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

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One Sure-Fire Way to Create Writing Prompts for Your Students

One Sure-Fire Way to Create Writing Prompts for Your Students

SHARON’S BLOG

I have a secret to tell you.

I’m not really sure I should. After all, it feels a little like a chef revealing the secret ingredient to a closely guarded family recipe, but I’m going to share it with you anyway.

As you may know, I create many writing prompts and wrote the daily writing prompts for SchoolhouseTeachers.com for over two years. That’s a lot of writing and a lot of prompts.

Where do I get my ideas? Here’s my secret:

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Love and the Weather

Love and the Weather

HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

What do love and weather have to do with each other?

Quite a bit, it turns out. Forty-eight of The Beatles’ 308 songs mention some kind of weather, according to accuweather.com.

You can watch The Petersens’ version of “Here Comes the Sun” here. The song is written by George Harrison, formerly of The Beatles. You’ll quickly notice that the sunny weather is a metaphor for

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What Do You Do for Fun?

What Do You Do for Fun?

MIDDLE SCHOOL PROMPTS

Some people like to put puzzles together. Others like to build forts, take hikes, or go camping. Some kids like to read or play a sport.

Derek Jeter, a now-retired New York Yankee, played baseball to have fun: “You gotta have fun. Regardless of how you look at it, we’re playing a game. It’s a business, it’s our job, but I don’t think you can do well unless you’re having fun.”

What do you do for fun?

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Proof of Alien Life Beyond Earth

Proof of Alien Life Beyond Earth

HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

Famed physicist Stephen Hawking and others launched a $100 million program called Breakthrough Listen in their search for alien life beyond Earth. The search will begin with the one million stars closest to us in the Milky Way Galaxy and then expand into neighboring galaxies.

“We believe that life arose spontaneously on Earth, so in an infinite universe, there must be other occurrences of life,” Hawking said.

They have a lot of listening ahead of them. That’s a lot of area to cover!

Would you like to win a cool million?

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You, a Huge Pile of Legos ®, and a Creation

You, a Huge Pile of Legos ®, and a Creation

MIDDLE SCHOOL PROMPTS

I recently visited Downtown Disney in Orlando, Florida, and enjoyed the huge Legos ® creations there.

Really, they are tremendously interesting. I kept trying to figure out how someone built them and where they put their first blocks to begin these fun displays.

Here are some of the Legos ® pictures I took:.

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Put Your Message on a T-Shirt

Put Your Message on a T-Shirt

MIDDLE SCHOOL PROMPTS

You’ve seen your fair share of messages on t-shirts, and you’ve probably worn a few t-shirts with writing on them.

Sports teams, music groups, camps, and even hospitals put their messages or advertisements on t-shirts.

They are like wearable billboards, and everyone reads them as you walk by. What message do you want to tell people?

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How Will You Get Your Message Out?

How Will You Get Your Message Out?

HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

You learn important skills in essay writing that you can apply to other forms of writing, but are essays always the best way to communicate ideas to others?

When Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wanted to save a piece of American history in 1830, what did he do?

Did he write his senator? Take out an ad in the local papers? Write a letter to the editor? Make protest signs?

Although all of those things are legitimate ways of communicating with people, he did none of them yet still succeeded in saving the USS Constitution, an old warship that had fought in the important War of 1812.

How did he do it?

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Chasing Happiness

Chasing Happiness

MIDDLE SCHOOL PROMPTS

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson writes that our “inalienable rights” are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

“Inalienable” means you can’t sell your rights or transfer them to someone else. They’re yours to keep.

But what does “the pursuit of happiness” mean?

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