MIDDLE SCHOOL PROMPTS

Advertising is everywhere. TV commercials bombard you 18 minutes out of every hour, but they are not the only places companies try to sell their products. Think of billboards, huge pictures of food products stuck to restaurant windows, and even your lowly cereal box.

Yes, even after you’ve bought the cereal, you still get advertisements about it. Take a look at a cereal box and notice all the adjectives there to describe the cereal and tell you how great it is. Here’s a sentence from my Cinnamon Life® cereal:

“Quaker Life ® Cereal satisfies the kid in everyone with just the right touch of sweetness and crispy goodness.”

Notice that it’s not “sweetness” but “just the right touch of sweetness.” And it’s not “goodness” but “crispy goodness,” using the adjective “crispy” to describe what kind of “goodness” it is.

Explore the world of adjectives on your cereal box and then try your own hand at advertising with this middle school writing prompt.

Adjectives are those words that describe or modify (change) nouns: the bouncy trampoline, the black cat, my brother’s broken nose, or a dolphin’s chatty laughter. Adjectives can make your writing richer and make readers “see” exactly what you are writing about.

Now it’s your turn: First, grab your cereal box and write three adjectives you find on it. Next, write your own sentence for the front or back of any cereal box so that you can keep advertising its tremendous qualities even to people who already are eating it.

A version of this prompt was first posted on SchoolhouseTeachers.com. You can go directly to SchoolhouseTeachers.com to sign up and take advantage of many exciting courses written by experts in their fields.

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This article by me in The Old Schoolhouse magazine is also loaded with links to other helpful posts that will give you and your writers some welcome relief.

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