Top Tips For Creating An Engaging School Newsletter 

School newsletters are an instrumental tool for keeping your school community informed of events, achievements and notices. Because they are a regular source of information, it can be difficult to know what to put in them to keep your school community engaged. As a school communication app, supporting the digitisation and accessibility of the school newsletter, Skool Loop has a few tips for creating an engaging school newsletter. 

 

Celebrate Success & Milestones
Schools use many formats to celebrate success within their community. But the easiest way to create an engaging school newsletter is to include the successes of students, teachers, and families in your school newsletter. This shows your students and parents that you value the children’s interests and achievements. It also allows the school to showcase the diverse skills that are celebrated within the community. 

 

 Introducing Role Models
Many parents and families in the school community may find it hard to know what is going on in their children’s lives. Having personalised input from leaders within the community can give more of a voice to the language and values of the school. When newsletters include “a word from the principal”, “an interview with a teacher” or “a chat with a student” this gives the families more insight and understanding of the pivotal people in their children’s lives. The personalised touch also makes key role models in the school come across as more approachable to community members. 

 

Present An Opportunity That Involves The Parents  
Newsletters can show parents what’s been happening in the day-to-day and give notice about upcoming events. But if you want an engaged readership community, creating activation points for the parents and caregivers who are reading the newsletter is a great way to develop this engagement. Present points of action such as bringing crafts to a craft day, weekly show and tell, an opportunity to be a part of a parent committee, sign a petition etc. will make the parents more interested in taking action and getting involved.  

Creating action points in your regular newsletters also shows the school that community members are reading the newsletters and will be more attentive to important notices when they are presented in a newsletter format.

 

Use Visual Storytelling Where Possible
There are various reasons why maximising the use of photos in your school newsletter is important. School community members engage more when they can visualise what is mentioned in the newsletter. Include photos that highlight day-to-day activities, showcase events that have happened and notice success in individuals in pairs and groups. Children/students will be interested to see if they are included in the newsletter pictures, and parents or families can visualise the events or accolades that are mentioned in the newsletter. 

 

Have a Digitised Newsletter, For Easy, Immediate Access
There is nothing worse for a parent than reading the school newsletter that has been crumpled in their child’s bag a month after it was sent out! Yes, having a paper copy of the newsletter can be useful. But having a digitised version means your community can get notified as soon as the newsletter is published.  

Community members can read the newsletter at their own leisure, having access to all the necessary notices at the relevant time at the click of a button. By using an app such as Skool Loop, they can also return to the school newsletter in their app, making the process of keeping your school community updated simpler and more direct.