Description | Exposition | Narration | Persuasion | All
Want to inspire your teens to write? Could you use some engaging writing prompts that won’t put your teens to sleep? You’ve come to the right place!
You’ll find prompts for opinions, descriptions, story writing, current events, prompts that are really tutorials in disguise, and much more. Complete instructions are included with each prompt.
Looking for tutorials on essay writing, proofreading, and so on? Interested in writing prompt bundles that span many grades? Click here.
Find prompts for your middle school students here.
Thanks for visiting the High School Prompts page. If you have a writing prompt you would like to submit, please contact Sharon Watson.
“You can’t wait for inspiration.
You have to go after it with a club.”
— JACK LONDON
Doctors and Assisted Suicide
You are a doctor, and you have been told that you must assist a patient with their suicide. If you don’t you will be breaking the law.
Doctors in some American states, in Quebec, and in some Scandinavian countries are facing this increasingly ethical dilemma: Help patients kill themselves or be punished.
In fact, doctors in Quebec, through Bill 52, are given a kit with three medicines designed to calm their patients’ anxiety and then stop their breathing, according to the Church Around the World.
Brittany Maynard, a vivacious 29-year-old woman dying of cancer of the brain, committed suicide in 2014 with the help of her physician. You can read her story here.
J. J. Hanson, a Marine Corp veteran, learned that he, too, is suffering from the same inoperable brain cancer that Brittany Maynard dealt with. You can read his story here. (more…)
Edgar Allan Poe and “The Bells”
Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809. Though that is over 200 years ago, we still read his work today.
He’s famous for his short stories and for poems like “The Raven.” (You know, that “Nevermore” poem.)
In an essay, Poe explained how he was very careful to choose just the right words for how they sound and for the effect he was trying to achieve. You’ll see that he was very successful in his poem “The Bells,” which is rich with writer’s devices.
(more…)
Violence and Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for racial equality in the 1950s and early 1960s before he was assassinated, but he did not advocate violence as a means of reaching this goal.
Read the following excerpt taken from Stride Toward Freedom, written by him in 1958: (more…)
The Call of the Wild and Description
From Sunny to Frigid
Buck is a dog who grew up in sunny San Diego, California, but suddenly finds himself thrust into the frigid world of the Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon Territory, Canada, in the late 1890s. You can read about him in Jack London’s The Call of the Wild.
Here’s Buck and his first encounter with . . . well, I’ll let you figure it out: (more…)
New year, New Chance
“Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.”
-Oprah Winfrey
You remember Samson of Bible fame? You can read about him in Judges 13-16. God kept giving him chances to get it right, and Samson pretty much blew it every time by focusing on himself instead of on what God wanted.
But you don’t have to be Samson to feel the regret of missed chances or the frustration of personal failure. To be human is to know the gut-punch of remorse.
Maybe you feel as if you failed in something last year. Maybe you wish you could do something all over again, only this time you’d win. You’d do the right thing. You’d have the courage. You’d succeed. (more…)
Poignant Christmas Memories
Do you have Christmas season memories you hold dear? Here are a few of mine:
The year my mother saved her hard-earned cake-decorating money to buy a sewing machine for me when I was a college freshman. Little did I know that I would use that machine to sew little outfits for my firstborn son and to teach my daughter how to sew on it. In fact, she has it now, and she is teaching her daughters how to sew.
The year we skipped Christmas. (more…)
