So many great prompts, it's hard to choose! I love the simplicity of Peter Brown's tree prompt and the complexity of Kate Messner's elevator buttons. Both have the potential to open many possibilities in our students' minds. Most of all I am excited to share this book with the classroom teachers in my two elementary buildings. Thanks for sharing, Colby!!
I LOVE this! I am a librarian and having students writing from a prompt from a favorite author is amazing! All the prompts help students' writing come alive, but the "I Remember" prompt is one that I will definitely use and share with teachers. This prompt will assist me in helping students find books that connect to their memories.
I’m an artist and a high school art teacher so creativity is of great importance to me and my students! The prompt you mentioned which I think would work great with my students is “I remember” - as artmaking is always more powerful when it is personal. My students use prompts like this in their sketchbooks and I think they’d really get into this one! But really... I think allllll of these prompts would be amazing drawing starters!
I'd love to gift our fourth and fifth grade teachers with the amazing Creativity Project books. The prompts are so wonderful for opening our students' writing experiences. A personal favorite is the 5 min. "I remember". prompt.
As a new principal this year, I have been getting into classes and reading aloud some of my favorite books. I thought that I would start to visit as a guest writer in classrooms with your book. I am excited to do this with my school to write with them and get to know each of them better. Thanks for all you do for teachers and kids!
Hello Colby! I am an Instructional Literacy Coach in a K-5 building and am always excited to support the teachers in engaging and motivating their Ss to write. I love that this book does just that. I am excited to share the book, and several of the prompts. Right now, I could see this being awesome for some small group instruction. Ss could choose different prompts and form small groups based on their interests. Thanks again for the opportunity to get teachers and kids pumped up about reading and writing.
I absolutely love the elevator prompt. So many of my 5th graders are interested in historical fiction and non-fiction. I think this would prompt some amazing responses both written and drawings.
The ‘I remember’ prompt was a simple yet effective way for students to sit and reflect on moments of their lives that stand out. It allowed me to get to connect with them on a deeper level. I’m excited to try more of these prompts and see where the writing takes my students.
Thanks Colby for this opportunity! The Creativity Project is on my TBR list and I'd love to share it with others at my school! The prompt you shared that I loved is the tree out of place. I can't wait to try this on Tuesday!
It’s amazing how a prompt as simple as I Remember can help to generate a list of powerful, emotional memories. I know when I tried it at your session at NCTE in Houston, it immediately helped me to pull up a really special memory from my childhood. This book is on my wishlist, but I haven’t been able to get it yet. I’d love to use it to inspire my class during their daily free writing time.
My third graders participate in something called the pillow project. A notebook is sent home and the students then can write to their parent or sibling, or someone in their household about anything they want. When finished writing, they place the notebook underneath the pillow of the person they wrote. Then that person can respond and place it underneath the student's pillow for a response. Students will be asked to bring in their pillow notebook sporadically to be entered into a drawing for actively participating in the project. I think that having copies of this book would be a great resource for students who may be having trouble deciding on something to write or simply need an idea starter.
Hi there! Eighth grade ELA teacher here! I love the wild time-traveling elevator prompt! I used it with my history loving first grader...his mind went crazy with the story he began to tell me. Passing your book along to my 7th and 8th grade colleagues would be a blessing!
Good Morning! Teaching 3rd in Indiana I am constantly reminding myself to not allow my students to lose their creativity. We are CONSTANTLY responding to reading and in test prep mentality, to the point that when you try to be creative the students are looking for a "right" or "wrong" answer. I LOVE the I Remember .... prompt. The ability to constantly add to that list so that students will always have something to draw from, and to remind them that there really is no right or wrong when they are drawing from their own experiences in writing. I would love to share the additional copies with each of my upper grade level teams to remind them to allow their kiddos to have time to just be creative! :)
I enjoyed the possibilities with each prompt you suggested. As a youth services librarian, these prompts make me want to start a writing club. When I was a teacher, I had used another book with prompts as bell-ringers, but I love that this particular book is supported by children's authors. As an aside, your enthusiasm is outstanding :)
I've used a few prompts in the past. Our librarian has a copy and I was able to borrow hers. I like to use Debbie Ridpath Chi's door prompt. I use it around the same time period when I give the children a Picture prompt of a red door in a stone wall. That states something to the effect that --"Noone has been permitted to enter the door for year. One day it is mysteriously open." We like to see if the 2 stories are similar at all, if they build off of each other, or if they are completely different. I have used the prompts & responses to the prompts as mini read alouds. The children really enjoy hearing what their favorite authors come up with from a prompt. They also see that the prompt can inspire a story and not just spark a reaction to a prompt. Great for modeling the differences in creativity & thinking. There are some children who are afraid to put themselves out there.
What a great resource! We need this for our push to help inspire our students to love writing as much as they love reading. Thanks for all you do, Colby Sharp! Would love to share this with the teachers in my building.
I teach first - so I have to be creative with the prompts in the book to tone them down to my littles. I loved the tree out of place one. I personally LOVE Peter Brown (#crush) so I chose his. In my class we do a lot of think out of the box Thursday where I give them a simple pic or part of a pic and they have to built it into a design - example: looks like a raindrop but the heading says it is not a raindrop. So I took the tree prompt and used it to take the students farther with think outside the box Thursday. We talked about what it means to feel out of place and then set them loose to draw what a tree would look like if it was out of place and where that would be. I was able to put a little setting review in there too, so that was a bonus! Thanks for creating this book and offering to share it with others. I know just who I would share the books with to promote this type of creativity and writing!
As a writing teacher, we do a journal prompt every day. They always have an option to write whatever they want, but I also put up a prompt as well. I love the one about the door by Debbie Ridpath Ohi. This group of 5th graders loves to write creative stories and I think they would love this one.
I love the I Remember prompt. It blends beautifully with Lucy Calkins’ Small Moments lessons for personal narratives. Some of the shorter prompts like the door one can also be used along with The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.
I like them all but I really like the elevator prompt - it could easily be adapted to different subjects/topics (biomes, continents/countries/locales, famous people, etc.)
Oh wow! What a fantastic book! I teach 5th grade in Norman, Oklahoma. I would love to use this with my class as I have been looking for something to take my kids’ writing to a new level. This goes along so well with our 40 Book Challenge. We just received classroom sets of MacBooks and I could incorporate the technology with the writing. I would love to get a copy of the book!
I am a reading specialist and a librarian. I am now working with a 5th grader who loves loves loves history. He is homeschooling with his mom and I would share Kate Messner's prompt. He would love it and so would his mom. In fact, I have been wanting to get your book for their whole family. I am the librarian and reading specialist in a pre-school ages 3-6. One of my goals this year is to use prompts to write collectively with my kinder classes.
I haven't purchased the book yet, but seeing this video makes me want to snag it right now. I really liked the last prompt you featured--the one where they can get off the elevator into different time periods in history. I love love LOVE how this could be cross-curricular and they could choose to tie in something they've learned about in Social Studies OR just choose a favorite time period they may know much about. What a fun, fun prompt!
My goodness! I need this book in my classroom. My fifth graders need so much help generating topics. "I remember" for five minutes is going into my lesson plans for this week!! Peter Brown, such a fun, wing-nut! SHWHAT disappeared in the river?! This could get my true crime aficionados rolling on some spooky stories (and me too). A time traveling elevator?! The I Survived kiddos will take this idea and run!
I bought this for my nephew, but didn't get one for my classroom! I teach 3rd and would love the I remember for our personal narratives. I also love the tree prompt! We are reading Wishtree and they have really become attached to that book.
Thank you for sharing how you use this awesome book! I have read little bits to my 4th grade students and used some of the prompts for writing prompts. We are working on doing more quick-writes in class and I am thinking I would love to try the 'I remember' prompt with a quick write. It is fun to ask the kids to do a prompt, and then share with them how another author responded. This would be fun as a blogging project perhaps with other classrooms.
Hi Colby! I loved hearing you at the Hamline Summer Literacy Institute this summer and started following you after hearing you speak. I loved the "I remember" and "Tree " prompt. Being a 2nd grade teacher at a Spanish immersion, I think these would be great prompts for students to start feeling more comfortable writing in Spanish. Thanks!!!
