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
Photo-Inspired Prompts
“A writer is simply a photographer of thoughts.” -Brandon A. Trean
Oftentimes our writing spills forth from an experience we’ve had or memory we’ve made. We keep a picture or image in our mind’s eye about that event, and it becomes the inspiration that prompts our writing. Have you experienced that?
Using someone else’s image or photo as a writing prompt can develop empathy and enable you to imagine the world from their perspective. That’s a valuable skill for a writer.
Grab these five fun photos here!
Go to the Ant—A Picnic Prompt
SHARON’S BLOG
Summer is almost here, and that means picnics! When you think of picnics, what comes to mind? It might be fried chicken, sweet tea, or potato salad. You might think of your mom, siblings, or other family members at a park. Maybe you think of Frisbees, Nerf balls, or a blanket to sit on.
But you and your family aren’t the only ones at the picnic! You might see (more…)
Dear Future Me
SHARON’S BLOG
Life is about making decisions, and you’ve got some large ones in your future.
Big ones include your future education or training: Should you pursue a college or technical degree. If you do, which one? Will you make the best choice? Will you change your mind several times?
What about marriage? Starting a family? Will that be in your future? Will you travel?
I’m sure you’ve heard your parents say, “If I knew then what I know now!” and understood them to mean that they wished they had some of their current wisdom to help them make decisions when they were younger.
What if, instead of looking backwards, we encouraged our future selves? You may not have all the wisdom you’d like to have now to inform yourself twenty years from now, but you know you better than anyone.
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Celebrate National Poetry Month with Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees”
SHARON’S BLOG
All this month we’re celebrating National Poetry Month with famous poems worth knowing. Be sure to check out the many links at the end of this post for more poetry appreciation and practice!
What is today’s poem? Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees.” Here are the first two lines:
I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree
Explore Poetry with “Birches” by Robert Frost
SHARON’S BLOG
Have you ever come across something unusual and wondered how it got that way?
Robert Frost in his poem “Birches” does just that. He finds some birches in the woods that are bent down and wonders what happened to make them curve down. Did a boy come by and climb them, bending them down? Did an ice storm overwhelm the branches?
Then he remembers swinging on birch trees when he was a youngster, and he misses the little boy he once was. He misses the enjoyment of being young and swinging on birches.
Use Poetry to Cope with a Traumatic Event
SHARON’S BLOG
Has something traumatic ever happened to you or your family?
When Anne Bradstreet’s house burned down, she was heartbroken and wrote a poem about it. Read her poem below in which she pours out her grief, her pain upon losing everything, and what she learned from this terrible situation.
What is unusual about this poem is that Anne’s house burned in 1666, at a time when many people did not value poetry and did not take the time or have the time to write it. Also, it is very unusual that a woman of that time would have been recognized as a poet and have her poems published.
Anne was the wife of Simon Bradstreet, a governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Her work became so famous that her poems were printed in London as well. High praise, indeed, for a Puritan woman of that era.
Here’s her poem titled “Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 18th, 1666.” You’ll notice that some of the capitalization and spelling is different from ours today:
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