August Writing Picture Prompts with Word Bank and Sentence Starters

About this resource

A child who can say a whole sentence about a notebook and then writes "n" and stops does not need a bigger picture. That child needs the first words already on the line to trace, then the same words printed to read and finish, then a page with nothing but the picture and the words to pull from. This is that: eight back-to-school picture prompts, three pages each, the same picture and the same word bank on all three, so the whole room writes about the same thing and nobody's paper is obviously the easy one. Perfect for the first weeks of school or any teacher getting students back into writing routines.

EVERYTHING INSIDE (40 pages)

• 24 prompt pages — 8 back-to-school prompts x 3 pages each, in contents order
• 8 word banks — 4 or 5 words each with a picture beside every word, the same bank on all three pages of a prompt
• 2 word walls — every word from every bank, 8 words, once in color and once in heavy black outline for a copier
• 1 free-writing page — a draw box and six writing rules, no prompt, for a fast finisher or the open writer
• 1 page of 6 cut-apart sentence checklists — five checks each (capital letter, finger spaces, a word-bank word, a period, read it to someone); the six sit edge to edge, so it takes three cuts
• 1 writing tracker (one student, 8 prompts) and 1 class grid (whole class x 8 prompts), type-in or print
• 1 family page — the week's prompt and its words, three plain steps for home, writing rules for your child, and a note box each way
• 1 filled example — an invented student's tracker, every number on it read off its own table
• 1 phrase bank — progress-note, family-note and next-step starters, plus the talk-first questions to ask before the pencil moves
• 1 binder cover with a spine label and six tabs
• Start Here, a how-to-read-a-page key, and a contents page that gives every page number

The Eight Prompts

My Notebook ("My notebook is…"), A Ruler ("I use a ruler to…"), The Computer ("The computer is…"), The School Bus ("The school bus is…"), My Folder ("I put my work in a…"), The Paint Brush ("I paint with a…"), The School Calendar ("The school calendar…"), A Bookmark ("My bookmark holds…"). Eight prompts is one a day for a school week, or use them across two weeks with a free-writing page for the fast finisher. All back-to-school essentials: notebooks, rulers, computers, buses, folders, paint brushes, calendars, and bookmarks.

The Three Pages For Every Prompt

1. Trace It — the sentence starter in dotted letters on the first writing rule. The student traces it and finishes the sentence with a word from the bank.

2. Finish It — the same starter in solid print, drawn with the same letter shapes on the same rule. The student reads it, finishes it, and keeps going on the rules below.

3. Write It — the picture and the word bank only. Six empty rules; the student writes from scratch.

Every student page starts with a big name line and one short instruction with a picture. The dots on the name line are the version code, there for the teacher: no student page carries a level word, and every page is the same tone, so nobody's paper is obviously the easy one.

The Pictures And The Rules

Every prompt is one big picture with its word printed under it, never a scene, and every word-bank word has its own picture. If a child gives a picture a different name, you say the word and move on; naming the picture is never the task. The starters are drawn on a real primary rule (a solid top line, a dashed middle line, a heavy bottom line) with the same letter shapes as this store's Letter Formation Handwriting Tracing pack, so the traced starter and the read starter look alike and sit exactly on the lines. Pictures are from the Google Noto set (Apache-2.0) on the color pages and the Microsoft Fluent High Contrast set (MIT) on the ink-saver wall. Every page prints clean on a black-and-white copier.

Type In, Or Print

The name and date lines, the tracker, the class grid and the family page are type-in fields in any PDF reader. The writing rules are always pencil work. This is a fillable PDF; it is not a Google Slides, PowerPoint or Google Docs file.

Who This Is For

Kindergarten, first and second grade classrooms, self-contained and resource rooms, and any teacher with three kinds of writer at one table. Use it at the start of school, for homework practice, or anytime you need quick picture-prompted writing with built-in differentiation. The talk-first questions on the how-to page are written for a paraprofessional or a volunteer to run the table; the family page sends the same prompt home.

What This Is, And What It Is Not

A month of picture-prompt writing pages with the record-keeping around it. It is not a writing curriculum, not an assessment, and not a claim about any student's age or rate of progress. The how-to page has a blank line for your district's own criterion.