Writing Prompts and Story Ideas – Summer

Be sure to learn more about how to use writing prompts with students here:

1. Using Writing Prompts with Kids: Tips, Tricks, Pros and Cons of Writing Prompts

2. How to Use Writing Prompts in Teaching Writing

Wishing you and your students total essay writing success! Have a great summer!

Summertime Cause and Effect Essay

• My lazy days cause my parents to…
• It gets hotter and hotter and hotter and pretty soon everyone is…
• I goofed off all school year and now I pay the price in summer.
• I worked hard all school year and my parents are really proud of my effort. Now it’s summer.
• Cause and effect of a sunburn.
• Kids have summer vacation, what is the effect for the parents?
• In the pool and at the beach all day, what’s the effect?

Summertime Persuasive Essay

• Summer should be equal in length to the school year.
• Parents must not over program kids during the summer. Summer is our time to relax.
• In this modern age, summer vacation is too long and should be reduced to something more reasonable.
• Summer vacation should be a time for self-learning as opposed to guided learning. Students must engage in learning activities over the summer.
• Summertime is fun time. No work! All fun!
• Families must take at least one family vacation during the summer.
• This is how you should spend your summer…
• Going to camp is terrible, or going to camp is great!

Summertime Process Essay / How-To Essay

• Step-by-step guide to having fun in the sun.
• How to eat a Popsicle in the summertime heat without dripping a drop.
• How to make sure your parents know how you want to spend your summer vacation.
• How to plan out your summer.
• How to have fun at the beach.
• How to stay cool on hot, hot days.
• Steps to making your parents happy during the summer.

Summertime Argumentative Essay

• The real purpose of summer vacation is…
• Summer is better than winter…

Summertime Evaluation Essay

• How summer vacation affects students’ mental attitude for the following year.
• How summer vacation has changed from when the summer was based on the agricultural growing cycle.
• Is summer vacation an outdated tradition that is not valid in these modern times?
• Who needs summer vacation more, teachers or students?

Summertime Narrative/ Personal Narrative Essay

• Remembering summers past.
• A special summer vacation family trip.
• The greatest summer ever.
• My family, my friends, and me… all summer long.
• When the air conditioner broke.
• My parents put me to work.
• Fun times.

Summertime Informational Essay

• History of summer vacation.
• Summer vacation through the ages.
• Things you can do to keep busy over summer vacation.
• Fun ways of learning over summer vacation.
• Different kinds of summer camp.
• Summer around the world
• Movies about hot summers.

Summertime Descriptive Essay

• It was a hot and humid night…
• Describe how it feels on the hottest day of summer.
• See, hear, feel, and taste all summer long.
• Describe how summer is.

Summertime Five-Paragraph Essay

• Three things you must absolutely do in the summer.
• The three stages of summer.
• Summer days – morning, afternoon, and nighttime.
• Three reasons summer is…
• Summer with friends, family, and camp.
• Working, playing, and learning… all summer long.

Summertime Compare and Contrast Essay

• Summer for kids compared to summer for adults.
• Summer before air conditioning compared to summer now.
• A working summer compared to a fun summer.
• My perfect summer compared to how my parents want me to spend my summer.
• Summertime for young kids compared to summertime for older kids.
• This summer compared to last summer.
• What makes summer good? What makes summer bad?
• Summer for teachers vs. summer for students

Summertime Story Ideas

• Back on the farm, on the hot summer days…
• The Global Warming Summer of Dry, Hot, Heat
• An amazing summer with dolphins.
• Splish, Splash, Crash!
• Warning: Record Heat!
• The Snowy Summer
• Straight A’s and Fun!

Have a great summer!

I have experienced these “extreme teaching situations” in both inner-city elementary schools and inner-city middle schools. No, I have not taught high school. (My guess is it is easier than middle school. It would almost have to be.)

A huge task and the main key to classroom management in these situations is you have to get the kids working. If you really want to pull the class together you have to get the kids writing. If you want to make it a “normal class” you have to get the kids writing… and it has to be thoughtful work that they take pride in.

In these middle school situations… there are some students who are reluctant to even pick up their pencil.

Can You Draw a Circle? “No. It’s too hard.”

Here is an example of reluctance. It involves a middle school student in one of the situations described above. We were drawing a rather complicated multistep illustration. The illustration starts simple enough. “Draw this circle.” He wouldn’t. “It was too hard.”

