knots with his toes.
New year. New skill. What skill would you like to learn in 2017? It can be anywhere from silly to serious.
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Other New Year prompts your students are sure to enjoy:
A prompt about second chances >>
Failures turned into successes >>
What surprising thing God did for Samson >>
Invent a new month with all the trimmings >>
You’ll find hundreds of prompts for middle school here >>
And hundreds of engaging prompts for your teens here >>
Enjoy these fun prompts from our blog that 5th – 12th graders will love >>
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