Use Graphing Questions as Writing Prompts? Yep!

In the younger grades, kids are often given little questions to survey their class, tally their results and graph.  One day it hit me that these were great questions to have a beginning writer sit down and answer.

Typical elementary graphing questions include questions like:

• What color is your hair?
• What color are your eyes?
• What is your favorite season?

Assigning questions like these can make for great for handwriting practice or to help with beginning grammar/sentence concepts.  You can write out the question on paper or a white board and have students respond to the question (teaching them how to rephrase it in the form of a statement). Make sure to also stress that complete sentences are written.

For younger kids, you could give one sentence daily, or you could give them several.  You might have them actually survey family members each day, graph the result and then write sentences like, "My mother has brown eyes" or "Three people in my family have brown eyes."

At any rate, if you just need something quick to get a younger one writing, these can be very helpful, in shaa Allah.

I found an extensive list of graphing questions at CanTeach: