When it comes to blogging one of the patterns that I see every school year starts to emerge around this time of year. That pattern is, our blogs that we started with the best of intentions in August start to lose their momentum. It’s easy to blame the tasks of the daily grind of the school year for getting in the way of maintaining your blog. That is definitely a valid challenge. Another challenge is thinking of things to publish on your blog.
When you’re struggling for ideas for things to post on your blog, ask yourself, “what is the goal of my blog?” Here are some common goals and actions that you can take toward reaching those goals.
- Goal: Reaching more parents.
- Action: think about the questions that parents have when they email or call you. Write some blog posts that address the most frequently asked questions. Close your post by inviting parents to ask more questions.
- Goal: Encouraging students to write.
- Action: expand the topics of your blog posts. For example, if you’re a history teacher it is easy to fall into the trap of only publishing posts directly related to a topic in history. Expand your topics to include things that might not be directly related to one of your recent lessons. Try publishing a post about a current article from the fields of science or technology then asking students to share their thoughts on it. Or better yet, let them choose a topic for group discussion on the blog.
- Goal: Helping other teachers:
- Action: first identify your area of expertise then make a list of ten things you wish you had known before you became an expert on that topic. Then draft one blog post about each of those ten things. For example, let’s say you’re good at helping emerging readers decode text. Create a list of things that you do to help students in that area. Then write a blog post about each of those things.
Topics like this one and many others are covered in Blogs & Social Media for Teachers & School Leaders.
