Journal Writing Prompts for Students for May

The month of May marches in many inspirations for student's journal writing. It's easy to use seasons, holidays and celebrations as a starting point for creating unique journal writing prompts that encourage students to practice well earned writing skills as well as to challenge them to try out new ones.

10 Fun Journal Writing Prompts for May

1. Write an acrostic poem about mothers in honor of Mother's Day using words or phrases beginning with each letter in the word "mother." Here's one of my favorite student examples of an acrostic poem for Mother's Day.

Make
Omelets.
Take
Her
Eggs to her
Room.
She deserves it.

2. Write a rhyming poem to your mother or a special lady in your life.

3. Remember Peter Piper and his pickled peppers? Try your hand at writing a tongue twister that uses May as a both a verb and a month. Here's an example.

Mother, may I make more macaroni on a May morning? May we mark it for a Monday in May?

4. May is the fifth month of the year. Write a letter to the number five explaining why five is important. Be serious or be funny. Either way, here's a high five to you for being original.

5. Last month many seeds were planted. Pick a seed of choice. It can be a flower, vegetable or fruit seed. Write a non-fiction explanation of the life of the seed over the next few months.

6. Choose a holiday in May such as Cinco de Mayo, Mother's Day, May Pole Day or Memorial Day and write what you know about the history of this holiday. Don't worry. If you're not sure about the history of the holiday, write about the costums you're familiar with and add questions about the history that you'd like to know more about. There are no wrong answers. You may know more than you think and good questions are just as valid as good answers.

7. You are no doubt already thinking about the end of school. Write a paragraph, or more, about the most fascinating thing you have learned in school this year. Why is this your number one choice?

8. Summer is coming. Create a list of three things you hope to do this summer. Tell readers why this is on your list and how you hope to make it happen.

9. Memorial Day is a holiday in honor of those who have died serving their country in a war. Write a letter to a real or an anonymous soldier telling them about you.

10. Write a short story about Mrs. May having an emergency and asking Mr. June to please come early to relieve her.

You can see that these journal writing prompts reinforce the spelling and capitalization of the months, challenge students to think of vocabulary words by alphabet and encourage both fiction and non-fiction writing. These journal writing prompts also span across the curriculum to include math, science and history.

While some journal writing prompts may seem at best like busy work or at worst just plain silly, teachers know there's a method to the madness and that many skills and challenges can be buried like treasure inside of a simple writing prompt.