Pondering prompts

If ice cream sandwiches ruled the world. . .
Then I realized that those weren't my shoes.
Which is better, Facebook or Myspace and why?
Free write (of course)

These were the In Class Writing prompts I came up with as students watched as class was starting. Ignore the fact that I wasn't totally prepared. Normally I don't require that they share, it's optional, this time I told them that they would have to share with their neighbor, they would have the opportunity to share with the group later in the week. I went over the choices, told them they had 10 minutes and sat down to write in my comp book. I started writing about ice cream sandwiches, the topic left me cold so I switched to the second topic - I didn't get far. None of the topics really got my creative juices flowing, so I began writing about that, musing that I would perhaps change the prompts for the classes that followed. I brainstormed some prompts for future ICW's (I won't tell you now, I don't want to ruin the surprise).

I left the prompts alone. The kids really liked them, I had one student remark, "Why did you have to put all these good ones on one day? Couldn't you spread them out?" He came up later and asked if I would put some of the choices up again because he wanted to write about all of them. I told him to write them in his journal and he could choose one as a free write.

I was totally bored by these prompts, I'm not sure if it is because it's Monday or the fact that I spent all weekend grading drafts of persuasive letters. Whatever the reason, nothing was coming out of my pencil. The kids were fired up though - usually I am too, especially with the prompts involving food, (it's kind of a recurring theme that started with the line - "And that's why you can never trust an orange" which come up in kids writing still).