Social and Emotional Learning: 50 Creative Writing Prompts

Shambhavee Sharma

7 min read

Writing is a life skill and a blessing. It can help in effective communication, self-expression, creativity, imagination, and emotional resolution. Like anything else, repetition hones the craft of writing and in turn, writing often rewards us with multiple benefits.

While writing is an essential skill to communicate better in this world, it can also be a contributor to social and emotional development. Based on CASEL’s core competencies, this blog has a list of creative writing prompts that you can use with your students of lower elementary, upper elementary, and middle school.

Use them to nurture the core competencies of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making and get students’ creative juices flowing. We promise these challenging and significant exercises will delight, engage and inspire young learners to express themselves. Most of these writing prompts can be used as speaking prompts for young learners. As teachers, you can assign these writing prompts as home projects for students. You can start a class discussion in Toddle Classroom so students can respond to each other’s ideas and get inspired! You can also give students the opportunity to share their writing pieces in their own style on the Toddle Student App by using creativity tools.

1. If you could be any emotion, what emotion would you be? Write a poem and tell us! ​​
2. Write a letter to your favorite cartoon character.
3. If you could build a dream house, what rooms would it have?
4. What is an emotion you do not like to feel? Imagine that emotion as an imaginary character and write a story around this character. 
5. Your house could be made of anything you’d like. Yes, even chocolate. What will you make your house with and why? What would it look like? 
6. What is your favorite book that someone has read to you? How does that story end? Now imagine that the story does not end there! What happens next in the story and how does it end?
7. You can either live in an igloo for a month or you could live in a treehouse! Which would you pick and why? Why did you pick it and how will you spend your time there? 
8. What is your favorite thing about your routine each day? Describe it and explain what makes it so fun for you! ​​
9. There are so many things to be thankful for! Make a list of 10 things you are thankful for today and why you’re thankful for them.
10. ​​If you could improve any quality of yours, what would it be and why?

1. You find yourself stranded on a deserted island with only 3 things in your bag. What would you want them to be, why so, and what would you do with them to get to safety? 
2. You wake up one morning as a pet in your own house! What adventures do you get into?
3. Write a short story starting with the line, “I was feeling completely overwhelmed and my emotions were all out of control. I had to go up on stage in less than 5 minutes and had no idea how I would calm down…” 
4. You wake up one morning and as you’re looking for clothes in your cupboard, you find an alien in your drawer. What happens next? ​​
5. You’re the first person on Planet Earth. No one else is around. What do you do? How do you start communicating? Whom do you talk to?
6. A magical treasure box arrives at your door. You open and a genie pops out who has forgotten where he came from. You set off on a journey with him to help him find his way back home. Tell us about your adventures!
7. What is something coming up that’s scary or challenging for you? Write down cheerleading slogans for yourself! 
8. There is complete chaos in your toy kingdom – all the toys are revolting! How will you bring back peace in your room?  
9. Write down your goals from your favorite sport or hobby, and make a rap out of them.
10. Stripey is a tiger, and Cloudy is a naughty ghost – sometimes, Cloudy says mean things in Stripey’s ear that make Stripey glum. The only way to get rid of Cloudy is to talk back to him. What can Stripey say to Cloudy? Write a monologue from Stripey that has the power to make Cloudy go away!

1. A student in your school has just moved in from a different country. You sense they might be feeling lonely but you’re not sure, and you want to make them feel comfortable and included. Write a warm welcome letter to them.
2. Write a short one-act play on something you have observed around you that you think is unfair. 
3. What according to you are some uncomfortable emotions, that make you feel like you’re the only one feeling them? Design an anonymous survey that simply seeks to find out if others feel these emotions too. If the results show that most people feel them, spread the word! 
4. Find someone who knows or speaks a different language from you, and learn about common sayings from their language and culture. Pick a saying that fascinates or amuses you and write a story using it as a title!
5. Write about a time you stood up for someone or helped someone and it made you really happy! 
6. Make a compassion and empathy reference chart for your classmates, including what they mean, their importance, examples, and how one can build these qualities within themselves
7. What’s a family tradition that you love? Describe everything you do. What’s a family tradition that your friend has? How is it different from yours and what do you like about it? 
8. You can work with Santa this year to create a list of presents for anyone around you. Who would you pick presents for and what presents would you pick? ​​
9. Partner up with a classmate from a different culture than yours, and ask about common or festive songs from their culture. Together with them, translate any one song of your choice into your language and give it an illustration to go along with! 
10. Write a blog on the topic ‘Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, there is no such thing as perfect’.

1. If you could invent one thing that would make your family’s life easier, what would you create? How would it work? Write about it.
2. Someone you love dearly loves movies. For their birthday, write a movie script with them as the protagonist (inventing all sorts of official stamps and production house names to put on the script and make it seem real). With the help of others, you can film it too!
3. Your friend has been feeling a bit bored and lethargic lately. Make a fun poster to explain what your favorite hobby is and share some key features about it, to help your friend try out your favorite hobby and feel better.
4. Write an apology letter for someone you never got around to saying sorry to.   
5. What according to you are the top 3 qualities of a best friend? Write about the times when you displayed each of those.
6. Write a letter to convince your parents to let you do one thing they won’t allow you to do. 
7. Pick a family member who helps you every day. Write a card to thank them! 
8. Two of your best friends are fighting. Write a list of suggestions to them to help them work it out.
9. What reminders would you give to a friend who is feeling unworthy? Write these down, make chits of each, and keep them in a jar. On a tough day, pick out as many as you need till you feel comforted. 
10. Write a song for the people in your life whom you love the most, dedicating one stanza to each, and then sing it to them! Your song can be two stanzas or twenty – upto you!

1. You are responsible for creating a whole new city – what would your city be like? 
2. Humans have to leave earth! Where do they go next? What happens there? 
3. If you were the health inspector of your school, what would you do to ensure all students took care of their health at school and at home? Would you run any events to spread awareness? Write all about them! 
4. You notice that your siblings always leave the electricity on when they leave rooms. Think of a fun way to tell them to conserve electricity and write down your plan.
5. You’re Captain Planet for the day and you have the power to fix any one problem on the planet. What would you fix and how? Remember, you have the help of any 3 of your favorite storybook characters on this adventure! ​​ 
6. The tree you and your friends climb and play around is going to be cut and a building is going to be built in its place. Write a letter to convince your local body to not cut the tree. 
7. You go to school one day and see that everyone has been turned into frogs. Tell us how that happened and how you saved the day.  
8. You are in charge of a tiger jungle and you find out there are poachers in the jungle. What do you do? 
9. Do you remember a holiday you went on? What was something you saw there, that you would have liked to bring back with you to better your city or neighborhood? 
10. You come back home after a game of ball with your friends to find a unicorn in your room, munching on your hoodie. You know a unicorn would make you extremely popular at school and with your friends. But then the unicorn looks at you with large, innocent eyes requesting you not to tell anyone or it will be in danger. What will you do?

Related resources

Liked this resource? Here are a few more you might like to explore:

• Kindergarten Booklist for Social and Emotional Learning
• Social and Emotional Booklist for Grades 1 to 3
• Social and Emotional Learning Booklist for Grades 4 to 6