Today I’ve written a range of prompts around the topic of space, which I’m sure will help get the creative writing flowing.
A popular subject for students of most ages, imagining (and trying to comprehend) what goes on in the vastness of space can be a powerful trigger for the imagination.
So let’s dig in to how it can help, and get started using prompts about space to inspire fantastic writing.
Why write about space?
Ever since I was a child I’ve had a fascination with space.
I can’t pinpoint exactly when it started – or what might have initially caused the interest from a young age.
My best guess is that I was a very curious child, and looking up at the night sky was just interesting to me – I wanted to understand what I was looking up at.
This progressed to reading science fiction extensively from an early age, and I’ve never looked back – space, our solar system, and our place in the Universe have always captured my imagination.
I strongly believe this was a major factor in my developing a love of the written word, and helped foster my creative thinking.
And it’s for these reasons that I’m a big believer in using subjects such as space travel, or far flung planets, as a creative spark to encourage creative and thoughtful writing.
How to use prompts to inspire students:
Honestly you can use these effectively in so many ways.
Here are some ideas:
- Give a selection of prompts to your class and let them run with the one that captures their attention.
- Select a specific prompt and provide this one alone to the entire class. Let them go away to write individually, and you’ll be amazed at how many different stories emerge.
- Divide your class into small groups and give each group one unique prompt each. Have them brainstorm their ideas for who will feature in the story, what the beginning, middle, and end should include – and so on. They can then write the story as a group, and bring it back to the class to share.
- Have your class decide on a number between 1 and 17 without showing them this list, and then tell them the prompt that they’ve “chosen”. A fun variation on assignment, where the kids can feel engaged from the very beginning.
The Writing Prompts:
- She looked down at Earth from the space station window…
- The rocket launch counted down, 3, 2, 1…
- Their space ship had been travelling for 8 months, they were almost at Mars…
- He was searching for strange signals from space, and then he heard it…
- She woke with a start. She’d been living on the moon-base for two years now…
- Their rocket was moving faster than anything on Earth, but would still take years to reach Jupiter…
- The robotic ship landed on the asteroid, and began mining…
- He considered himself a Martian now, having lived on Mars for more than 10 years…
- Through the shielded dark windows of the ship they could see nothing but the Sun getting closer…
- As he sat at his campfire out in the woods at night, the bright flash of a meteor suddenly lit up the valley as if it were daylight…
- They had damaged their planet too much, and had to look for a new home…
- Looking up at the silent night sky, he saw something that he could not explain…
- She was floating weightless in space, and had to try her experiment…
- The plants they were growing in their space station were behaving strangely…
- He looked back at Earth as it got smaller and smaller, a tiny blue dot…
- She was proud of her mother getting chosen to go to space, but was nervous watching the rocket launch…
- She’d finally made it, she was the first YouTuber to go into space…
How have you used these writing prompts?
We’re always so thrilled to hear from you all about how you’ve been able to use our resources with your students.
There is honestly nothing more motivating for us to create original teaching resources for you than hearing your stories of difficult students being able to express themselves through writing a story they are proud of, or a class becoming excited about writing class for the first time.
We really hope that you find todays space prompts can help inspire some creative writing and enthusiasm from your students.
We have more writing prompts and other teaching resources coming out all the time, so don’t forget to bookmark and Pin – we’d love to have you back to share in what we’re publishing for you to use next!
It would mean the world to us if you could share this with others who you think would find our website useful, thank you so much.
Thanks,
– Matt& Hayley
