The picture prompts below have been designed to encourage sketching as a pre-writing strategy. Please remember that Picture That! was designed to only suggest a method for prewriting and did not cover other writing skills. I suggest that both teachers and parents do the following when using these picture prompts:

• Pick a picture prompt and do it yourself.

  When you model how to do something, children are helped to learn the skill. First, you choose one of the picture prompts and talk out loud about what it reminds you of. Then do a quick sketch and stress that you are not worried about how good the drawing is, but you want to use your sketch to help you plan your story.

• Let the child pick his or her own picture prompt.

  Talk about the pictures with the child and encourage the child to pick a favorite picture.

• Talk to the child about why the picture is a good choice.

  Ask the child to explain why this picture is special. Help the child link the picture to a story read before or to something that happened in real life. Helping the child depend on background knowledge to write a good picture prompt will make the writing stronger.

Use these Power Points for grades 1 and 2:

• Child Drummer
  
  
• Child With Cake
  
  
• Cowboy!
  
  
• Child Fishing
  
  
• Drum Major
  
  
• Girl with Mirror
  
  
• Hot Air Balloons
  
  
• Children Kissing Dad
  
  
• Cute Kitten
  
  
• Mom and Child
  
  
• Cute Puppy
  
  
• Children with Snowman
  
  
• Swimmer!
  
  
• Unicycle Rider