A Few Places for Writing Ideas

The Blank Page

It stares back at you, daring you to just try to type and your mind goes as blank as that page.

What do you do?

Ideas List

Somewhere handy — a Google Doc or your writing notebook, keep a list of ideas you could write about. Here are some suggestions to get you started:

• A “How To” about…
• The time my little brother…
• My 10 Favorite — [songs, movies, animals]
• How to train an alligator [hummingbird, shark, etc.]
• a new ending to a book or movie
• If I had a million dollars I’d
• My 10 rules

Writing with Writers

Do you have favorite authors or favorite books? Perhaps you could write like that author.

Or perhaps you could write your own version of a pattern-style picture book, like

• Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst
• The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown [sample student book too]

You could create it for the younger students in your school.

Scholastic provides several lessons with writers to help you develop your style:

• Poetry— three different poets: Jack Prelutsky, Karla Kuskin, Jean Marzollo
• Myth Writing with Jane Yolen and Folk Tales and Fairy Tales

Take a look at Scholastic’s other writing models for you too, here.

Poetry

Sometimes we just need a pattern to follow. Here are a few places for examples:

• Poetry4Kids by Ken Nesbitt — scroll to “Poetic Forms”
• Read Write Think has poetry inter-actives to help you write poetry; save and write on your blog.
• Forms of Poetry [description and examples]

Other fun poetry activities here.

It’s National Poetry Month in April in the United States — you can write a poem a day! Join the fun!

The Prompts

Of course, we all know about those writing prompts— but some are fun. Here are a few sites to get you started this minute:

• ThoughtfulLearning: choose your grade level [or not]
• Emoji prompts [grades 4-12]
• New York Times Picture Prompts [grades 5-12]
• Pobble365 — picture prompt with text ideas [grades 4-12]
• Blog Post Idea Generator with Matthew Loomis [grades 4-12]
• JournalBuddies for First Grade
• When I’m Stuck [all ages]

What’s on Your Page?

You’re ready to write now!  Let us know what’s on your page!