We all have an innate love of stories. They spark magical thoughts and improve willingness to communicate feelings, thoughts and experiences. A good story stays with you and can shape understanding, language development and writing motivation.
When writing stories, the difficult part is often getting started. That's where story starters or writing prompts come in. Story starters spark children's imagination, helping them to imagine the plot, the setting, or the characters and then build their own story around them.
When we launched Pobble, we didn’t know just how popular it would become. Now, we have a community of hundreds of thousands of teachers around the world logging on to find our free, daily writing lesson ideas to inspire their young writers.
Click through to find a unique, engaging image every day of the year, with story starters, analytical questions and writing challenges for your class. You can save these lessons to use later and access the Pobble Writing Bank - the world’s largest bank of children’s handwritten work, sorted by age, genre and topic. Ideal for exemplification, finding ideas and lesson inspiration.
Here are some of our favourite story starters for your class, whatever genre you’re looking to teach:
Can your class continue the story?
Or search 'Adventure' on Pobble.
“The King had known that the gift he presented to his children on their 5th birthday was dangerous. He was prepared to take the risk of letting them own a pet dragon, however. One day, the twins would rule the kingdom together, and they would need all the help they could get. No one could deny that a dragon was a powerful ally! Before that day, though, the children had much work to do. They had to train their dragon!”
Can your class continue the story?
Or search 'Fantasy' on Pobble.
Can your class continue the story?
Or search 'Fairytale' on Pobble.
“No one knew where they had come from. Nobody had even been there when they appeared. Once word had spread about these mysterious objects, people started to visit from far and wide. Eva loved a mystery, and she herself had journeyed a great way to see if the rumours she had heard were true. She stood on the makeshift stone path that had been hurriedly thrown down to guide the curious onlookers through the scorching desert, and gazed in amazement at the sight that greeted her bewildered eyes…”
Can your class continue the story?
Or search 'Mystery' on Pobble.
“They had arrived out of the blue, catching everyone completely unaware. Striding through the vast expanse of ocean as if it were nothing more than a shallow puddle, the robots provided the gathering crowd on the beach with a menacing spectacle. They were enormous! Terrifying! The whole shore shook as one of them crunched a clunky, clumsy leg the size of a giraffe into the sand...”
Can your class continue the story?
Or search 'Science Fiction' on Pobble.
"Ulrik had always been the strongest man in the village: it was said that he could lift a cart all by himself! Growing up, his father, and his father before him, had been builders. He had even heard that his great uncle had been a mighty warrior! Ulrik, however, dreamed of a different path. He had always wanted to be a blacksmith. Sure enough, Ulrik grew up to be the best blacksmith in the whole country. Anything you wanted making, he could make it! That was until a fateful evening on a snowy night, when he was visited by a darkly-cloaked, mysterious man…”
Can your class continue the story of The Blacksmith?
