Essay Prompts: A Better School Experience

Here are ten essay prompts around the subject of your school experience (assuming you’re in high school or middle school, or some equivalent of those).  Select a question you wish to address, then take a stance on the topic.  Use that to formulate your essay.

As with any essay, you should state your position in the beginning, then defend it with a few reasons or examples in the body of the essay, and finally give your conclusion at the end.

Prompts

  • Would you rather have the same teacher for all of your subjects, or a different teacher for each subject?

  • For any given subject, not everyone has the same skill level. Is it better for students who excel at a subject to be grouped with students who struggle with that subject? Why or why not?

  • In some parts of the world, there are all-girls schools and all-boys schools. What are the advantages or disadvantages of these over co-ed schools?

  • Should students be able to choose which foreign language they can learn, or is it better for everyone in the school to learn the same foreign language?

  • Would you rather take 6 one-hour classes each day or 3 two-hour classes each day? (This is a form of ‘block scheduling’; by the end of the year, you finish the same number of classes with the same amount of time on each.)

  • Is a scheduled ‘study hour’ productive or a waste of time?

  • Would you rather have the same set of teachers four years in a row or a different set of teachers each year?

  • If your school had one mandatory class on a creative art (music, drawing, creative writing, theatre, etc.), what creative are would you prefer/recommend?

  • At most schools, students take multiple classes one hour a day throughout an entire semester (or year). Would you rather take an intensive approach through which you take only one class at a time? The classes would take a full day, but they would only last 3 weeks or so and then you don’t have to take it again for the rest of the semester.

  • When they are in high school, should students start taking classes specific to the field they want to work in, or should those specific classes wait until college?

Note

If some of these options seem strange to you, it may be because they aren’t prevalent in your part of the world.  But each of these cases is real somewhere.  Part of considering a change involves looking at what works for others.

Get more with Insider Access

INCLUDING

Advanced Features in Student Projects

search and filter

planning info

AND

Extra Video Content

more How-to-Teach grammar videos*

with intros, instructions, and summaries

*compared to free resources

AND

Exclusive Supplemental Resources

slideshows

posters & handouts

bonus notes

Stories

Show, Don’t Tell

A common adage among writers is “show, don’t tell”.  Writing in this way prompts students to think of different ways to express the same thing.  Students will have to use expressions and imagery – like native speakers do in most situations – instead of being straightforward.

Read More »
Stories

Story Prompts: What If?

Whether you’re doing a brief writing exercise or getting started on a full project on stories, sometimes your students’ minds need to be primed to get those creative juices flowing. Here are some what-if questions to explore.

Read More »
Popular

New Inventions

Encourage your students to think of some inventions, giving them a project to pour their creativity into.  Different tasks throughout the project focus on different aspects of English, so this project can be used as a practical example for introducing new topics, or it might be a good review.

Read More »
Stories

A Month of Writing

November is National Novel Writing Month, but your students don’t have to write a whole novel to challenge themselves and practice creative English.  Encourage them to write 5,000 words instead.  A short story in a month is still something to celebrate!

Read More »
Stories

Character Journey

Students can create characters that they’ll use throughout the year. Each month, the character progresses a little closer to their goal, but in the meantime, they can be used to answer questions and for other activities. The possibilities are wide open.

Read More »

Share This Post