what is custom writing prompts

what is custom writing prompts

The Importance of Custom Writing Prompts

1. Understanding Custom Writing Prompts

Understanding custom writing prompts in an academic context is a very important and useful skill to develop. More often than not, you will find out that an essay that you’ve been asked to write is not simply an exercise in putting together a string of related information but a task that calls for a thoughtful engagement in an issue with the intent to convince or persuade the reader. And even though custom writing prompts are typically geared towards writing, it’s probably a good idea to mention at this point that they are also useful tools for those who are looking to write for personal reasons. At some point, everybody will experience what it’s like to have a case of writer’s block. Custom writing prompts are a good way to break out of that funk and get those mental juices flowing.

Custom writing prompts are characteristically elegant, but most of them are designed to serve a certain purpose. Even though it is hard for regular assignments to replicate the charm of a specifically designed prompt, the concepts below are really just different directions to the same end. Any custom writing prompt will include key words and concepts that suggest that some mental effort be employed. Usually, you will be asked to compare and contrast, explain, illustrate, define, or use other more vague verbs to do the same thing. Another way of getting at the same idea is deciding what the end product of the writing assignment is supposed to be. Your instructor has a certain idea in mind and he/she thinks that the best way to get you to understand something is to have you write about it. Custom writing prompts are pointed and have a specific goal in mind for what they want the reader to get out of the writing.

2. Benefits of Custom Writing Prompts

Peered learning process. Still celebrating 30 years. The better to see you with. North and South are complex cases. Not organs. The Unicorn in the Garden. Flashback: Using history to create community in the classroom. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Don Quixote: Our Knight of the Woeful Countenance. The importance of custom writing prompts. Using a new tool in teaching history. Fifth grade teachers Corinne Ferri and Debbie Miller discovered a new tool for teaching history – writing prompts. These prompts were part of Professional Development Workshops sponsored by the New Haven Writing Project and Yale National Initiative who worked with local school teachers on the development of new material for history instruction. “The prompt is the second hook of the teacher to the student,” says Ferri, “The first hook is the really good introduction to the lesson that really grabs them. And then the second hook is the prompt that says, OK, now that you know all this stuff, what can you do with it?” The lesson plan and prompt created by Ferri and Miller combined the history of immigration at the turn of the century with a reading lesson. After researching historical facts on immigration, students read the historical fiction novel, “The Memory Coat.” The prompt that followed asked students to take on the role of an immigrant chronicled in the book and write a letter home to family in his native country. Through this exercise, students were able to use both the historical information learned and writing skills acquired during the reading lesson. Both Ferri and Miller felt that the prompt was extremely successful in engaging the students and allowing them to apply what they had learned. “The effect of having the children take on the role of an immigrant really worked,” says Miller, “They really got into this over the several days we worked on it. This was very positive for them.”

3. How to Create Effective Custom Writing Prompts

While some instructors might assume that they already know what kinds of writing prompts will encourage their students to write effectively, empirical evidence may be more useful in satisfying this assumption. No worse instructional malpractice exists than choosing a particular writing prompt because it is the first one that came to the teacher’s mind. For this cavalier method of selecting what counts as a major resource in the instructional process is akin to underlining numbers in a lottery and then expecting to win. To select an effective prompt is an intentional act that should involve careful thought. Step one in the process is deciding what kind of writing is expected, and what will count as effective or successful writing in the context being considered (for example, writing will be considered effective if it is clear and complete and solves a particular problem). Another step in the teaching of writing is the contact of an audience, and some writing carried out in this connection may be starting work, for these two considerations taken together are preliminary to assembling a new habit activity. At the beginning of one long-term research project on the writing process, teachers were asked to jot down an instructional writing assignment and the actual what the students did as a result, the nature of the activities referenced was so various that the investigators questioned what kind of writing the teachers were going to try to get from their students and what helped the teacher toward this end.

4. Implementing Custom Writing Prompts in Education

There are many ways in which custom writing prompts can be used in the classroom. One of the simplest methods is to ask students to come up with their own prompts based on a unit of study. For example, a student reading Huckleberry Finn might be asked to write a letter from Huck to Jim, or a different ending to the story. When students share their prompts with the class, the teacher can then select one or more to be used as the basis of an assignment and post them on the web for easy access for everyone. Teachers can use student-created prompts as well as instructor-created prompts for many online activities such as peer review and various publishing activities. Printed writing. Custom prompts are often an integral part of an I-search. An instructor might ask a student who is investigating the way a particular new law will affect gun retailers to write a letter to the editor of their local paper. A writer preparing a technical manual might be asked to present a hypothetical example of a common mistake that users of the manual might make. In addition, there are also curricular uses for custom prompts. For example, many California universities will soon require students to pass the Writing Proficiency Exam. This exam will include a prompt which will require the student to write a 5 paragraph persuasive essay. The CSU English Placement Test has also had a long-standing tradition of using custom prompts. Instructors can also employ the use of the EGUSD Writing Rubric to improve student writing. By having students respond to a single prompt at different grade levels, teachers can more easily isolate and identify specific writing skills. And finally, with the advent of the California High School Exit Exam and the requirement that all teachers in California be able to teach writing, there may be an increased importance in using custom prompts at the high school level.

5. Conclusion: Embracing Custom Writing Prompts for Success

We have found from research and underscored through various examples the undeniable importance of having students create and write their own custom prompts. It allows students to begin a more organized writing process, while not stifling creative potential. They are able to constantly assess their understanding of the prompt and use it as a measuring stick of their writing and thinking skills. Custom prompts offer another channel to the content of a course and can be revisited at a later time because they are directly related to course material and personal experience. Custom prompts are an effective bridge between a teacher’s knowing the material covered and the student’s learning. Through custom prompts we open expansive and reinforcing connections among writing, critical thinking, and course content. What could be more important to the success of a student, in any discipline? E-mail author for further writings.