Let Your Writers be the Prompts
They can be very cute. They are quite easy to find and are available for every time of the year. They fill in time. They get something done. They look harmless.
Looks can be deceiving.
They limit. They bore. They ask for more than they will get.
They are WRITING PROMPTS.
As teachers are making their way through the start of the school year the need for a variety of items and plans come to light in the social media groups. I myself get very excited to see questions about writing as the Enneagram 2 Helper in me is always ready to share ideas! I get so sad though, when the question is in reference to finding, managing, assessing or utilizing daily writing prompts. (insert sad face here)
The Trouble with Prompts
I will begin by saying that I do not completely reject writing prompts as having any place in your classroom. They are something students will come across in various settings, including testing and college and job applications, and we should provide instruction on how to respond to them in an effective way. They may also serve, at times, as a scaffold for students who are struggling to generate ideas on their own, with the plan being to continue to teach them how to do so and provide them with a toolbox of strategies so that eventually, that scaffold is no longer needed.
The fact is the act of providing prompts to our students on a regular basis is actually doing the complete opposite of their intended purpose. Prompts are often implemented because teachers feel they will provide effective time for writing practice. Unfortunately, the practice occurring is quite limited. Most prompts follow a very similar expectation of structure and organization as they are either a question or have a particular expectation for the writing itself such as a story, descriptive paragraph, etc. Students will be able to practice writing words and sentences (and this is only if they are engaging in answering the prompt at all) but will not have the opportunity to practice other vital skills such as choosing a genre or a topic, utilizing different leads, or even varying the length of their pieces. If the goal of writing instruction is to help students develop skills in order to create strong, original pieces, answering a prompt that is providing a topic and is made with a particular structure in mind, does not allow for that development to occur.
The use of writing prompts ultimately shows many things about our beliefs about our writers and the expectations we have for them.
One underlying or subconscious belief you may have is that students are not able to, or do not excel with, generating their own topics. The concern over the possible struggle with this skill causes us to prevent that issue by providing a topic for them with the prompt. Another belief may be that the students are not capable of producing pieces of writing that contain proper or sophisticated sentences. In an attempt to ensure students will take their time to write in complete sentences, we provide a prompt that guides students into doing just so by limiting their ability to think creatively, as well as to write at their own level of development. Students who are not yet ready to write the expected sentences will become frustrated, and students who have so many topics in mind and so many ways to write it will be stifled. Although not always noticed, the expectations and beliefs we have and show in the activities we ask our students to complete indirectly affect the understanding our students have of what and how they should write. They can feel that we want “perfect”, complete sentences. They know there is a certain way to complete the task, and it affects the way they think and write.
Take a look at the picture of the prompt at the top of this post. How would you answer it? Mine may look something like this:
The new subject added to the school day should be Art Appreciation. I would like to have this subject because, although I am not an artist, I do enjoy looking at works of art and would like to be able to understand them in a more meaningful way. I would also feel more confident in having conversations about art with my peers if I had a more thorough understanding of art in general. I know I would appreciate pieces more deeply if I had better knowledge of their history, time periods, culture and techniques.
I wrote that quickly, but admittedly, with some help from google in reference to what art appreciation class would consist of. But I know I only included such detail and as many sentences because I am an adult. To be honest, although I am an educator, I did not enjoy thinking of an answer to this question. Now imagine a student in second, third or even sixth grade answering this prompt. Would you expect this many sentences to be included in their response? Would you expect descriptive words or content vocabulary? I have yet to see a prompt, that isn’t from a standardized test, that would be supportive of a long, elaborate piece of writing. One major consideration is that the topic at hand is most likely will not be one with which each student will feel connected. Ultimately, I just don’t believe writing prompts are conducive to producing the type of writing we may want to see from our students. That is, unless we are just looking for complete sentences with capitals and punctuation. But I want so much more!
Students are the Prompts they Need
It is so fantastic to see students excited with and deeply involved in their writing. To see their confidence grow gives us that wonderful teacher happiness! But I’m here to tell ya, these things only occur when students have agency over their own writing. Please do not confuse agency with complete freedom and lack of instruction. NOT AT ALL! Of course we need to teach our young writers the skills they are able to use to be successful and effective writers. Agency means they have the ability to use THEIR ideas, THEIR level of skill, THEIR creativity, THEIR ways of planning in order to grow from the writers they are now to the writers they will become.
What I have found to be the biggest obstacle of experiencing that joy of seeing writers in their glory is teachers’ assumptions that their writers are not capable. It may be they think most students won’t come up with an idea, won’t write in sentences or won’t have enough stamina. (If you haven’t already, be sure to read an earlier post, Finding Success In Writing; Why Assuming May Be Your Biggest Setback) What I have also found-every. single. time- is that when students are given the opportunity to be writers, they are! Does it happen for every student the first time? No. Do some students take much longer than others? Yes. Do some students regress with certain types of writing or due to other causes? Yes. Does every writer meet their teacher’s expectation or start where they’d like them to? No. But they are ALL STILL WRITERS. And they all make progress. Some take great strides in their writing growth while others take small steps. But they all have strengths, and they all have potential. And when we allow them to show us who and where they are as writers, we are able to provide the support needed to move them along the path.
Our fabulous students will not develop as writers if we do not allow them to do just that. How can they learn to generate ideas if we keep providing them! It is our job to facilitate the cultivation of the topics they love. We teach them why we write and how to use ourselves-our loves, our fears, our feelings—and the world around us—to choose our writing topics. Our students will not move along the progression of writing development if every single student, regardless of their writing abilities, are all being asked to write in the same way. Students will not take risks with their pieces (silly words, strong voice, difficult spellings) if they are limited in their responses or feel as though the expectation is something likening perfection. They will be unable to learn how to plan for different types of writing if the planning is basically completed for them. We cannot allow our own fears and assumptions limit our writers and prevent their growth.
Get Ready to Ditch those Prompts!
Trust me, you don’t need them! (Please refer to my earlier statement about sometimes using prompts!) You definitely don’t need them every day! Don’t be scared of what your writers will do-Be CURIOUS! Be EXCITED! The truth is, if you don’t know what your students will do on their own, then you don’t know how to help them improve. Prompts will not show you that, only your students’ independent writing will.
So tomorrow, tell your students that THEY ARE WRITERS. Then, share an idea or two of what you have written or could write and why. Give them a chance to think and share with their peers about what they may write. Then set them off to write on their own and see what happens. It may not be smooth sailing right away-remember; they aren’t used to this! But I am willing to bet it will go so much better than you thought!
Encourage them, celebrate them, provide some supportive feedback, and then try again the next day!
