I learned early on when I began to blog with students that if you allow too much time to pass between the experience (whether that’s reading, a guest speaker, a field trip) and writing about the experience, then students’ writing becomes stagnant and lifeless.
To truly capture their voices, students need time during the experience to write.
This allows them not only to practice using writing as a means of processing, but also allows them to hold onto the memory of the experience.
So, if you’ve hit that place in students blogs where you feel like students’ voices aren’t coming through, look at when you are asking them to write in comparison to when the actual experience they are writing about occurred. It might be as simple as timing!