This book looks amazing! I am part of an incredible 6th grade ELA team of teachers. I know we'd all use this book in our classrooms. I love all 5 writing prompts that you showed...especially the elevator and the I remember. (We're about to start working on personal narratives so this one has me thinking!) Thanks for all you do for your own students and all the other students you are reaching through teachers (like me) who read your blog and view your RUclips channel!!
I have to get that book!! I love Kate Messner’s prompt with the elevator door. I think it would be fun to have the students create a digital storyboard showing their sequence of events. They can use images from Adobe Spark to insert and type their text on the images to illustrate their story.
I love the tree prompt and the elevator prompt. I think both require Ss to take on a unique perspective. I do not have a copy of the book yet, so I have not used it yet.
I love Kate Messner’s prompt about the time-traveling elevator. I have to get your book, The Creativity Project! It reminds me of the wonderful prompts in The Mysteries of Harris and it’s companion book, The Chronicles of Harris Burdick. My students get so creative with these mysteries!
For me, it is a toss up between Debbie Ridpath Ohi's prompt and Linda Sue Park's. I really like the idea of Ohi's "door" idea and I would love for students to come back to their entry every few days to add to the story. Oh the possibilities! I would absolutely love to give this book to each teacher in my ELA department. Thank you for producing this great work!
The Creativity Project is out in paperback!!!! As a media specialist, I shared this book with my teachers when it first came out. One has used prompts from it every year. She also uses the document camera to share the prompt. I'd LOVE to win this giveaway to gift a copy to each of the 4th and 5th grade teachers in my building. The Kate Messner prompt . . . I can't wait to see what our students create from that!
I absolutely love this! I am a tree-lover, so the "tree out of place" stood out to me! I just love the ideas for stirring the imaginations of students in this way. I even want to use this with our faculty as a PD starter! :)
I'd love to share these books with my colleagues! And thanks for the reminder to get this book out and use it! I've used the tree out of place and the kids loved it, and I can't wait to try the elevator one. So exciting, but I've already used up my quota of exclamation marks :)
Hi Colby! Absolutely love the I remember. Since my focus is ideas this week, this activity has landed into my plans. I’m hooked at idea one and excited to use the ideas from this book to spark my writers. I work with my sister from another mister through the inclusion model. We’re very lucky and she works with our babies the following year. It’s my second year working with her and we are planning a day to cross curricular plan so that we can grow writers through 5th. This would to share with my co teachers and staff would be awesome and a great way to grow writers. Thank you for all that you do! We’ve creating readers who love watching what you videos to learn what we should read next. It’s our own version of previews before the movie(aka reading lesson) for the day.
Thank you for your posting once again. I am always inspired by what you share and it helps me to motivate my own 5th graders with reading and writing. I've been eyeballing this book for quite some time, and I really like the 4th prompt about throwing something into the river and watching it float away. Aside from being a great writing prompt, you can also use it in a class discussion to build speaking and listening skills and reinforce questioning strategies. Who threw something in the river? What did the throw in the river? Why did they throw something in the river? What happened after it floated away? After having these discussions, you can inspire students to write because the answers to any of these questions could be its own narrative. You can definitely use this to inspire writing flashbacks and flashforwards, or multiple perspectives. So excited to try this!!
Wow - what an incredible resource for teachers and students! I would use this in so many ways. I imagine it being an incredible tool for generating ideas for personal narratives (I remember), for fiction (Debbie Ohi's prompt), historical fiction (the elevator). More than that, I can see using this as an integral tool to use within reader's and writer's workshop (or during soft start in the morning) as a student tool and choice to continue to develop their writing lives. I am currently a literacy coach and would love to share this book with the teachers I work with!
This book makes me so excited! My student will absolutely love this! I’d first start with Debbie Ohi’s prompt about the door knob. I know there would be many wild stories.
I love the tree idea. I think it would allow for so much creativity! How can I get a hold of this resource? I would love to get myself a copy for my classroom.
As a Philippine Resident, I'm interested to try your book because of those cool prompts I've seen in this video. I love to make my own thoughts using my creativity skills.