Now I assumed… it was not the circle that was too hard, but it was the aspect of the following steps that made this student reluctant to even start. I ended up having a student come over from another class and help him draw circles. That was the last time this student would not start.

So part of the solution is you need to motivate students to “begin.” They cannot give up before they even start.

A journey of a thousand miles began with a single step.
Lao-tzu (c 604-c 531 bc)

Then it’s Step-by-Step

With a lot of the writing instruction reluctant and remedial writers think, “Stop with the words. Just tell me what to do. Make this a “how-to” and not a cryptic message.”

When you tell these reluctant writers in clear and simple terms “how-to” … they will do it. No one likes to fail. Kids and adults alike will not even begin something if they know they are going to fail. “No. I’m not going to do that… because I don’t understand how to do that… and I’m not going to do something that I just know I am going to fail at.”

For many people this will remind them of how they feel about singing, public speaking, dancing, or sports. This is how these very reluctant student writers feel about writing.

The solution here is to break down the writing process into manageable steps… while also maintaining student interest. With these very reluctant writers, if you do not tie all the steps together they will lose interest or give up.

These students do not want “information.” They want “how-to.” If it does not connect you are just giving them information. They don’t want that. They already have heard that same “information” a thousand times. “How-to” means it is all connected to an end result.

Middle School and High School Reluctant Writers

If you start by saying exactly what they have already “heard a thousand times” these students will not be interested. “We know that already!” The truth is they do know it… they just don’t get it.

I’ve been getting more and more letters from middle school and high school teachers and parents asking if the “Pattern Based Writing” program will work with their remedial and reluctant writers. The answer is… YES.

Is it going to be too easy? No. This is not a childish writing program. The fact that it works with 3rd graders from the inner city just means that it’s effective… not simple. Older kids will not be insulted by the language or the ideas.

Most of the program is simply approaching all the ideas they don’t understand in a way that will make sense to them. This is a “how-to” system.

In a Perfect World

In a perfect world we would not have reluctant or remedial writers in middle school and high school. My honest (and maybe biased) opinion is that “Pattern Based Writing: Quick and Easy Essay” is the solution.

In good conscious I have to call “Pattern Based Writing: Quick and Easy Essay” remedial for middle school and high school. Why? Because if it is used in elementary school they will be FANTASTIC WRITERS in middle school and high school.

The questions to ask are:
• Are your students reluctant or remedial writers?
• Has other methods failed them?
• Are you planning on doing exactly what has not worked already for these kids?
• Is the language you are going to use to teach them writing boring and tired?
• Do your kids say, “We already know that?”

Here are just a few of the problems middle school and high school teachers and parent have written to me about:
• My students don’t even write in complete sentences.
• My students say the writing prompt is stupid and they won’t write about that subject. When I let them choose they can’t think of anything to write about.
• My middle school students don’t write in paragraph form. I’m shocked and am not sure what to do because… they are in middle school. Why don’t they know this?

I have had great success in the most extreme middle school classrooms that one can imagine. The program is transformational for these struggling students. No, I have not taught high school… but I have seen high school writing that I knew “Pattern Based Writing: Quick and Easy Essay” would greatly improve.

Remember, there is a 100% “no funny business” money back guarantee… so be sure to check out the writing program on the main page. Don’t be worried that the pictures show some kids who may be younger than your students. The program will make your mind spin at times… and then when you see how the entire puzzle fits together… there will be clarity.

1. Are your middle school students remedial writers or are they on grade level?
2. How do you bridge the gap between your remedial writers and your high achieving writers?
3. What are appropriate goals and objectives of middle school writing instruction?

The Six Traits of Effective Middle School Writing Instruction

Many students are ready for this kind of writing instruction. However, if your students are not, the question is, “What is the fastest way to get them ready for this?”

1. Students apply the skills of using both precise and descriptive language.
2. Students apply advanced levels of syntax and sentence structure.
3. Students apply the skills of precision in language, clarity in language, and unique expression in language.
4. Students develop the knowledge and skills of writing in a variety of genres and across the curriculum.
5. Students engage in deep analysis of many genres of writing and use evaluative rubrics in their analysis.
6. Students apply advanced language usage and sentence structure to essay writing and composition assignments.

