Picture writing prompts are a type of writing prompt that uses a picture to help students start writing a story or non-fiction text. Students can use the picture as the actual story setting or as an idea to get them started. See this earlier blog post for more ideas.
How to use picture writing prompts
Using pictures as writing prompts is a great way to help those students who struggle with starting a story.
You can start this as a whole-class activity. Show a picture to the class and ask them to brainstorm words that come to mind when they see this picture. Write their words down where the entire class can see them. Then they can write their stories using those words. Presenting it as a whole-class activity will show students how to brainstorm words about a picture and then use them as the basis for their writing.
More Ideas
- Use several pictures at a time and give them to students as a writing challenge.
- Choose a different one for each weekday and use them as a daily writing exercise.
- Use them as part of a writing center. Make it fun by having lots of different types of writing utensils and stickers. Have some pictures on lined paper so that students can color their pictures. Make sure to have some wacky pictures too!
- Picture writing prompts are perfect work for fast finishers. This is when the wacky pictures will come in handy!
- They make great substitute lesson plans. Leave several pictures and instruct the sub to let students choose which one to write about. This works best when students already know the expectations for using writing prompts, so start using them at the beginning of the year.
- Provide 12 – 15 images and have students pick 3 that they like the best. Then ask them to tie all the pictures into one writing! This is a more advanced assignment but works very well for sparking imagination and creativity.
- Use them as assessments. You can use images for any type of writing you’d like your students to do. This can serve as a baseline so that you can see how they improve throughout the year.
Use the Seasons as Your Writing Topics!
It’s not always easy to find appropriate images to use with students, especially emerging writers. It takes time to sort through computer images or story books.
If using picture writing prompts is something you’d like to try, you may want to look at this resource. I’ve used 3 seasons: Fall, Winter, and Spring as the base topic to build this resource around.
This Write About The Picture Bundle has been created for emerging writers, with the goal of enabling students to achieve success with independent writing. Students have been provided with a word bank to help with spelling and encourage ideas for writing.
To begin to extend sentences students have also been provided with color words. They should first color the picture with the ‘best’ color, then use the finished colored picture to enable them to begin to write longer sentences. This is the core of this resource.
This resource can also be easily differentiated. I’ve provided alternative writing lines and extra bordered pages for students who may want to write more. There are photo images as well as lined pictures to color. All images come with a word bank. And there’s an editable version of the images as well so you can add your own vocabulary words if you’d like!
I’ve also provided this resource as writing prompts for individual seasons.
- Fall Autumn Write About the Picture {editable}
- Winter Write About the Picture {editable}
- Spring Write About the Picture {editable}
Do you have some fun writing prompts that your students love?
