Designing a Writing Prompt

Often teachers are unsure of how to design an effective writing task.  Novice teachers fall back on the open-ended, “Write about what you want to write about.”  This will lead to unpredictable student responses that are difficult to grade and do little to scaffold skills you want students to develop.  Instead, help students be excited about writing what you want them to write about!  

Consider Objectives

Before designing a writing prompt, consider why you want students to write.  What specific skill do you want students to practice?  Argument?  Synthesis?  Summary?  Narrative?  Past-tense?  Let the why shape your prompt.

Choose a topic

If you decide you want students to practice argument, choose a topic that will lead to opinions!  Consider, for example, designing a prompt around illegal immigration, the death penalty, Artificial Intelligence, homeschooling, social media… the list goes on.

Build anticipation

If you decide to design a prompt around the use of AI in the classroom, show YouTube videos about the invention and innovations of AI.  Read and discuss articles as a class about the worries teachers and administrators have surrounding AI.  Have students draft AI disclosure policies for the class and vote on one to add to your syllabus.  The more you can get students thinking and talking about a topic, the more excited they will be to get their thoughts on paper!

Write your prompt

The more specific your prompt can be, the easier it will be for students to write.  Although it may seem unintuitive, the more narrow a prompt, the more creative the response.  Every writing task should include the following:

• The prompt

• Objectives

• Formatting guidelines

• A Due date or allotted time

• Evaluation criteria

Let students know what they will be graded on, even if it is only completion.