I have just used The Creativity Project by showing it to certain avid readers and writers to peruse and possibly use, but after having watched this video I am going to start showing it to some classes, starting with 5th-we are going to start with the "I remember" to get them thinking about writing more during their biweekly visits to the library, and then I will periodically put others up on the doc camera, and I will show the other 4 you shared here first because they are all so good! I am curious how many of the Kate Messner dates coincide with a "Ranger in Time" titles as well as Lauren Tarshis "I Survived" titles, and will challenge students to find out. If I were to win a copy I would put it in my giveaway boxes that I put out three times a year: for school "Pioneer Mile" fundraiser as reward for finishing, right before winter break and then right before summer break as classes get all their library books turned in or taken care of.
I NEED this to give me permission to return to all the best ways to inspire writers of all ages. We are hyper focused on "writing" aka typing in a box for a standardized test.
I live the last one by Kate Messner. I think it would be great to include time periods that relate to our content curriculum! I would love the copies of this book to do a book study with my 4th and 5th grade teachers!
I love this book. Do you also use the writing pieces from authors as mentor texts for reading standards as well? I can see the benefit with writing, but am curious if you use them for reading lessons as well. Thank you!
I would love to try all of these, especially number 5! We do a writing “warm up” everyday and this book would be perfect. Our school does not do traditional homework but this year we are trying a 5th grade requirement of 100 minutes a week of choice homework. The kids will choose from various menu and website options. This book would compliment that concept so well. Adding it to my teacher wishlist! Thank you!
So many great nuggets, I REALLY loved the first prompt: "I remember..." Using this would be a great way to introduce small moments narrative writing with our 1st graders! All of these prompts invite creativity and excitement! I'd love the opportunity to dive into The Creativity Project and share with others!
So many great prompts, it's hard to choose! I love the simplicity of Peter Brown's tree prompt and the complexity of Kate Messner's elevator buttons. Both have the potential to open many possibilities in our students' minds. Most of all I am excited to share this book with the classroom teachers in my two elementary buildings. Thanks for sharing, Colby!!
I LOVE this! I am a librarian and having students writing from a prompt from a favorite author is amazing! All the prompts help students' writing come alive, but the "I Remember" prompt is one that I will definitely use and share with teachers. This prompt will assist me in helping students find books that connect to their memories.
I love the Kate Messier prompt where you entered an elevator and you stops are different years. Love that.
The door prompt is my favorite. I love the idea of entering a new world!
An "I remember " list would be a great way to create a list of narrative writing ideas.
I’m an artist and a high school art teacher so creativity is of great importance to me and my students! The prompt you mentioned which I think would work great with my students is “I remember” - as artmaking is always more powerful when it is personal. My students use prompts like this in their sketchbooks and I think they’d really get into this one! But really... I think allllll of these prompts would be amazing drawing starters!
I'd love to gift our fourth and fifth grade teachers with the amazing Creativity Project books. The prompts are so wonderful for opening our students' writing experiences. A personal favorite is the 5 min. "I remember". prompt.
As a new principal this year, I have been getting into classes and reading aloud some of my favorite books. I thought that I would start to visit as a guest writer in classrooms with your book. I am excited to do this with my school to write with them and get to know each of them better. Thanks for all you do for teachers and kids!
Kate Messner’s prompt about the elevator buttons....it’s like a create your own I Survived book!
Hello Colby! I am an Instructional Literacy Coach in a K-5 building and am always excited to support the teachers in engaging and motivating their Ss to write. I love that this book does just that. I am excited to share the book, and several of the prompts. Right now, I could see this being awesome for some small group instruction. Ss could choose different prompts and form small groups based on their interests. Thanks again for the opportunity to get teachers and kids pumped up about reading and writing.
I absolutely love the elevator prompt. So many of my 5th graders are interested in historical fiction and non-fiction. I think this would prompt some amazing responses both written and drawings.
I love the prompt about the tree!
The ‘I remember’ prompt was a simple yet effective way for students to sit and reflect on moments of their lives that stand out. It allowed me to get to connect with them on a deeper level. I’m excited to try more of these prompts and see where the writing takes my students.
Thanks Colby for this opportunity! The Creativity Project is on my TBR list and I'd love to share it with others at my school! The prompt you shared that I loved is the tree out of place. I can't wait to try this on Tuesday!
