Inspiration images

Stimulus images can alleviate some mental load by providing content that students can work into a given text pattern.

For example, in Genre Mix 01 (General) we ask students to write a political campaign promise like this one from U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren:

I am deeply concerned about the threat that coronavirus poses to the health of our people and our economy.

New data from here and abroad suggest that the virus could easily overwhelm our health care system. The Trump Administration continues to badly mishandle the outbreak, raising the risks of the virus spreading more widely in the United States and reaching more vulnerable populations.

The moment calls for a clear-eyed, data-driven assessment of the problems we face, and a comprehensive plan that matches the scale of those problems. My updated plan presents the latest data and builds on my existing recommendations to offer a comprehensive approach for protecting Americans and our economy.

My Updated Plan to Address the Coronavirus Crisis(2020)

In that particular lesson we use Eugene Delacroix's painting Liberty Leading the People as inspiration:

Liberty Leading the People

The prompt for the learners is, how would that Warren speech sound if it were about this scene?

Here's what one student wrote:

I am deeply concerned about the barrier that the House of Bourbon poses to the freedom of our people and our country.

The past has shown that conservative gorvernment does not lead our society step forward. The King Charles continues to advocate divine right of kings and try to strangle liberalism at birth.

The moment calls for free spirits to fight the situation we face, and revolution is imperative. My standpoint is to firmly guarantee the property of our people, the public order of our country, and the right of democratic freedom.

If students want to see the snippet and inspiration image side by side, most textboxes have a 'View stimulus' link that will open them up in a sidebar.

Unfortunately it's not possible to write in the textbox at the moment while the sidebar is open, so if students want to keep the image and snippet visible while writing, we recommend they open a second window (e.g. for a word processor or notepad) then paste their writing into Writelike when done.

If you're keen, use the image to inspire a campaign promise.

We on the Writelike team try to choose images we think are quirky, rich, interesting, and/or have some sense of history or story behind them.

But we provide inspiration images to be helpful, not restrictive. In some lessons we don't provide them at all because we think the effect is too limiting.

We encourage students and teachers to find their own images, but beware students (or yourself) going down rabbit holes trying to find 'just the right' image.

Also note that you can't upload images to Writelike, so if you want to share an image with your class, you'll need to do so via another channel.

Teaching with Writelike

Inspiration images