Black History Month Creative Writing Prompts with Story Cards

Twenty Black history figure cards combine with a story-planning organizer and sentence starter to generate original short stories, scored by a rubric.

Grades: Grades 2–4, Elementary
File type: PDF
Preparation: Print ready

Updated Dec 14, 2022

Subject: Creative Writing, Holidays, Holiday & Seasonal, Writing, ELA
Topic: Black History, Creative Writing
Resource types: Writing Prompts, Worksheets & Printables
Preparation: Print ready

From the author

About this resource

Twenty trading-card-style figures from Black history — including Bessie Coleman, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Jackie Robinson, Madam C.J. Walker, and Rosa Parks — pair with a SWBST (Somebody-Wants-But-So-Then) graphic organizer and a fill-in-the-blank sentence starter so students generate an original short story about one of the historical figures. A teacher and student version of an eight-category creative-writing rubric (basic story elements, organization, vocabulary, capitalization, spelling, punctuation, neatness, and illustration) scores the finished piece, and optional handouts supply 100-word reference lists of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions plus editing and revision checklists. Because the character set and organizer can be recombined in different pairings across the school year, a teacher can reuse the same packet for multiple writing sessions rather than a single one-off prompt.

In the classroom

Teaching tips & learning objectives

Learning objectives

Student can plan an original short story using the Somebody-Wants-But-So-Then story structure.
Student can incorporate a chosen Black historical figure into a fictional or biographical narrative.
Student can revise a draft against a checklist covering spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.

Teaching tips

Decide in advance whether students will use Option 1 (figure as a secondary character in a fictional story) or Option 2 (figure as the main character in a fact-based story), since the sentence-starter template changes meaning depending on which is chosen.
Hand out the 100-word noun/verb/adjective/adverb lists to students who need vocabulary support before drafting, rather than after.
Use the teacher rubric to pre-teach the eight scoring categories so students know what 'excellent' looks like before they start writing.

Skills covered

Narrative story generation — students use the SWBST framework (Somebody-Wants-But-So-Then) to plan a short story built around a chosen Black historical figure.
Descriptive sentence construction — students complete a fill-in-the-blank sentence frame using a noun, verb, adverb, and adjective to introduce their chosen character.
Self- and peer-editing — students apply a checklist covering spelling, capitalization, and punctuation before submitting their final piece.

Good to know

Questions teachers ask about this resource

What is the difference between using the character cards as 'Option 1' versus 'Option 2' in this resource?

In Option 1, the historical figure is a secondary character students write about in a fictional or self-insert story; in Option 2, the same figure becomes the main character, and the story instead retells the figure's real actions rather than an invented plot.

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Resource details

Concepts & topics

Core concepts

Narrative writing
Black History Month
Story structure
Parts of speech

Topics

Black History Creative Writing Writing Early Writing Elementary Writing Martin Luther King Jr Rosa Parks Ruby Bridges Mae Jemison MLK

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Categories this resource belongs to

Creative Writing Holidays Holiday & Seasonal Writing ELA Writing Prompts

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