Student Blogging Challenges
Help students learn about publishing online, develop their digital writing skills, and connect with an authentic audience. Start your own challenge by adding a tag for your students to use, or request a public audience for a chance to be featured on our subject feeds.
Here are a few examples we’ve seen:
One Word challenge: Choose a specific word to guide you throughout the year as you make decisions, pursue goals, and try to become the human being you want to be. It's part compass, part motivator, and part mirror.
Six-Word challenge: Write your memoir or tell a story, poem, or joke in exactly 6 words. Ernest Hemingway’s famous one is “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
100 Word challenge: Write a short story, poem, or other piece of creative writing that is exactly 100 words long. New Zealand version. U.K. version.
Genius Hour: Students are free to choose any topic they want to learn about. They can research the topic, conduct experiments, create projects, or simply learn more about something that interests them. The teacher's role is to provide guidance and support, but the students are ultimately in charge of their own learning.
Local History challenge: Public history is a broad field that includes historic preservation, oral history, museum curatorship, and archival science. Students learn how to research, write, and interpret history for a public audience, and study the intellectual origins of public history.
Ciena Solutions Challenge: A collaborative learning experience that opens in September and closes in March, supporting teams of educators and students to contribute a meaningful solution to their local community.
September is also Hispanic Heritage Month: Add articles to the History & Geography feed by publishing with that tag.
Write Out: A two-week October celebration of writing, making, and sharing inspired by the great outdoors, sponsored annually by the National Writing Project and the National Park Service. See their simple choice board for student publishing ideas!
October is also National Arts Month and Health Literacy Month: Tag Visual & Performing Arts or Health & Fitness.
NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month is an annual writing challenge that takes place in November. Participants aim to write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. NaNoWriMo is a free event, and anyone can participate, regardless of their writing experience.
November is also Native American Heritage Month.
December is Write a Friend Month, Read a New Book Month, and Made in America Month. See the Communications & Literature feed for examples.
School Book Clubs: The goal is for students to facilitate the discussion, rather than the teacher, and practice reading skills through text-based discussions. Spaces like this make school libraries real and relevant:
January is National Mentoring Month. Use the Fan button to run your school’s mentoring program or get career-connected adults responding to students’ learning articles.
February is Black History Month: Check out thehistorymakers.org and publish your own research and inspiration.
Slice of Life: A month-long challenge in March that encourages people to write about ordinary moments in their lives, hosted by Two Writing Teachers.
March is also Women’s History Month and Music in our Schools Month.
April is National Poetry Month, Math & Statistics Awareness Month, National Financial Literacy Month, Arab American Heritage Month, and Citizen Science Month.
Photography challenge: Push your photography skills by taking and sharing your photos.
Pulitzer Center’s Fighting Words: Poetry in Response to Current Events invites students to explore these questions: How can poetry be an effective response to current events and the issues impacting our communities? How can journalism and poetry help us make connections between global issues and our local and personal contexts?
YouthMADE Festival: Digital Promise’s Youth Making, Activism, Art and Design in Education Festival invites students, educators, advocates, and organizations around the globe to host and join events showcasing youth-led work in May.
May is also Military Appreciation Month, Mental Health Awareness Month, and Asian American Heritage Month: Check out curriculum guides from the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation.
100 Days of Summer Writing challenge: Moving Writers encourages people to write for 100 consecutive days during the summer.
The Hyperscore Challenge: This web application allows you to compose music by drawing dots and lines on the screen. With Hyperscore, you can create music in any style, as simple or complicated as you want. The challenge is to complete your piece and share it online or at an in-person performance on June 21, 2024, which is Make Music Day, a global celebration of music-making.
The Sherman brothers wrote Disney’s famous songs. Get inspired by a music challenge their Dad offered them as kids.
National Writing Project’s Writing Our Future: https://writingourfuture.nwp.org
National History Day: Students share thesis statements plus receive feedback and responses on research links and resources. Parents and friends respond to project parts and school showcases.
Civics Renewal Network’s Preamble Challenge: https://www.civicsrenewalnetwork.org
C-SPAN’s StudentCam Contest: https://www.studentcam.org
Student Newspapers: Add student editors as co-moderators to your school news space to provide feedback and help distribute to a wider audience. Publishing about sports activities and sharing photography are popular articles in spaces like these.
Fanschool’s safe network of lifelong learning blogs provides a consistent, continuous opportunity for students to learn about blogging, portfolios, and digital citizenship. Fanschool is the most student-centered, engaging, and secure blogging platform available.