Bridging the Gap between Remedial and High Achieving Middle School Writers

One of the greatest frustrations in teaching middle school writing is the wide range of academic skills that students in the same class possess. There is a much larger gap between the high achievers and students who are struggling when compared with both elementary school and high school students.

In elementary school the gap in student achievement is much smaller because there has been less time for the gap to grow. In high school students are essentially on different career paths and as such are in different classrooms. (Furthermore, the statistics on the national high school dropout rates are dismal. This does make it easier for high school teachers; however it is a national failure that we must address!)  

Three-Step Plan for Scaffolding and Remedial Instruction 

1. Get everyone on the same page.
2. Scaffold the new instruction.
3. Remediate with students who still struggle.

Your writing instruction needs to be accessible (inspirational and motivational) across a wide range of abilities!

With “Pattern Based Writing: Quick and Easy Essay” you will:
1. Quickly get everyone on the same page!
2. Easily remediate with students who still struggle!
3. NOW because ALL your students are engaged, scaffolding the new writing instruction actually WORKS!

Through my weblogs, I get to see what searches brought people to this website. Here are some of my favorite searches that showed up on the weblogs. If you look at them, they really tell a story! It would be funny, if it weren’t so… true!

• tools to teach toddlers prewriting skills
• how to teach 1st grader to write an essay
• how to teach my 7 year old son to write fast
• small easy essays for grade 2
• my middle school students don’t write sentences
• my 8th grade son does not know how to write an essay
• how do i teach complete sentences? “middle school”

I consider “Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay” good common sense in elementary, and the only REAL remedial solution in middle school. (Excellent rapport with middle school students is another really helpful solution!) It’s interesting to see the change of tone in the searches for what I would consider remedial middle school writing instruction.

Have You Taught Middle School Writers… Who You Would Consider to be Remedial?

It may be that you need to have taught middle school students who were “remedial writers” to truly understand and feel the full hidden subtext of pain and frustration in the searches related to middle school students.

Have you ever tried to back it up on middle school students? Backing it up in math, they appreciate! Backing it up in writing, whew… they can turn into a fiery hornets’ nest!

With writing, middle school students think they understand it. “We studied this in elementary school. I know this stuff! This stuff is easy.” By middle school they have definitely been TOLD all the rules of correct writing. However…

My feeling is “you don’t understand it, if you don’t use it.” Writing naturally in correct paragraph form, with nice introductions and conclusions should feel… natural. It should be painful to write with poor paragraph form. It should feel unnatural to have no introduction and a poor conclusion. You should be able to feel beginning, middle ending… beginning middle, ending, both within your paragraphs, and within the full context of the essay, report, or story.

You shouldn’t have to think about it. You should feel it within. Rhythm! Fluency! Natural patterns of communication!

The Best Writers and the Remedial Writers

The best writers in middle school start to feel how to toy with all of these. The remedial writers don’t feel or understand any of these. Remedial writers are writing idea by idea, and sometimes even word by word.

Middle school writers who are not remedial should be focused on:

1. Writing with an academic tone and authority (includes all the exciting aspects of citing references and quoting authorities etc.)
2. Playing with voice, and expression.
3. Playing with structure (Think about the movies Memento, The Usual Suspects, and Groundhog Day as an inspiration for playing with structure. Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay should make playing around with structure for middle school students as easy as A, B, C!)
4. Writing with a purpose. This means purpose within paragraphs and purpose within the larger structure of a piece of writing.
5. Being persuasive in their writing! Logic, following a line of thinking through to its conclusion, framing an argument in a way that naturally leads to their stated point of view.

As middle school students work on all of this… there should be no sacrifice to “PARAGRAPH FORM.” If paragraph form continually falls apart, they don’t understand structure at the level they need to. They need to back it up and you need to teach in strictly visual and kinesthetic terms. No more “explanations.” They have heard it all!

Be sure to read “How to Teach Writing in Inner-City Middle Schools”

If you are struggling with remedial middle school or Jr. High writers, be sure to read an upcoming post on teaching writing in “Inner City Middle Schools.” A MAIN, MAIN, MAIN problem in inner city middle schools is that the majority are “remedial writers.” The majority don’t get it.

Get your middle school students writing correctly… lots of your problems go away… and they start to take pride… (I had written “all of your problems go away.” But no… you may still have your hands full!)