October Writing Picture Prompts with Word Bank and Sentence Starters

About this resource

A child who can say a whole sentence about a pumpkin and then writes "p" 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: twelve October

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.

EVERYTHING INSIDE (52 pages)

• 36 prompt pages — 12 October prompts x 3 pages each, in contents order
• 12 word banks — 5 or 6 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, 36 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
• 1 page of cut-apart sentence checklists — four cards, five checks each (capital letter, finger spaces, a

word-bank word, a period, read it to someone)

• 1 writing tracker (one student, 12 prompts) and 1 class grid (whole class x 12 prompts), type-in or print
• 1 family page — the week's prompt and its words, three plain steps for home, four writing rules, 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 divider tabs
• Start Here, a how-to-read-a-page key, and a contents page that gives every page number

The Twelve Prompts

The Pumpkin ("The pumpkin is…"), Apples ("Apples are…"), Fall Leaves ("The leaves are…"), The Owl ("The owl

can…"), The Spider ("A spider has…"), Bats ("Bats can…"), The Night Sky ("At night I see…"), A Rainy Day ("When

it rains…"), Corn ("The corn is…"), My Coat ("I wear my…"), The Fire Truck ("The fire truck…"), My Harvest

Basket ("In my basket…"). Twelve prompts is three a week for the month, or one a day with a Write It page for

the fast finisher.

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.

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 slate tone, so nobody's paper is obviously the easy one.

The Pictures And The Rules

Every prompt is one picture a child can name in a word — a pumpkin, an owl, a fire truck — printed big, with

the word under it; naming the picture is never the task. Every word-bank word has its own picture. 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, the family page and the binder cover 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

or PowerPoint 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. 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.