Take a Virtual Vacation |

At a certain time of year, students and teachers alike are daydreaming about summer getaways. Maybe your perfect vacation would be a trip to one of the great old cities of Europe. Maybe it would be days of quiet hiking in the mountain air. Kids are thinking ahead to family trips or imagining adventures in places they’ve only seen in a book. One way or another, everyone is thinking about traveling. So why not make the most of this interest in new settings and plan an activity with a vacation travel theme?

That was the idea that I had in mind when I collected these pictures and put together this set of writing prompts. Each prompt is about a popular vacation destination, and I’ve included prompts for informational writing, narrative writing, and persuasive writing.

Each of the 25 slides includes two images – one large image of the location and a smaller image that gives additional detail. Also on each slide there is information about the destination to get students thinking, followed by the prompt for writing an essay or another type or writing. Here are samples of two of the prompts.

These prompts can each be used along with a little library or online research for a combined research/writing activity, or students can be directed to use their imaginations (and skip the information search!) for a quicker writing lesson. This set of picture prompts is now included with the full set of Narrative, Opinion, and Explanatory Prompts.