Drawing as a Writing Prompt

Students always love their time in specials. However, they often only get to go to art, music, library, and physical education once a week. This is why teachers often find creative ways to incorporate essential academic skills with aspects students love. For instance, Directed Drawing and writing is a fun and engaging way to integrate art with instruction! Luckily, the Directed Drawing Full Year Bundle is ready to help students build their writing skills one step at a time. Students will love it when they get to use drawing as a writing prompt! 

Directed Drawing Full Year Bundle

This bundle of over 60 Directed Drawing and writing worksheet activities are perfect to fill your writing centers! There are 10 differentiated options to ensure that ALL students can work on the same drawing lesson at many writing levels. 

Best of all, there are directed drawing and writing for tons of themes. For instance, autumn includes a scarecrow, sunflower, and squirrel. Additionally, Thanksgiving includes a turkey, cornucopia, pilgrim, native girl, and Mayflower. Honestly, there is something for every season and event during the year! 

On top of all these differentiated options, there are over 25 video links for Directed Drawing videos! You can play these while walking around as students work. 

Check out all the excitement with the FREEBIE! 

Implementing Drawing as a Writing Prompt 

Honestly, there are so many ways to incorporate drawing as a writing prompt! I am excited to share a few favorite activities. 

Writing Compliments 

After the whole class finishes their directed drawing and writing template, invite the class to do a “gallery walk.” Before students start, leave a Post-it note beside each picture and assign secret partners. Students will study their partner’s drawing and write a compliment on the Post-it note. Students will love returning to their desks and reading their notes! 

Gallery Walk

When we took a trip to a local art gallery, we noticed that each piece of art had a small sign beside it. Students could read the sign to find out something special about the artwork. 

So, we decided to try this when using drawing as a writing prompt. After our directed drawing lesson, students received an index card to write a description of their artwork. Depending on ability, students described the colors they used, their favorite part, or their inspiration for drawing!

Honestly, this was such a powerful experience in the classroom! Everyone was quiet and respectful with a lot of reading going on! 

This was a wonderful way to encourage both reading and writing authentically.

Turning Directed Drawings into Class Books 

Using drawing as a writing prompt is a fantastic way to turn students into authors! Honestly, nothing makes students feel more like real authors than having their writing and illustrations in a professionally printed book! 

So, we used our directed drawing and writing projects and created a class book! Each student selected their favorite animal to draw to keep the process simple. Then, they wrote about it. 

To help support students, we selected a template. We used, “I know a zebra has stripes, but I wonder how the mother can remember her baby’s stripe pattern.“ The portion underlined changed with each animal. 

When students were happy with their writing, we turned the resulting pages into a photo book. Personally, we had a local photo store use online templates to make the books. So, we used them to insert photos of student drawings. Honestly, the results were amazing! 

We ordered a copy for each student as part of our Mother’s Day gifts! It was VERY exciting to finally see the finished books once they arrived!

The best part was reading them together and hearing students compliment each other on their drawings and writing! They definitely feel like published authors now, and they are more eager to write than ever!

Drawings as a Writing Prompt in a Literacy Center 

The Directed Drawing Full Year Bundle works great as a literacy center! Since the steps are on the writing paper, students can complete them by studying the small changes and reading the words underneath. 

Then, they use their own drawing as the topic of the writing task! There are several options to differentiate the templates quickly. Best of all, students are so engaged since they write about something that interests them. 

To keep the centers exciting for students, they change based on the season. Students can pick between 2 or 3 prompts for each theme before we switch them out. 

It’s so nice to have a writing center planned for the whole year so quickly and easily! 

Teacher-Led Directed Drawing 

Depending on student abilities, the class can complete a drawing as a writing prompt! First, I draw part of the picture. Then, a student draws the same part. You can even project a Directed Drawing Video for your students to draw along with us! 

Students spend so much time in school learning essential content. So, they deserve fun and exciting lessons. Thankfully, the Directed Drawing Full Year Bundle has tons of options! Students will love drawing as a writing prompt!

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