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
For the Love of Narnia and Middle Earth
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! (more…)
Olympic Fun
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? (more…)
7 Quotations to Ponder
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! (more…)
What Is Your Theory of Happiness?
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! (more…)
Intro to Writing, Part 7: Introductions and Conclusions
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. (more…)
Intro to Writing, Part 6: Easily Develop Thesis Statements
Thesis Statements
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. (more…)
