Blog Post #16

50 Writing Prompts for All Grade Levels

The first article I found was about writing prompts that can be used for all grade levels. This article is divided into three sections where it includes writing prompts for high school, middle school, and elementary. This article was appealing to me because at my school they are always explaining how we need to push our students so that they can be able to write well for the STAAR test. Writing is a critical skill that students need to master in order to succeed. I thought that some of the prompts were a tad bit hard for my kindergarten students but they were appropriate for older grade levels. One of my favorite prompts at the elementary level was, “I wish my teachers knew that…” I thought this would be a great opportunity for the students to share their deepest fears, hopes, dreams, or secrets. I believe this prompt would open the door to build a better relationship with the students.

The middle school prompts are more open to explain issues like gender, bullying, ethnicity, etc. One example of a prompt I found would be interesting to read about was, “Is your ethnicity an important part of your identity? How so?” This is a question that will provide students with the opportunity to dig deep down and analyze. A prompt from the high school level that caught my attention was the following, “What causes racism?” This question is of vital importance because it gives students the opportunity to analyze their feelings and maybe research past events to determine what they think causes racism. These are important prompts that can provide the teachers with a greater understanding of how the students think. It also provides the opportunity for addressing any misconceptions that may exist. Overall, I enjoyed reading this article because it gave me stupendous ideas to use in class. 

6 Techniques for Building Reading Skills 

The other article I found in Edutopia described techniques to build reading skills. The techniques mentioned include making annotations that will increase engagement and increases comprehension. Some of the following are: asking questions, chunking, summarizing paragraphs, and even drawing pictures. Another goal is to appeal to the senses. Reading aloud to students and verbalizing the questions can be beneficial because students need the skills modeled because sometimes they don’t know how to ask the questions. Another suggestion the article emphasizes is setting goals. In order to do this, students need to evaluate their reading skills and ask themselves questions. Other suggestions include giving students different text lengths, giving them the opportunity to choose what they read, and by assessing their skills whether in a formal or informal manner. This article gave me ideas that I can use with my class to build their reading skills.