I don't know what to write about

  Can you hear that voice? During Daily 5 "centers", Work on Writing is the hardest for my second graders. They struggle with coming up with things to write about. Teaching in an urban setting, a good chunk of my kiddos do not have the life experiences to draw from to give them ideas. We live minutes from Lake Michigan, and some have never been there! So when faced with a blank piece of paper staring them down, I hear that phrase several times a day.
   We are working on building independence. At the beginning of the year, we made a list of things that they could write about and wrote it on the inside cover of their writing journals. In my writing center we have paper to make post cards, paper to make lists, and paper to write stories or letters to friends. I had to tell them that they could only make one list a day, because that is all they would do if I let them.
   I was looking at leftover journals that I had that were missing pages, and taking up precious cabinet space. I couldn't give them to kids with only half the pages, so I thought: "What if I turned them into kind of a shared journal?" So my journal prompts were born!

 On the cover, I asked a couple questions to get their brain thinking. Then on the inside cover I made a vocabulary page with the words and matching pictures. So, if they had never been to the beach, then they could see a few things that they could do there and be able to write about it. So far the beach one is their favorite!

  You can find them in my TpT Store HERE. I am going to make this a "growing bundle" and will be adding more as I go. My store will be on sale November 30 - December 1st, so catch them on sale!

Happy writing y'all!