Monthly Writing Prompts Using A Scrapbook
It is so much fun to see student writing progress using monthly writing prompts. It’s even more fun to turn the monthly writing prompts into a Scrapbook. Scrapbooks make great student keepsakes! Here is how to make a Scrapbook with your kids that they will never forget.
Thematic Monthly Writing Prompts
Each month exciting events happen! The first day of school, leaves changing colors, making gingerbread cookies or watching adorable little chicks being born. What better way to capture these moments during the year than writing about it? It combines academics with a memorable events. You are also able to collect samples of writing, from the first month of school to the last month of school, and observe your students’ writing progress.
Illustrate The Monthly Writing Prompts
After they write their perspectives of the joyful events, have them illustrate their writing. Make these special and let them choose if they want to use markers, crayons or colored pencils. There is such humor and joy the kids have when looking back on the progression of their pictures. You never know if might have the next Picasso in your class!
Take Pictures
When these memorable events are taking place, take pictures. This could be a picture of each individual student OR a class picture. I like to do a mixture of both. I love to do individual pictures at the beginning of the school year and a few other times during the year but the majority of my photos include the entire class often wearing a fun headband that fits the occasion. Sometimes I even take photos of students in small groups. It’s fun for kids to look back at their classmates year after year.
Add Special Pages
I like to add special pages towards the end of the Scrapbook. I add pages such as a favorite field trip (or favorite part of a field trip), class party and the autograph page. Students love to write their names on everybody’s autograph pages, especially when using their favorite marker or crayon.
Putting the Scrapbook Together
This is the best part! There are two ways to complete this project – either work on this monthly (after students finish their part and you have printed the photos) OR collect the pages from each month and put the book together at the end of the year. I use a binder and find that it’s really easy to slip the pages into the page protectors but you can also glue the writing paper to colored construction paper and bind or staple all the construction paper together once the book is complete.
If you want to start your year with monthly writing pages for a scrapbook you can check out my resource. It has monthly writing prompt choices for the entire school year:
If you want to know how I teach my kindergarteners to write check out this blog post:
