USING PICTURE PROMPTS FOR WRITING

Teaching kids the different genres of writing can be tricky because students need to understand that narrative, opinion and informative writing are distinct forms of writing that serve different purposes.

Let’s begin with narrative writing.

Narrative Writing tells a story or recount of a sequence of events. Story elements of narrative often include a main character, other characters, setting, conflict and resolution. A great way to teach children about good narrative structure is through the use of mentor texts. Reading lots of children’s literature helps students understand the narrative framework.

Next is opinion writing. Opinion writing is important enables students to express their personal opinion and use emotive language to convince their readers of their belief or thoughts on an ideas.

Then come informative writing. Informative writing is factual writing, where the aim is to provide the reader with information and the opportunity to learn more about a particular topic.

Now comes the question…what is the best way to teach the different genres of writing?

Picture writing prompts are always a great start!

They motivate students, particularly visual learners.

Picture prompts provide lots of writing practice in all the different genres.

For example, students can imagine what is happening in a picture or photo and create a fun narrative.

Students can use picture prompts to form an opinion about what’s happening and create a text using persuasive language to convince their readers.

USING PICTURE PROMPTS FOR WRITING

If you’re looking for a writing pack complete with picture prompts writing templates, task cards, lesson ideas and step by step teacher notes to explain all the different activities. What’s more, this printable pack is differentiated which makes it ideal 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade.

Critical Thinking Skills: Encourage students to analyze the picture and make predictions. Draw conclusions based on the visual cues. For example, if the picture shows a child holding an umbrella and dark clouds in the background, the child might infer that it is going to rain soon.

Narrative Skills: Prompt students to use the task cards to create a story based on the picture. This helps develop their imagination and narrative skills as they describe the characters, setting and events depicted in the image.

Persuasive Skills: Students use task cards to orally express their opinion to convince others of their beliefs/ideas

Paragraph Writing: Differentiated writing templates to help students organize their thoughts and ideas in sequential paragraphs

Problem-Solving Skills: Present a picture with a problem or challenge and ask the child to come up with possible solutions. This fosters their ability to think critically and find creative ways to solve problems.

Empathy and Emotional Intelligence: Use pictures that depict different emotions on characters’ faces and encourage the child to infer the emotions being expressed. This helps them develop empathy and understand different emotional states.

Observation Skills: Ask students to observe the picture carefully and identify different objects, colors, shapes, or patterns within the image.

Sequencing Skills: Provide a series of pictures and ask students if they can place in categories (e.g. seasons, events, holidays, habitats etc)

Visualizing Skills: Ask students to describe what might be happening ‘beyond the photo.’ This helps develop the skill of visualizing, imagining and inferring.

Comparing and Contrasting Skills: Provide two different pictures and ask the child to compare and contrast the elements, identifying similarities and differences between the two.

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