You’re a dynamic educator, always on the lookout for new ways to inspire your class. Since your students were raised on computers and tablets, why not kick your curriculum up a notch with blogging? Not only does blogging encourage students to use their writing skills more, it improves…

• Communication: Students openly share their ideas in blog posts and engage in substantive discourse.

• Connection: Blogging creates a bridge between home and school. Students can continue to blog during school breaks, which decreases summer learning loss.

• Cooperation: Students develop collaborative skills by working on group blog posts and commenting on their classmates' posts.

• Creativity: Students have an opportunity to present their original artwork, short stories, poems, and science fair projects, inspiring future creative endeavors.

• Critical Thinking: Students are challenged to look at issues from multiple angles, and to provide and receive constructive feedback.

To streamline blogging into your classroom, this guide will walk you through the seven steps you need to know to successfully introduce blogging to your students.

1. Start a  Teacher’s Blog First

The best way to teach blogging is to become a blogger yourself! To start, register with Kidblog to create your own teacher’s blog. This will serve as a blueprint for your blogging lesson, so take time to develop content that will excite your students about blogging. The following ideas are great post ideas:

• Daily recap: Your blog is the perfect place to highlight the key points of the day, creating an invaluable source for both students and parents.

• Extra credit announcements: Want to give your students another opportunity to boost their grade? Post extra credit assignments right to your blog!

• Math printables: Post geometric shape patterns, multiplication worksheets, word problems, and math games that students can print out at home.

• Science news: Nothing gets inquisitive students going like a new scientific discovery. Use your blog to highlight the latest breakthroughs in space, technology, and biology.

• Books, books, and more books: Make your blog the hub for summer reading lists, book report prep, author spotlights, and chapter discussion Q&As.

2.  Introduce Your Blog

Now that you’ve filled up your own blog with fabulous content, it’s time for the big unveil. First, discuss what a blog is, what it’s used for, and what differentiates it from a news article or an essay for example. Most importantly, you want to inspire your students to blog, so touch on the following post ideas to really get those gears turning.

• Step-by-step science project documentation: Students can post photos, videos, and notes about their scientific process!

• School break adventures: This is a great icebreaker activity to promote both communication and creativity amongst your class.

• Art analysis: Students can posts their thoughts on the paintings and sculptures they observe on museum field trips.

• Pop culture spotlight: Encourage students to post about a movie, video game, or popular trend that’s relevant to the current curriculum.

3. Register Your Student Blogs

After you introduce your class to the art of blogging, you’ll need to register them for their first blogs. Since you already registered with Kidblog to create your teacher’s blog, all you have to do is...

• Log back into your account

• Create a class

• Generate class codes that students use to join your blog network.

After your students receive their codes, they can sign in through the student portal on the Kidblog homepage. It’s that easy! In fact, you can even create a post on your own blog that walks students through their registration.

4.  Explain Blog Platform’s Features

Now that your students have registered their blogs, your role as IT guru begins. That’s right—the next step is walking your students through all the technical stuff. Luckily, the Kidblog interface is easy and intuitive to use, but it’s important that your class understands how to use their blog interface to its fullest potential. Your walk through should include…

• How to start and delete a post

• How to input content into the text field

• How to underline, bold, and italicize text

• How to change font colors, sizes, and styles

• How to create bullet points and numbered lists

• How to add multimedia to posts

• How to link to websites and research URLs

• How to comment on a post.

To make sure your students have this information on hand, simply post your technical walk through on your own blog!

5.  Your Students’ First Blog Post

With your technical walk through still fresh in their minds, now’s the best time to have your class write their first blog posts. You gave a few topic ideas during your own blog unveiling, but providing a structured template will help your students better navigate the art of blogging. In fact, the elements of a well-formatted blog post serves as a fantastic template for new bloggers.

• Title: Students should spend time brainstorming catchy post titles that are under 12 words long.

• Introduction: This is where your students will introduce the main idea of their post and provide two to three sentences emphasizing the importance of that idea.

• Subheadings: Students should include at least three separate sections, with subheadings, that support the main point of the post.

• Multimedia: Students should include a featured image, as well as videos, slideshows, and additional images when applicable.

• Conclusion: This is where students wrap up the main idea of their post.

• Call-to-action: CTAs essentially instruct the reader to do something, so students should include a CTA to encourage sharing and commenting.

6. Teach Proper Blog Commenting

Commenting on a blog post is more than just saying “great job” or “I agree.” Comments need to continue the discussion already started by the blogger. When commenting on their peers’ blogs, students should…

• Remain focused on the blog post topic.

• Ask relevant questions to spark further discussion.

• Be positive. When disagreeing, students should present arguments respectfully.

• Be careful of using too much slang or “text language” like LOL or SMH.

• Avoid Correcting misspelled words or errors. Leave that up to the teacher!

7. Reinforce the Importance of Online Safety

With blogging comes great responsibility. While blogging helps build a positive digital footprint, it’s important for students to exercise caution and good judgement when using any website. That’s why it’s important to include a section on internet safety in your student blogging lesson plan. Here are a few important internet safety tips to share with your class:

• Never share passwords-Yes, kids trust their friends. But it’s important for them to know that sharing passwords can lead to hacking or someone posting inappropriate content.

• Never share personal information-Students should not share any personal identifying information, like phone numbers, addresses, or social security numbers.

• Always monitor comments-Even if you’re not posting inappropriate content, that doesn’t stop visitors from doing so. Students should monitor their blogs for inappropriate activity.

Now that you have all the tools in hand, it’s time to finally introduce blogging to your class. Blogging is a fantastic opportunity for your students to think critically about their current curriculum and spark enriching discourse amongst their peers. You never know - your decision to introduce blogging to your classroom may even inspire that next great journalist or author!

Chris Brantner served as a teacher for 11 years before he began blogging full time about saving money by cutting cable. Now he is sharing what he learned as a teacher and blogger with his new site, Scribblrs.com.

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