It’s amazing how a prompt as simple as I Remember can help to generate a list of powerful, emotional memories. I know when I tried it at your session at NCTE in Houston, it immediately helped me to pull up a really special memory from my childhood. This book is on my wishlist, but I haven’t been able to get it yet. I’d love to use it to inspire my class during their daily free writing time.
My third graders participate in something called the pillow project. A notebook is sent home and the students then can write to their parent or sibling, or someone in their household about anything they want. When finished writing, they place the notebook underneath the pillow of the person they wrote. Then that person can respond and place it underneath the student's pillow for a response. Students will be asked to bring in their pillow notebook sporadically to be entered into a drawing for actively participating in the project. I think that having copies of this book would be a great resource for students who may be having trouble deciding on something to write or simply need an idea starter.
Hi there! Eighth grade ELA teacher here! I love the wild time-traveling elevator prompt! I used it with my history loving first grader...his mind went crazy with the story he began to tell me. Passing your book along to my 7th and 8th grade colleagues would be a blessing!
Good Morning! Teaching 3rd in Indiana I am constantly reminding myself to not allow my students to lose their creativity. We are CONSTANTLY responding to reading and in test prep mentality, to the point that when you try to be creative the students are looking for a "right" or "wrong" answer. I LOVE the I Remember .... prompt. The ability to constantly add to that list so that students will always have something to draw from, and to remind them that there really is no right or wrong when they are drawing from their own experiences in writing. I would love to share the additional copies with each of my upper grade level teams to remind them to allow their kiddos to have time to just be creative! :)
I enjoyed the possibilities with each prompt you suggested. As a youth services librarian, these prompts make me want to start a writing club. When I was a teacher, I had used another book with prompts as bell-ringers, but I love that this particular book is supported by children's authors. As an aside, your enthusiasm is outstanding :)
I've used a few prompts in the past. Our librarian has a copy and I was able to borrow hers. I like to use Debbie Ridpath Chi's door prompt. I use it around the same time period when I give the children a Picture prompt of a red door in a stone wall. That states something to the effect that --"Noone has been permitted to enter the door for year. One day it is mysteriously open." We like to see if the 2 stories are similar at all, if they build off of each other, or if they are completely different.
I have used the prompts & responses to the prompts as mini read alouds. The children really enjoy hearing what their favorite authors come up with from a prompt. They also see that the prompt can inspire a story and not just spark a reaction to a prompt. Great for modeling the differences in creativity & thinking. There are some children who are afraid to put themselves out there.
What a great resource! We need this for our push to help inspire our students to love writing as much as they love reading. Thanks for all you do, Colby Sharp! Would love to share this with the teachers in my building.
Honoured to have my prompt used as an example in your video! And how exciting that the book is now available in paperback, hurray!
I like the I Remember prompt as it does not require much prior knowledge and as a teacher I can customize the prompt to fit my topic of the day.
I teach first - so I have to be creative with the prompts in the book to tone them down to my littles. I loved the tree out of place one. I personally LOVE Peter Brown (#crush) so I chose his. In my class we do a lot of think out of the box Thursday where I give them a simple pic or part of a pic and they have to built it into a design - example: looks like a raindrop but the heading says it is not a raindrop. So I took the tree prompt and used it to take the students farther with think outside the box Thursday. We talked about what it means to feel out of place and then set them loose to draw what a tree would look like if it was out of place and where that would be. I was able to put a little setting review in there too, so that was a bonus! Thanks for creating this book and offering to share it with others. I know just who I would share the books with to promote this type of creativity and writing!
As a writing teacher, we do a journal prompt every day. They always have an option to write whatever they want, but I also put up a prompt as well. I love the one about the door by Debbie Ridpath Ohi. This group of 5th graders loves to write creative stories and I think they would love this one.
I would love the book for different ideas to have them write about!
I love the I Remember prompt. It blends beautifully with Lucy Calkins’ Small Moments lessons for personal narratives. Some of the shorter prompts like the door one can also be used along with The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.
I like them all but I really like the elevator prompt - it could easily be adapted to different subjects/topics (biomes, continents/countries/locales, famous people, etc.)
