Journals and blogs are a great way to get students to practice writing consistently. Set a daily writing prompt and give your students about 5 minutes at the beginning of class to respond in their journals or blogs. They can finish the rest of the writing during their free time and you can access once a week or every other week. To keep students engaged and really enhance their writing skills, vary the types of writings and prompts. Get students to write short essays, emails, sms, status updates, note-taking, comics, short stories, prose, reviews, arguments, scripts, summaries, biographies, poems, headlines, news articles, and any other writing you feel will help them throughout their lives. You can also mix in some past writing prompts from exams they will have to take for ongoing practice. Below, find websites, apps, and resources for finding visual and multimedia writing prompts to engage your learners. For more tips, check out our webinar recording, Writing in the Digital Age.
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Recommended Web Tools
- Make Beliefs Comix has over 350 free printable writing prompts in comic form.
- Quick Write is a pinterest board full of visual writing prompts.
- Corn Dog Art features many video and writing prompts.
- Photoprompts is a Tumblr with visual writing prompts.
- Writing Prompts is a Tumblr with visual writing prompts, which are aligned with the common core.
- The Storyteller Blog is full of writing prompts as videos or images. Some are geared for older students.
- The Teaching Ideas site has several visual writing prompts.
- Boggles World Creative Writing has several creative story starters to print that are designed for English language learners.
- One Word is a website, which posts one word and your students have 60 seconds to write on the website whatever comes to mind.
- Journal Jar is a free web and phone app where students click shake and see a question to write about.
- PicLits helps you create visual writing prompts. Students or teachers choose an image and drag and drop words onto the image.
- Plinky is a web tool which has many question writing prompts that ask students about their opinions on a topic.
- Writing Fix has children’s writing prompt games to learn about grammar and when completed they are prompted to write with this newfound learning.
- Scholastic Story Starters is an interactive website where students choose a genre then get help being a story with this genre.
- StoryIt has has printables of an image with the first paragraph of a story to help young learners craft a story.
- Five Card Flickr will generate 5 random pictures from Flickr and students can write a story in the space provided or view several other pictures.
- Lightning Bug provides students with story ideas to write about or develop.
- 100 Word Story is a website for adult writers where an image is posted and students write a story that is only 100 words.
- The Ted Blog has listed 21 creative writing prompts.
- Write About This is a free IOS app with prompts to inspire writing and students can create their own.
- Tell About This is a free iPad app for students to respond through their voice to picture prompts.
Check out the Teaching with Technology Certification course we offer online.
Live TESOL webinars are presented every Friday at 4 PM EST or New York time with Shelly Terrell. TESOL Lectures are open to the public, so feel free to invite a friend. To enter a TESOL Webinar, click here https://americantesol.adobeconnect.com/terrell/. Next, click Enter as a Guest, type your name, and click Enter Room.
