As middle school or high school English Language Arts teachers, we know that visual support is more important than ever for twenty first century learners. Students are inundated with strong images from technology each day. Visual Writing Prompts provide one way teachers can engage students and encourage them to employ upper-level thinking skills with visually appealing prompts.
Why Visual Writing Prompts?
Writing prompts aren’t a new teaching tool. Every teacher has an arsenal of prompts they use to encourage writing and discussion about any text. As virtual learning took over the world over the past year, I realized that my writing prompts needed a serious upgrade in order to engage my learners from a distance. So, I started taking my prompts and pairing them with strong imagery to encourage deeper thinking. Once I realized how well they worked with my students, I began creating sets for each unit.
How to Create Visual Writing Prompts
Visual Writing Prompts are incredibly easy to create and you don’t need to be artistically inclined to create a set. You can easily use Google Slides to create your own prompts, but I prefer to use Canva. Canva has an arsenal of visuals right at your fingertips to use in your slides. It’s easy to create your prompts to include strong images that match the themes and content of any text.
Long Way Down Visual Writing Prompts
I love the images from this set using Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds. The story centers around an elevator ride, so the visuals include different views of an elevator. The numbers on the slides correspond to the chapter the prompt is about. This is just one example of how you could use these prompts. The possibilities are endless.
Ways to Use Visual Writing Prompts
It might seem obvious that you’d use these prompts for daily routine writing, but I’ve found a few other ways to use them as well that are worth sharing.
- Create a set of task cards with the printed prompts and group students. Use them as discussion prompts for small group discussion.
- Use them to anticipate or review a section of text specifically.
- Print them with space to write for a daily bell ringer journal.
- Have students create their own set by writing prompts and using images that connect to the text’s themes.
I hope you’ll try Visual Writing Prompts in your own classroom. Check out the sets in my shop if you’re looking for some excellent tools that are already created for you.
Happy teaching!
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