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In our writing workshop, instead of giving children writing prompts, we help children find their own writing ideas. Why?
Children learn the entire writing process this way. After all, finding a meaningful topic is the beginning of the writing process. It’s what real-world writers do every day. We expect our students to write the same way because they are real writers.
Finding their own writing ideas gives our students a sense of ownership. They have a reason to care about their writing when it’s about something that matters to them.
Prompts are limiting, when we assign writing prompts, we limit our student's ability in becoming independent writers. Students just want to know how many sentences they have to write.
How do we help our students find their own writing topics? Here are two ways.
An expert list is a list of things, people, or places that a student knows a lot about. Show students how to make a list of things that they know a lot about and could write something about. They could list family members, places they’ve been, interests, etc.
Make a heart map. Invite students to divide it into sections, writing about things that are important to them on each piece of the heart.
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