SHARON’S BLOG
Let’s use a quote from Confucius and a passage from Proverbs to get your students thinking about wisdom.
In this bundle of writing prompts centered around wisdom, your students will encounter these types of writing: opinion, personification, parallel construction, definition, and more.
These prompts are just right for students in grades 5 – 12.
So, what did Confucius have to say about wisdom? And do your students agree with him?
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SHARON’S BLOG
Is it too early to dream about the beach? I think not!
This week’s fun prompts are beach themed and are great for your 5th – 12th graders.
The first set of prompts is from a recent news article that caught my imagination, and the second is from a goofy song by Phil Harris recorded in 1950. Well, maybe it wasn’t so goofy. It became so popular that it hit #1 on the Billboard charts soon after he released it.
Ready? Dive in!
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SHARON’S BLOG
Saint Patrick’s Day is a great time to encourage the thinking process in your students, and these two prompts are here to help.
Younger students will enjoy the categorizing and attention to words in this prompt. A free printable is included.
Older students will read of two examples and then use something concrete to explain a spiritual truth, just as Saint Patrick did. Find this thought-provoking prompt for 7th – 12th graders here. >>
Yours for more vibrant writing and literature experiences,
SHARON’S BLOG
Narnia and Middle Earth—what delightfully intriguing places to visit!
Enjoy this compilation of activities involving C. S. Lewis’s Narnia and J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth.
Suitable for anyone who is old enough to read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, other Narnia tales, The Hobbit, or The Lord of the Rings.
Your students haven’t read those books? No problem. Many of the prompts and tutorials below are freestanding and don’t need the original books.
Ready? Put on your magic rings!
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SHARON’S BLOG
Involve your students in the excitement and issues surrounding the Winter Olympics with these six fun prompts and two bonus ones.
What would the Olympics look like in the Middle Ages? In Ancient Roman times? What new sporting event will your students cook up? Should countries and their athletes be banned? And what kind of music could athletes compete to or be inspired by?
Don’t miss the extra links to more sporting fun at the bottom of this post!
Designed for grades 5-12.
Ready?
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Quotations are rich wells in which to dip our pens. Give your 7th – 12th graders something to ponder with these intriguing, thought-provoking quotations. Most of these quotations come from famous people and are accompanied by more than one writing prompt, so your students have many options open to them.
Opinions are the easiest paragraphs and essays to write, and your students have loads of opinions. Let them organize their thoughts and write some opinions based on any of the following quotations.
Dig in!
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Would any of your sentences ever sell for $1.56 million? That’s what happened recently with Albert Einstein’s one-sentence “Theory of Happiness.”
The story, according to USA TODAY, is that Einstein was visiting Japan to receive his Nobel Prize in physics in 1922 when he did not have enough money to tip a messenger. What did he do?
He wrote down one sentence and signed it, saying that it would be worth a lot of money someday. Looks like he was right!
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Get a writing assignment. Look at a blank piece of paper for hours. Cry.
Is this what happens with your students?
No need for weeping. In this week’s Intro to Writing, your students will learn what ingredients to put into their introductions and conclusions. In addition, they will grade other students’ work and then write their own effective introduction and conclusion.
If you have been following along with the Intro to Writing tutorials on Writing with Sharon Watson, you likely have noticed something weird.
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A guy walks in to your living room and blurts out, “Pizza.”
You look at him and wonder what he means. Well, you know the subject matter—pizza—but you don’t know where he’s going with this. He could take it in any of these directions:
“I want pizza.”
“Pizza is bad for you and here’s why.”
“Eat more pizza; it contains all the food groups.”
“I know how to get bigger tips working as a pizza delivery person.”
“This is how to build the perfect pizza.”
“The pizza you buy here is very different from the pizza you can get in Italy.”
“With six hundred dollars borrowed from their mother, two brothers began one humble Pizza Hut, now an international chain.”
Or, of course, he could mean, “Here’s the pizza you ordered. Now give me a tip so I can get out of here.”
When you write an essay, writing about the subject matter is only the beginning. Readers need to know what direction you are taking your subject. That way, they will keep reading and will understand what you are doing. For instance, if your introduction looks like you are going to write about the founder of Amazon but you end up writing about all the cool stuff you can find there, your readers will be confused.
What’s your main idea? What’s the one thought you want to convey to your readers? Everything you write about your subject matter is going to be gathered around one statement, one main idea, so that people reading your essay know what direction you are taking your subject.
This main idea is called a thesis statement.
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One of my students handed in an interesting essay on volcanic activity. She included lots of facts, dates, and anecdotes, but there was one big problem.
There was no rhyme or reason for the order in which she put her facts. Each major or historic volcanic eruption was in its own paragraph, but the paragraphs were in no particular order. It felt jumbled and incoherent.
How could she have arranged her paragraphs to have the most impact on her reader? Check below for two possible answers to this conundrum.
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