Hello, class! This week, the free teaching material is the third, fourth, and fifth in my series of “Writing Prompts.” I am putting out three this week as an apology for the skipped week of the 7th.
This week’s writing prompts are designed to help students practice their “showing” skills. Prompt 03 is aimed at getting students used to considering the senses besides sight in their descriptive writing. Prompts 04 is designed to have students practice showing a character’s emotions, rather than simply telling the reader how they feel. This is much like Prompt 01 from several weeks ago, except that I chose the emotion of guilt, which is more complicated to try and show. Prompt 05 is designed to show us a character’s attitude towards something without directly telling the reader. This also works out other skills, like tone.
So, let’s get started!
What it is/What it’s for\How to use it:
First, let me just post in text the three prompts so that you do not have to download the files before you know if you want to use it:
Prompt 03:
When using descriptive writing, it is easy to fall into the habit of only using descriptions of sight. In other words, many novice writers only describe what their characters can see. It is important to remember that the other senses give the reader a lot of valuable and engaging information too! So, for this prompt, you will practice description using the other senses.
Imagine a scene in your mind, it can be anything or anywhere, and imagine a blind character within that scene. You must describe the scene from the blind character’s perspective. That means you must not use any sight descriptions in your writing, but rely entirely on descriptions using the other senses, like touch, temperature, smell, balance, hearing, and taste. Try to use as many different senses as you can, but you must use more than two.
Prompt 04:
“Show, Don’t Tell,” is a technique that can be used to indicate the emotions of a character without having to tell the reader directly how they are feeling. For this writing prompt, we will be practising that technique. Think of a character who is feeling guilty. They can be anywhere, in any situation, and they can be feeling guilty for any reason. Write a scene below in which you show the character feeling that emotion. Be sure not to use the words “guilty,” “bad,” “responsible,” “ashamed,” “conscience,” “remorse,” “sorry,” “regret,” or any other words like those that tell us directly how the character feels. Show it through senses, thoughts, dialogue, and actions!
Prompt 05:
When you show something from a character’s point of view, you are also showing the reader how the character feels about it. For instance, if a character walks into a church and describes it with beautiful descriptions, and acts in a reverent manner, it tells us something about them and the way they react to religious locations. Imagine a character entering a place they have always wanted to go, but had never been able to before. It can be any character and any location. For this writing prompt, use the technique of “Show, Don’t Tell” to show your reader how the character feels about finally visiting this location. Do not use words that tell us directly how the character feels. Show it through senses, thoughts, dialogue, and actions!
I’ve talked about the importance and use of writing prompts before, but it is always worth remembering. I hope you don’t mind a bit of self-plagiarism, but I feel I described my writing prompts and their uses very well the first time, and so to save you from having to follow a link, I’ll just post it again below:
“Of course writers will know that writing prompts are good for practice, but to be frank, most teachers view them as time fillers – valuable mostly to slip into a schedule when you don’t have anything else prepared. This is an incorrect approach to take with writing prompts. They may be time consuming, but I believe they are an essential part of the writing curriculum for many reasons.
Of course the most obvious purpose for a writing prompt is practice. As much as I love a good presentation or lesson, nothing – and I do mean nothing – is as important in developing writing skills as practice. Writing Prompts, no matter the time window given, give students an opportunity for that practice with just enough structure to focus their efforts, and enough creative freedom for students to feel personal investment in the product of their work.
Short writing prompts – in the five to ten minute range – are great for starting writing class with. They can be on the desk for the students to work on the second they walk in the classroom, which helps with classroom management, but they also help spark creativity, leaving the student revved up and ready to jump into long-form writing projects, or participate in class activities.
Medium writing prompts – in the fifteen to thirty minute range – are best used when paired with other writing steps or activities. For instance, if the students are given a thirty-minute writing prompt, the second half of the period could be used for self-assessment, sharing, or it could see the students trading their writing to practice peer editing or peer conferencing. I like this especially because examining writing is just as important for improvement as the act of writing itself. If you believe in homework, it could also be useful for a light assignment as well.
Long writing prompts would take up a full writing period, and in general I don’t like them very much unless time is planned in a future time period for the students to go over and examine their writing through another context. These sorts of prompts are good for writing assessments before a lesson, as well as post-lesson assessments. I believe there is a danger in using these prompts, however, as it can be tempting to use them to simply fill time by taking up a whole class period so the teacher doesn’t have to plan something more complicated – which is not a great angle to take. I don’t believe they make a good replacement for long term writing projects, and I also believe that extensive homework holds limited returns, so I don’t recommend giving them for homework.
The writing prompts I give have a front and back, but in general I believe they can be used for all three lengths.” … “This could involve writing a single paragraph, or it could be expanded to fill both the back and front of the page, with a little creativity and will. If you’re using my prompts for the short form writing, you should probably only print out the front page, but if you use them for medium or long segments, I would recommend printing both the front and back pages.”
FREE DOWNLOADS:
PDF:
Google Drive: (To Download the Google Drive Files, you will have to click on File and “Download as…” If you use Google Drive a lot, you can also click on “Make a Copy” and modify the file name as you see fit.)
- Printable – “Show, Don’t Tell,” Prompt 03 (Ink Heavy)
- Printable – “Show, Don’t Tell,” Prompt 03 (Ink Light)
- Online-Editable – “Show, Don’t Tell,” Prompt 03 (Dark)
- Online-Editable – “Show, Don’t Tell,” Prompt 03 (Light)
- Printable – “Show, Don’t Tell,” Prompt 04 (Ink Heavy)
- Printable – “Show, Don’t Tell,” Prompt 04 (Ink Light)
- Online-Editable – “Show, Don’t Tell,” Prompt 04 (Dark)
- Online-Editable – “Show, Don’t Tell,” Prompt 04 (Light)
- Printable – “Show, Don’t Tell,” Prompt 05 (Ink Heavy)
- Printable – “Show, Don’t Tell,” Prompt 05 (Ink Light)
- Online-Editable – “Show, Don’t Tell,” Prompt 05 (Dark)
- Online-Editable – “Show, Don’t Tell,” Prompt 05 (Light)
Free Images: Since today doesn’t have new art assets, there are no free images this week. Sorry!
I hope you find these materials useful! If you do, and you want to help me keep making free materials for you and teachers around the world, please support me at My Patreon!
Have a great day, and DFTBA!
Sincerely,
– Mr. Edward L. Cheever II
P.S. – DFTBA = “Don’t Forget to be Awesome!”
P.P.S. – All materials are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution -Non-Commercial – ShareAlike (CC-BY-NC-SA) License.
Hello, class! It’s been all too long since my last post. For those of you who don’t know, I run this blog on the side of the other things I do, and so life occasionally steps in the way and prevents me from getting these things out in a timely manner. Do not worry, though! I will make it up to you with next week’s post which will include three different writing prompts instead of the usual one. 
Hello, class! I hope you’ve been having a great day! The reason this post is coming out
Mr. Cheever's Class 