Oh wow! What a fantastic book! I teach 5th grade in Norman, Oklahoma. I would love to use this with my class as I have been looking for something to take my kids’ writing to a new level. This goes along so well with our 40 Book Challenge. We just received classroom sets of MacBooks and I could incorporate the technology with the writing. I would love to get a copy of the book!
I am a reading specialist and a librarian. I am now working with a 5th grader who loves loves loves history. He is homeschooling with his mom and I would share Kate Messner's prompt. He would love it and so would his mom. In fact, I have been wanting to get your book for their whole family. I am the librarian and reading specialist in a pre-school ages 3-6. One of my goals this year is to use prompts to write collectively with my kinder classes.
I haven't purchased the book yet, but seeing this video makes me want to snag it right now. I really liked the last prompt you featured--the one where they can get off the elevator into different time periods in history. I love love LOVE how this could be cross-curricular and they could choose to tie in something they've learned about in Social Studies OR just choose a favorite time period they may know much about. What a fun, fun prompt!
My goodness! I need this book in my classroom. My fifth graders need so much help generating topics. "I remember" for five minutes is going into my lesson plans for this week!! Peter Brown, such a fun, wing-nut! SHWHAT disappeared in the river?! This could get my true crime aficionados rolling on some spooky stories (and me too). A time traveling elevator?! The I Survived kiddos will take this idea and run!
I bought this for my nephew, but didn't get one for my classroom! I teach 3rd and would love the I remember for our personal narratives. I also love the tree prompt! We are reading Wishtree and they have really become attached to that book.
Thank you for sharing how you use this awesome book! I have read little bits to my 4th grade students and used some of the prompts for writing prompts. We are working on doing more quick-writes in class and I am thinking I would love to try the 'I remember' prompt with a quick write. It is fun to ask the kids to do a prompt, and then share with them how another author responded. This would be fun as a blogging project perhaps with other classrooms.
Hi Colby! I loved hearing you at the Hamline Summer Literacy Institute this summer and started following you after hearing you speak. I loved the "I remember" and "Tree " prompt. Being a 2nd grade teacher at a Spanish immersion, I think these would be great prompts for students to start feeling more comfortable writing in Spanish. Thanks!!!
This book looks amazing! I am part of an incredible 6th grade ELA team of teachers. I know we'd all use this book in our classrooms. I love all 5 writing prompts that you showed...especially the elevator and the I remember. (We're about to start working on personal narratives so this one has me thinking!) Thanks for all you do for your own students and all the other students you are reaching through teachers (like me) who read your blog and view your RUclips channel!!
I have to get that book!! I love Kate Messner’s prompt with the elevator door. I think it would be fun to have the students create a digital storyboard showing their sequence of events. They can use images from Adobe Spark to insert and type their text on the images to illustrate their story.
I love the tree prompt and the elevator prompt. I think both require Ss to take on a unique perspective. I do not have a copy of the book yet, so I have not used it yet.
I love Kate Messner’s prompt about the time-traveling elevator. I have to get your book, The Creativity Project! It reminds me of the wonderful prompts in The Mysteries of Harris and it’s companion book, The Chronicles of Harris Burdick. My students get so creative with these mysteries!
For me, it is a toss up between Debbie Ridpath Ohi's prompt and Linda Sue Park's. I really like the idea of Ohi's "door" idea and I would love for students to come back to their entry every few days to add to the story. Oh the possibilities! I would absolutely love to give this book to each teacher in my ELA department. Thank you for producing this great work!
The Creativity Project is out in paperback!!!! As a media specialist, I shared this book with my teachers when it first came out. One has used prompts from it every year. She also uses the document camera to share the prompt. I'd LOVE to win this giveaway to gift a copy to each of the 4th and 5th grade teachers in my building. The Kate Messner prompt . . . I can't wait to see what our students create from that!
I have just been given the opportunity to be a Ready Writing coach, so this book would give me plenty of ideas for practice prompts!
I absolutely love this! I am a tree-lover, so the "tree out of place" stood out to me! I just love the ideas for stirring the imaginations of students in this way. I even want to use this with our faculty as a PD starter! :)
Love the Peter Brown prompt! I'm going to try it with my 3rd graders!
