In the Classroom: Summer Writing Prompts

I try to set my students up with successful tools for Summer Reading and Writing before they leave my classroom. Over the past few years, I've asked students to decorate Summer Writing Notebooks. Sometimes this happens in the classroom and we decorate notebooks together, and sometimes I ask them to decorate at home. Either way, it builds excitement for filling clean pages in a new notebook.

There are several writing activities and challenges that my students take part in before bringing their notebook home on the last day of school. I'll be sharing them here with you! Tomorrow, we'll get started with some fun summer journal writing prompts. Creative ideas to get their minds going!

The prompts that I'll be using are from Genia Connell, Scholastic Teacher Blogger. I  mentioned her in my posts a few times last week. Be sure to check these posts out here and here. Genia posted about 5 Ways to Keep Your Students Writing All Summer Long. One of her tips was about journal prompts and she shared 75 Summer Writing Prompts that she sends home with her students.

Genia provides one prompt per day and most of the time, the prompts are about a special thing that happened on that day. Here are some examples below:

June 18 

On this day in 1983, Sally Ride became the first woman in space. What would you like to 

be the first to do? Go into the future and write a newspaper article that tells the world the 

who, what, when and where of your great accomplishment as “The very first person to 

ever…” Include quotes from yourself and other people who know you. 

June 19 

Today is known as Juneteenth. This special day commemorates the ending of slavery in the 

United States in 1865. Write a speech about what freedom means to you. Perform the speech 

for someone at your home or tape the speech and become your own audience. 

June 22 

The largest hailstone on record was recovered on June 22, 2003, in Aurora, 

Nebraska. With a diameter of seven inches, this hailstone was nearly as large 

as a soccer ball. Write a fictional narrative about a day that you were outside 

playing when something unusual started falling from the sky. What was it? 

What did you do? Remember to start with an attention-grabbing beginning, a 

middle with important details and an ending that wraps up your story for the 

audience. 

Click here to download all Summer Writing Prompts. 

I'll continue to keep you updated with the activities and challenges that fill their notebooks. I'll also continue to post some fun Summer Reading stuff, too!