When I taught elementary grades and even middle school, as part of our morning work, students would write in their journals, whether answering a question on the board or completing a writing prompt I had given. Let’s dive deeper into Make Writing Fun: Creative Daily Journal Writing Prompts and discover how a few minutes of writing each day can transform your classroom into a hub of imagination. You’ll see students grow more confident, expressive, and excited to share their stories, one journal page at a time.
Why Daily Journaling Builds Confident, Creative Writers
It was essential for students to write every single day to become fluent and confident writers. Students would also illustrate their daily writing, and the journal made for such a wonderful compilation of their writing progress throughout the school year. Now, I do the same for my two children that I homeschool. It’s been so neat seeing their ideas and writing abilities grow and flourish.
Incorporating Writing Across All Subjects
Writing is so multifaceted that students can practice writing within every subject you teach. Check out our blog post about Cross-Curricular Fall Writing Ideas.
The Power of Daily Writing Practice
Daily, isolated writing is an important habit for students to practice what they’ve learned from direct writing instruction time as well. Whether students write within other subjects or they write for morning work, as an early finisher, or in a writing center/station, it’s just important that they are writing every day. Just like the adage: the more a student reads, the better a reader they become, the same goes for writing.
Introducing Creative Writing Journals That Inspire Young Authors
We created two specific and different creative writing journals for students to give them fresh writing prompt ideas, a designated area for illustrating, and targeted ways to enhance their writing so they never hit writer’s block.
180 Sentence Starters Writing Prompts: A Movie-Inspired Creative Journal
How to Build Student Buy-In Through Storytelling
I always start my creative writing classes with the question, “What is your favorite movie or TV show?” Not only is it a great icebreaker, but it also leads the way into how I gain student buy-in for writing.
From Script to Story: Connecting Writing to Movies
After discussing everyone’s favorite movies and shows and connecting over which students like the same things, I always ask, “Did you know that your favorite movies and TV shows started as writing? Words on a page. Screenplays. Scripts. Novels.” Some of them express that they never thought of that idea. I go on to tell them that movies and shows are just words brought to visual life. Writing is a potential movie or TV show. When you write, you can play the words in your mind like a movie. By adding sensory words and adjectives, your words leap off the page and become a live-action movie within your imagination.
This idea generated our theme for 180 Sentence Starters Writing Prompts. Students get excited to write as they imagine that the more details they add to a story, the more the story comes to life as a movie in their minds. This creative writing journal’s movie theme inspires students to think outside the box, not just as a student completing an assignment, but as the director of this movie or even the star of the show!
What’s Inside the 180 Sentence Starters Writing Journal
This creative writing journal has 8 main genres: Fantasy, Mystery, Adventure, Science Fiction, Realistic Fiction, Historical Fiction, Suspense, Humor, and four bonus graphic-novel style prompts and comic templates.
Each genre contains 22 different story starters, paving the way for creativity and an abundance of fun writing ideas. At the top of each page is a stage for students to illustrate their story. Students can illustrate their stories after they write, or they can illustrate before they write.
Visuals-First Storytelling for Reluctant Writers
Illustrating before writing is an approach called “visuals-first storytelling.” It allows even the most reluctant writers to ease into writing and brainstorm ideas from their own drawings and sketches to generate a wonderful story.
Learn More in Our Course: Soar into Writing with Visual Magic
We talk more about our “visuals-first storytelling” in our writing course, Soar into Writing with Visual Magic. It’s a course for teachers, so they can learn how to transform writing in their classrooms.
Soar into Writing transforms reluctant writers into confident storytellers by using the power of Canva. Through creative prompts, choose-your-own-path adventures, and visual planning tools, even your most hesitant students will go from “I don’t know what to write” to “Hey, I created a book!” Check out our course here!
Our creative writing journal offers flexibility, too. Students can write a simple short story for each prompt, or the beginning of a story that they can then turn into a longer story for a writing unit. Additionally, students can revisit their journals and pick the start of a story to expand on for a longer writing project.
Flexible Ways to Use This Journal
- Daily short story practice
- Launch point for longer narrative units
- Early finisher activity or writing center
- Graphic novel–style bonus prompts and templates
Additionally, the graphic-novel style bonus prompts and templates offer fun variety, especially for those students who love graphic novels. Even the most resistant writers also find writing comics and graphic novels engaging and motivating.
Grab our 180 Sentence Starters here!
Student Creative Writing Journal: 180 Story Prompts/Cards
Our second creative writing journal, Student Creative Writing Journal: 180 Story Prompts/Cards, is based on the idea of Choose Your Own Adventure books. Do you remember those? I loved them. In those novels, the reader would reach a certain chapter and be presented with two paths the story could take. To take a particular path, the book would tell you to turn to a specified page to change the trajectory of the story. Those books were magical, so we created this particular journal with a magical theme, so students can understand how their words create literary magic.
This Creative Writing Journal works similarly to the Choose Your Own Adventure books. With 8 genres, 22 writing prompts each, and 4 bonus seasonal prompts, students will never run out of ideas that appeal to them. Within each prompt, three “Choose-Your-Own-Path” options are presented. Students can take the story in three different directions, or students can create their own options!
Even more ideas abound as students can dive into our Magic of 3 cards. At the end of our journal is 132 Magic of 3 Cards. Students choose 3 of these cards either randomly or with purpose to enhance their story. The Magic of 3 cards are general writing boosters that enrich students’ stories, from using sensory words to adding figurative language, from implementing flashbacks to adding fun ideas like time travel. Printing out the Magic of 3 cards and placing them in a pocket chart for the students to utilize in the classroom during all writing times is a great way for students to have easy access to diverse writing ideas.
Grab our 180 Writing Prompts here!
This journal gives students an abundance of writing inspiration and flexibility. Teachers can utilize this journal as a daily writing practice for short stories or a prompt for longer stories. This writing journal is also great for morning work, early finishers, and homeschools. We have formatted it for teachers to utilize this as a journal or even as a writing center with easy-to-cut writing cards.
Soar into Writing with Visual Magic
This journal is in our writing course, Soar into Writing with Visual Magic. Writing becomes exciting and joyful with our Canva-powered, visuals-first program. With even more resources, such as conferencing tools, leveled rubrics, and guidelines, conferencing and story showcase resources, and 12 video modules, we empower teachers to turn their students into soaring writers. Check out our course here:
Conclusion
Daily writing is one of the most powerful habits you can build with your students. Whether they’re journaling each morning, responding to creative prompts, or exploring writing through other subjects, every word they put on paper strengthens their skills and confidence as writers. Writing can be a creative adventure that lets students express themselves, think deeply, and bring their imaginations to life.
Our 180 Sentence Starters Writing Prompts and Student Creative Writing Journal: 180 Story Prompts/Cards were designed to make writing a joyful, daily experience. One filled with creativity, choice, and endless possibilities. With each prompt, illustration, and story path, students aren’t just writing… they’re growing as authors, storytellers, and imaginative thinkers