Creative and analytical writing prompts organized by grade level
Every teacher has watched students groan at the question, "Write what you did during break." Here are questions students actually want to answer. You can even give kids a menu of three options and let them choose their favorite.
Creative writing is any writing where invention leads: stories, poems, scripts, personal narratives, worlds that did not exist until a student built them. It asks writers to make choices instead of reporting facts. Who tells this story? What happens next? What gets left out? Those decisions are the work, and they exercise a different muscle than summarizing a chapter or answering a comprehension question ever will.
In the classroom, it pulls double duty. Students drafting a story are practicing structure, word choice, point of view, and revision without any of it feeling like a grammar drill. It also gives reluctant writers a way in. A kid who freezes at a five-paragraph essay will often fill a page when the assignment is a talking rock or a dragon the size of a sparrow, because there is no wrong answer to be afraid of.
A few things help it land. Give students a choice of prompts rather than one assignment, keep early sharing low-stakes and voluntary, and let some pieces stay unfinished. A prompt is a doorway, not a contract. The goal is students who reach for the pencil a little faster than they did in September.
If the argumentative prompts above get your students fired up, debate is the natural next step. It shows up in schools as everything from a dedicated class to an extracurricular team, and at some schools it earns a varsity letter. Students join for all kinds of reasons and come out the other side as stronger public speakers, clearer thinkers, and more thoughtful citizens.
At the high school level, debate gives students a team to belong to that also works their intellect. They represent their school the way any athlete does. At the college level, it can shape a course of study or a career: pre-law students in particular get invaluable reps forming and defending positions, including positions they personally disagree with. That last part is the real skill, and it takes practice.
What follows is a working guide to debate formats, elements, and topic selection for high school and college classrooms. Use it to get a program started, or just to run a livelier discussion on Tuesday.
Teams defend a thesis through a series of speeches, scored by impartial judges. The team with the most points wins. Modeled on how government legislatures argue, and used by both high school and college teams.
A structured sequence: constructive speeches, then rebuttals, then summaries, then a final focus speech from each team. Every speech is timed, and each round includes a crossfire segment where the teams question each other directly.
Most formats give teams their topics well in advance. Not this one. Teams learn their topic at the meet itself and get a limited window to research and build their case. Great for teaching students to think on their feet.
Every debate runs on the same five parts: a proposition, two parties, speeches, judges, and a decision. The proposition gives each team a thesis to research and defend. Teams are assigned one side of a contentious question, and they defend it whether they agree with it or not. That is the point. The goal is to argue from facts and reasoning, free from personal feeling.
One party argues the affirmative and the other argues the contrary. One side might argue for representative taxation, say, while the other argues against it. Tournaments set their own rules for how teams are composed.
Teams make their case through timed speeches, with deductions for running long. Judges score each speech, often weighing public speaking ability alongside the argument itself. Since no single judge can be fully objective, there is rarely just one. The final decision comes from tallying every score card, and the team with the most points wins.
A good debate topic starts with clear sides. There can be plenty of gray in the middle, but students need a real pro and a real con to stand on. If nobody would take one side, it is not a debate topic. It is a fact.
Timeliness helps too. Students dig into topics that are actually in the news, and it helps when the issue sits close to their own experience, because part of the training is learning to argue something you feel strongly about with the least possible emotion. That is also why students should regularly argue sides they disagree with. The educational goal is facts and reason over feeling, and there is no better drill.
Finally, a good topic is researchable at the level the format demands. For spontaneous argumentation, pull from current events and hot topics of the day, where supporting facts are a quick search away. For topics assigned in advance, go more complex: something that rewards deeper research and real analysis.
Look for topics with two clear sides, plenty of available sources, and a real connection to the present moment. Strong topics tend to run hot, which is useful: the lines of disagreement are easy to find, so each side knows its own ground and can anticipate what the other side will throw at it.
Stuck for ideas? Current events are the reliable starting point. The opinion and editorial pages of local and national publications are even better, because a few of those pieces will show you quickly which issues are meaty enough to carry a full round. For a more demanding topic, look to scientific, legal, or philosophical journals, which surface the finer points of an argument. Instead of the well-worn "should drugs be legal," a journal might lead you to whether the war on drugs has disproportionately impacted minorities. Sharper question, better debate.
One caution for judges and organizers: check your own leanings. It is easy to gravitate toward topics you already have settled opinions about, and that bias works against the competitors. Drawing candidate topics at random and then evaluating each one on its merits is a simple way around it.
Match the topic to the clock, too. A topic should be complex enough to deserve the time allotted. Some of the best rounds come from topics that honestly need twice the time available, because they force teams to identify the arguments that matter most and spend their minutes there.
Two teams, opposing sides of one topic. Each team gets equal time: two or three speeches to build its case and an equal number to rebut the opposition. The affirmative opens the debate and, in exchange, also delivers the final speech. Across multiple rounds, teams should get equal turns arguing the affirmative.
If the format includes cross-examination, questions must be clear, direct, and relevant, and speakers face questioning immediately after finishing, with no time to confer with teammates.
Judges decide using only the arguments, facts, and materials the teams actually presented. Anything a team left unsaid stays out of the decision, no matter what the judge happens to know.