I'd love to share these books with my colleagues! And thanks for the reminder to get this book out and use it! I've used the tree out of place and the kids loved it, and I can't wait to try the elevator one. So exciting, but I've already used up my quota of exclamation marks :)
Hi Colby! Absolutely love the I remember. Since my focus is ideas this week, this activity has landed into my plans. I’m hooked at idea one and excited to use the ideas from this book to spark my writers. I work with my sister from another mister through the inclusion model. We’re very lucky and she works with our babies the following year. It’s my second year working with her and we are planning a day to cross curricular plan so that we can grow writers through 5th. This would to share with my co teachers and staff would be awesome and a great way to grow writers. Thank you for all that you do! We’ve creating readers who love watching what you videos to learn what we should read next. It’s our own version of previews before the movie(aka reading lesson) for the day.
Thank you for your posting once again. I am always inspired by what you share and it helps me to motivate my own 5th graders with reading and writing. I've been eyeballing this book for quite some time, and I really like the 4th prompt about throwing something into the river and watching it float away. Aside from being a great writing prompt, you can also use it in a class discussion to build speaking and listening skills and reinforce questioning strategies. Who threw something in the river? What did the throw in the river? Why did they throw something in the river? What happened after it floated away? After having these discussions, you can inspire students to write because the answers to any of these questions could be its own narrative. You can definitely use this to inspire writing flashbacks and flashforwards, or multiple perspectives. So excited to try this!!
Wow - what an incredible resource for teachers and students! I would use this in so many ways. I imagine it being an incredible tool for generating ideas for personal narratives (I remember), for fiction (Debbie Ohi's prompt), historical fiction (the elevator). More than that, I can see using this as an integral tool to use within reader's and writer's workshop (or during soft start in the morning) as a student tool and choice to continue to develop their writing lives. I am currently a literacy coach and would love to share this book with the teachers I work with!
This book makes me so excited! My student will absolutely love this! I’d first start with Debbie Ohi’s prompt about the door knob. I know there would be many wild stories.
I haven't read it! I would love to share it and use it to learn with our new teachers!
I love the tree idea. I think it would allow for so much creativity! How can I get a hold of this resource? I would love to get myself a copy for my classroom.
As a Philippine Resident, I'm interested to try your book because of those cool prompts I've seen in this video. I love to make my own thoughts using my creativity skills.
I have just used The Creativity Project by showing it to certain avid readers and writers to peruse and possibly use, but after having watched this video I am going to start showing it to some classes, starting with 5th-we are going to start with the "I remember" to get them thinking about writing more during their biweekly visits to the library, and then I will periodically put others up on the doc camera, and I will show the other 4 you shared here first because they are all so good! I am curious how many of the Kate Messner dates coincide with a "Ranger in Time" titles as well as Lauren Tarshis "I Survived" titles, and will challenge students to find out. If I were to win a copy I would put it in my giveaway boxes that I put out three times a year: for school "Pioneer Mile" fundraiser as reward for finishing, right before winter break and then right before summer break as classes get all their library books turned in or taken care of.
I NEED this to give me permission to return to all the best ways to inspire writers of all ages. We are hyper focused on "writing" aka typing in a box for a standardized test.
I’d love to read kids response to Debbie Ohi’s prompt about the unusual door.
I live the last one by Kate Messner. I think it would be great to include time periods that relate to our content curriculum! I would love the copies of this book to do a book study with my 4th and 5th grade teachers!
I love this book. Do you also use the writing pieces from authors as mentor texts for reading standards as well? I can see the benefit with writing, but am curious if you use them for reading lessons as well. Thank you!
Hello Mr Sharp!!!
The prompt I love is the “I Remember” one. This would be an awesome way to generate ideas for personal narratives!
I would love to try all of these, especially number 5! We do a writing “warm up” everyday and this book would be perfect. Our school does not do traditional homework but this year we are trying a 5th grade requirement of 100 minutes a week of choice homework. The kids will choose from various menu and website options. This book would compliment that concept so well. Adding it to my teacher wishlist! Thank you!
Hi Mr. Sharp it's John
So many great nuggets, I REALLY loved the first prompt: "I remember..." Using this would be a great way to introduce small moments narrative writing with our 1st graders! All of these prompts invite creativity and excitement! I'd love the opportunity to dive into The Creativity Project and share with others!