8 Prewriting Activities to Get Student Writers Unstuck

When high school English teacher Cathleen Beachboard asked a struggling writer what made him get stuck, the student responded, “I feel like it’s hard before I even start.” 

The next day, Beachboard assigned a fresh writing prompt to the class: What is your absolutely dream perfect day? Again, the student froze. This time, Beachboard prompted him to zero in on the most exciting part of this perfect day. He responded quickly, “On a perfect day, I would get Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.” 

That’s all it took for him to kick into gear, Beachboard recalls, with the additional prompt providing a gateway through the difficult prewriting jitters. “You’ve just got to give them an in, and as soon as they have it, they’re not going to stop,” she says. 

Writing is hard, and students often become overwhelmed by a pileup of ideas, bewildered when organizing or choosing the right words, and worried about whether their writing will be good enough. “That combination of perfectionism, cognitive overload, uncertainty, and fear of evaluation can create paralysis before they ever write the first sentence,” Beachboard says. 

At times, the pressure that students feel around writing can even manifest as defiant or combative behavior—they might slam their notebooks shut, distract themselves by talking with friends, or put their heads down. When teachers “reduce those psychological barriers,” Beachboard notes, “students do not just become better writers, they become more willing to write in the first place.”

Here are eight low-stakes, fun prewriting activities designed to lower the barrier to entry. From writing out loud to finding the muse in music, these strategies ease prewriting pressure so kids can begin to write. 

Write Out Loud: To get her third graders over the prewriting butterflies and improve the structure of their writing, Kristen Evans devised a strategy she calls a verbal rehearsal. In the activity, students start by very briefly explaining to Evans how they’re going to approach their writing—how they’ll narrow down topics or structure their time, for example. Next, students rehearse their sentences and paragraphs by recording themselves speaking them aloud. As they listen to these recordings, they make adjustments and repeat the process until they feel like they have a solid foundation for the assignment. The exercise, Evans says, allows students “to play with language” and attend to how their writing sounds, which helps them create “more thoughtful, elaborated drafts before writing on paper.” 

Interview the Author: To help her students iron out ideas and feel mentally prepared to hit the page, seventh-grade language arts teacher Carly Van Der Wende uses a prewriting interview. To start, she shares one of her own stories as a model text, then students discuss their own ideas with a partner. As they talk, Van Der Wende circulates, listening in and occasionally encouraging students with intriguing ideas to share with the class. As a student presents an idea, she’ll model how to ask questions that help the student develop the idea. Finally, students interview each other in pairs about their stories, asking questions such as “Can you help me picture the character?” and “How were they feeling during the plot’s climax?” This thoughtful questioning helps students “visualize the scene more vividly,” writes Van Der Wende, while replacing initial writing anxiety “with fun and flexibility.”

Prep Writing via Debate: Should mammoths be brought back from extinction? In educator Michael Strong’s class, students debate hot-button issues, like the mammoth question, to clarify their perspectives and develop ideas—as well as alleviate writing anxiety—before tackling an essay on the topic. Strong starts the exercise by having students read two related articles by Yale scholars, then gives students a class period to debate the question, while helping them organize main arguments and supporting evidence. With the debate format doing the heavy prewriting lift, these conversations can be focused and brief, and then students begin to write. “I see writing as largely a matter of organizing one’s beliefs into a coherent fashion,” he writes on X.

Walk Through Writing: As a prewriting exercise for her 11th graders, Karla Hilliard creates a road map they can quite literally walk through. The process gets them out of their seats and collaborating with peers so that when they eventually face a dauntingly empty page, they do so with confidence and clarity. 

First, Hilliard hands pairs of students a stack of papers, each printed with different essay elements such as tension, dialogue, or contextual anchors, plus a few tasks such as “Brainstorm three possible titles using dialogue” or “Back then, I didn’t realize…” After laying their papers on the floor, students work through the prompts on the sheets and take notes, deliberating about different ways to tell the story. “The process encourages students to do their thinking upfront and test out ideas with peers,” writes Hilliard. After each round, they switch roles: The notetaker becomes the speaker. As they chat, Hilliard circulates around the room, observing as students “build their understanding of what great personal writing looks like if you really dedicate some time to thinking through what it is you want to say.” 

Sketching Storytellers: When high school students are struggling to start writing, education professor Jonathan Bartels pulls out a box of crayons and asks them, “If I asked you to draw a picture of your topic, do you think you could draw it?” Though they may be initially hesitant, Bartels jumps in by modeling the sketches they could make, emphasizing the ideas behind the drawings rather than quality—this strategy does not require art skills, he reassures students. Venn diagrams, for example, can help students visually compare and contrast relationships between important characters, while comic strips can help them lay out a story’s sequence of events and structure. The “unconventional mode can work with or against their customary thinking patterns,” writes Bartels, “producing valuable insights regarding overall purpose, structure, [and] use of evidence.”

Feel the Vibes Outdoors: As a child, renowned poet Mary Oliver found solace walking in the woods. Today, much of her work is inspired by the tranquility and beauty of nature. When her upper elementary students are spinning on a writing assignment, Montessori teacher Donna Paul takes them on nature sensory walks around the schoolyard or to a shady spot under a tree, to ground their descriptive writing in the real world outside the classroom. They start by exploring the natural environment around them––the sounds of birds or the warmth of the sun, for example. Paul prompts them with questions like “What do you hear?” or “What textures stand out?” which students use to write a descriptive paragraph for a story or poem once they’re back in the classroom. 

To up the challenge for his high school students, English teacher Tanner Jones asks students to describe natural objects using 20 adjectives or phrases. Over time, observations go from broad descriptions like the leaf is yellow to beautiful analogies like the leaf is a heart with veins receding in size from the central stem. When students go out into the real world, they “notice details and write with greater clarity and confidence,” writes Donna Paul, making writing fun and tangible for students who are laboring to express their ideas. 

Gamify Prewriting: By participating in collaborative games, students can engage in prewriting thinking in a low-stakes, playful way. For example, Jocelyn Greene, executive director of Child’s Play NY, has students work in groups to invent a product, then script a commercial that includes a funny or dramatic reenactment of what happens when you don’t have the product, as well as a call to action that incites the viewer to use the item, with at least two compelling reasons why.

Students then use the commercials as creative fodder for writing their essays, using persuasive language connected to the unit. “Whichever activity you choose, you can be confident that students will be excited to work together to creatively generate ideas and feel prepared to tackle their next writing assignment,” Greene says.

Brainstorm With Music: Just like stories, music is rife with tension, setting, and characters—and listening to it can help move students beyond the wheel-spinning prewriting phase and into rich creative brainstorming. To inspire her students, elementary school teacher Elizabeth Peterson plays tunes like Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” or Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance.” She asks her students to close their eyes, immerse themselves in the music, and play a story out in their minds. The rhythm and energy of the tune helps them weave their narratives together. Next, students map major scenes through storyboards, which can “become the foundation for writing a short story, telling the story aloud, or even acting it out in small groups,” writes Peterson.