The "key" to success

Writing prompts are always difficult for children, especially when giving the task to think of an idea and create a story. Even as a college student, this is a difficult task. Students sit there pondering what they should write about and often try to produce a piece of work that is thought to be what the teacher wants. Instead of encouraging children to step back and let their mind wander until an idea comes to them, we too often focus on getting the work done. In class one day, we were given a blank sheet of paper and asked to draw a picture. Of course, no one knew what to draw until our professor created a story that we listened to and then left us to put on paper what we "saw" in our minds. This is a great way to create writing prompts for students, especially when introducing creative writing or story-telling lessons. To accommodate for an elementary level, students would receive a piece of white paper with a blank keyhole, similar to the picture. The teacher would then tell a story to the students and drop the story off by the children looking through the keyhole. The stories could be centered around a certain topic or simply fantasy. This allows the children's minds to wander. The children would then draw what they saw on the other side of the keyhole and use it as a reference for creating their own short stories.

*Special thanks to Dr. Specht!!