#732

across the fence

#731

financial supporter patches for politicians

[This seems like the right week to post this one. And if you don’t know why… you could start by reading this editorial.]

#730

something worth knowing

#729

pirate curses

[so… I tagged this one as informative/expository writing because I guess you are just describing something, but if you think about it… it really should be persuasive because a really good description would persuade someone not to touch that treasure chest… and to make it really good, you should probably embed that description in a story, so that there’s some consequences and motivation for opening it… so, this prompt, like so many others, is actually some kind of overlapping Venn diagram of Common Coreness… real writing doesn’t play nice, does it? I made this comment recently: the best non-fiction I know is narrative. But, it’s really all three at once. Fine, I’ll make a picture to show it:

For examples of writers who hit the center of that Venn diagram, I’d probably point to these:

• Michael Lewis: Moneyball and The Big Short 
• David Foster Wallace: Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing…
• George Saunders: The Braindead Megaphone

All this to say, I struggle with putting prompts up and assigning them a Common Core category… it seems pretty rare and artificial to have a prompt that fits in just one category. Ugh. I don’t know who to see about this.

Also, as long as I’ve got you on the line, and I’m commenting on this one… fair warning to teachers: use this prompt at your own risk.]

UPDATE: @rogre with this: “A pirate interests himself with uncommon ore, not Common Core.”

#728

Hitler is to evil as _____ is to good.

#727

too late for earth, too early for the stars

This is writing prompt #703… but it’s been reworked based on some excellent feedback… feedback about simplifying the wording of things, which I’ll try to incorporate more often. If anyone else has specific prompts that they think need to be reworded or simplified, please let me know. I really appreciate the feedback. Sometimes I forget what Milton Glaser said: “Just enough is more.”

#726

“the story you tell yourself”

I really try to keep this blog just to writing prompts, or at least to spread these out… but there have just been so many books showing up, that I have to say…

THANK YOU!

A huge thanks to all those who bought a book for our classroom library recently. These are some of the books that have shown up from our wish list over the last few months. We are so grateful. 

And I have to give a really huge thanks to Kelly and Sharon at Tyl Middle School who sent us almost that whole stack of books in the bottom right corner of the picture. Wow. Thank you all. 

I also have to mention again and again how great the Clear Eyes, Full Shelves blog has been to our classroom. I heard a rumor today that they were sending us their copy of this book. Awesome.

Also, as long as we’re already on the topic, there’s now another way to get books onto the shelves of our classroom library (well, hopefully they actually won’t be on the shelves because they’ll be in students’ hands) through the Adopt a Classroom site.

#725

Are you worth your weight in gold?

Thanks to @edrethink, @rogre, and a few others for helping me think through this one.

Update: 

Pablophonic writes this about the prompt: “More importantly, I’d like to see a ransom note justified with this logic. ‘If you ever want to see your son again, assuming he’s worth his weight in gold, his current market value is $1.6 million… and dropping…’”

Update #2:

Pierce Presley points out this glaring error on my part: “gold is measured in troy ounces rather than the avoirdupois ones we’re used to, and that’s the unit the markets use. A Troy ounce is equal to 192/175 avoirdupois ounce, and there are 12 Troy ounces in a Troy pound. So a 200 lb. person would overvalue themselves by $566,666.67 if they failed to convert Troy ounces to avoirdupois ounces. Also, gold is in a bit of a slump lately and is just over $1,500 per Troy ounce right now.”