We are so close to the end of the year and your students are probably ready for summer. We have put together several 1st grade writing prompts about summer to get you started.
3 Summer Related 1st Grade Writing Prompts
Writing Prompt 1: Tell me what your summer goal is. How do you plan to achieve that goal?
We all know how important goal setting is for people of all ages to grow and thrive, but it is especially important to show your young students how to set goals and create a plan to achieve them. This prompt focuses specifically on goals that can be achieved over the course of the summer.
This prompt will, of course, help students work on sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling. But it will also test their critical thinking skills as they will have to figure out what steps they will need to take to reach their summer goal.
Encourage your students to pick realistic goals. They probably won’t be able to fly to the moon by August - although it would be pretty impressive if they did pull that off! Avoid telling them that those goals aren’t attainable. Instead maybe ask if they want to read more books, become a faster runner, or learn to paint their favorite animal.
PROJECT IDEA
Start by giving your students examples of common goals and how they can be achieved. For example, the goal could be that a person wants to be healthier. To carry out that goal someone might decide that they will exercise for 15 minutes a day and eat 3 servings of vegetables a day. Now your 1st graders may need a little help coming up with the steps they will need to take in order to meet their goals but ultimately you want them to be realistic. Have your students accompany their writing with an illustration of them achieving their goal and create an inspiring classbook.
Writing Prompt 2: If you could go anywhere in the universe and do anything for summer vacation, where would you go and what would you do?
This writing prompt is fun because it goes beyond the typical, “If you could go on vacation anywhere in the world where would you go?” because students can choose anywhere on Earth or in space! This writing prompt allows your first graders to let their imaginations run. They can brainstorm creative ideas for their summer vacation and you will be extremely entertained by what they come up with.
This prompt has your students narrate and describe their experience helping them develop fundamental writing foundations for the future.
Let your students know that there are no limits when it comes to this writing prompt. They can take it as far as they want. Is their ideal vacation to go to Jupiter and eat grilled cheese all day? Sounds like an interesting piece of writing. If they want to talk about going back to Florida with their family to visit grandma, that is totally fine also.
PROJECT IDEA
Have your students close their eyes and visualize themselves on their ideal summer vacation. After the visualization exercise, have your students write down what they saw and use those notes to describe where they would go and what they would do over the summer. Once your students write about their perfect summer vacations, have them add an illustration of themselves on this vacation and put everything together into an adventure filled classbook!
Writing Prompt #3: You have suddenly made friends with a talking polar bear living in Antarctica! Write a letter to your polar bear friend describing what summer is like where you live.
This prompt is a fun spin on the traditional writing activity that asks students to describe aspects of summer. What first grader wouldn’t love to write a letter to a talking polar bear?
Your first graders will develop valuable descriptive writing skills while also working on letter writing. Your students may have trouble seeing the point of learning how to write a letter and you may hear, “Why do we have to learn this? No one writes letters anymore.” But they will need to know how to format a letter in the future to send formal emails, apply for scholarships, complete college letters of interest and more. This prompt is a fun way to bring letter writing into the classroom and remove the stigma associated with this form of writing.
PROJECT IDEA
You can either give your students a list of words that describe summer and play a word association game to help get the gears turning before they start writing their letter. Have your students write down the words they want to use in their prompt. Teach them how a letter should be formatted and let them begin writing. Your students can complete their project by drawing a picture of them and their polar bear friend either in Antarctica or in their town during summer! This project will make a wonderful classbook that your students and their families can look back on for years to come!
Additional resources
Want to explore other ideas, tips and thoughts on how to continue improving your students’ writing as the year comes to a close? Head over to our online teacher’s lounge to browse through the suggestions and resources. You never know what may spark a great idea for your next writing assignment!
And, of course, don’t forget that while you’re visiting, sign up to receive your free classbook publishing kit. Your students will be thrilled to become published authors and have a way to remember an excellent class project!