So you’ve set up your Boom Storefront, learned your way around the Studio, and now your ready to start filling those digital shelves with new decks of Boom Cards.
Stuck for ideas? Not sure what Boom Cards will sell?
Check out our 10 tips for topics and content. Each one is based on requests from educators and trends the Boom Team has noticed over the past year.
1. “Real Picture” choice cards
It seems that teachers and students would like to see decks using real photography more often. These requests have come for a variety of topics and subjects. If you’re handy with a lens, you can take your own photos, or you can seek out professional ones – just make sure your aware of copyright and use restrictions.
2. Reading Comprehension
Educators are looking for questions about stories or books. These could include stories your create followed by comprehension questions or questions based on established work, but be careful of copyright restrictions in the later case.
3. Emergent Reader Guides
There have not been enough emergent guided reading stories in Boom Cards to satisfy educators. These decks would have dots for each word to help students track, as well as sounded out words, pictures, and other audible or visual cues. They’d also like the decks to have comprehension questions, and to be leveled ideally.
4. Life Skills
Requests for these range from doing the laundry or shopping to tackling bills and budgeting. The goals can range from helping students build basic life skills to preparing teenagers for the real world after graduation.
5. Science, Geography, and Social Studies
There are a variety of sciences to choose from, but not a lot of quality decks on those topics in the Boom Store. Similarly, Social Studies and Geography have far fewer quality choices than most subjects.
6. Upper Grades
There are lots of decks in the Boom Store for Pre-K, Kindergarten, and 1st-3rd grade, but this has left secondary teachers struggling to find decks for 6th-12th grade.
7. Phonemes
We’ve heard requests for decks that use simple de-codeable sentences or short passages that contain 3-4 of the common spellings for a phonemes.
For example: ‘AY’ and ‘ai’ as well as ‘a_e,’ ‘ey,’ and ‘ea’ in the same passage.
8. Timely Themes
While many people include seasonally appropriate themes and backgrounds or create decks of Boom Cards centered around major holidays, far fewer acknowledge themes such as National Nutrition Month (March). Topics range from Poetry to Bullying Prevention and can be great inspiration.
Here’s a few to get your started:
- February: 100th Day of School
- March: National Nutrition Month/National Crafts Month and Read Across America Day
- April: Poetry Month
- May: Physical Fitness Month
- August/September: Back to School
- October: Bullying Prevention Month
9. Languages (other than English)
Decks that either teach languages other than English or which are translated into other languages are also in demand. Spanish and French are classic, and commonly requested, options of course. American Sign Language, German, Japanese, Italian, and Chinese are also all in demand though.
10. Social and Emotional Wellness
It’s not hard to work out why this was highly requested, and there’s no reason to think the demand will dry up next year. Decks cover coping skills for stress, build emotional intelligence, or address bullying are all popular requests. In general though, you can’t go wrong providing decks on any topic the helps a student navigate their social and emotional landscapes.
Final Thoughts
One final insight we can share: there is a real push for more representation across the board these days.
Decks of Boom Cards that show characters from a variety of backgrounds and in every shade of the human experience are growing more and more popular.
Creating decks for Black History Month (February), Women’s History Month (March), or Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month (May) are a great start, but more representation won’t go amiss any time of the year. Just be sure to do your research so you can ensure accurate and fair representation of lesser known historical events and cultures other than your own. Bonus: the more research you do, the more inspiration you’ll find along the way.
Share any insights or fun facts you’ve uncovered in the comments below, or join our Boom Sellers group on Facebook to give and get tips, tricks, and ideas with fellow Boom Card Authors.
If you haven’t started selling your Boom Cards yet, check our our Quick Start Guide for Authors to kickstart your store on Boom Learning.
Happy Booming!
You must be logged in to post a comment.