The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA (Betsy Potash: ELA)

Planning the layout and components of your ELA classroom? It's so fun, right? But it can also be a bit intimidating. 

These days I wish I could have my first classroom to design all over again, because I did not know about all the amazing possibilities! My seating was not flexible, my bulletin boards were not layered, and the special fonts I used for my posters came from a CD Rom, not Canva. 

There are so many wonderful ways to create opportunities for creativity throughout the year through the way that you set up your space. 

Today on the podcast, get ideas for what to put inside your ELA classroom space to make it a great place to work and learn, for your students AND for you!

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Looking for creative multimedia mentor texts for your ELA students? Check out these options, from picture books to podcasts, videos to poetry, student work to YA novels. Get mentor texts kids will reallys it up and pay attention to!  

Sign up for Camp Creative: The Roadmap to Student Podcasting here. 

It's poetry month, and that means it's time for me to share as many poetry activities, poetry projects, and poetry workshops as I can muster over here!

Today, I'm going to walk you through a toolkit of creative poetry options for your ELA classroom. 

We'll start with one of my favorite introductory activities for any poetry unit, poetry collage, and then go full steam ahead through poetry one-pagers, blackout poetry, great performances and verse texts, I am From poems, a colorful poetry annotation activity, and more!

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Snag three free weeks of community-building attendance question slides

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

This week I want to talk about the literary food truck project and why it’s time to try it if you haven’t yet!

Since I designed this project many years ago, I’ve heard from sooo many teachers about how well it worked for them as an engaging AND analytical way to wrap up their choice reading or book club unit. I got three lovely notes from teachers this very week, and each one had me grinning from ear to ear.

I know it can be hard to find a project that doesn’t make you feel like the book police, but this one checks all the boxes.

Here’s the basic premise. Students in groups or partnerships imagine they are creating a food truck based on the book they’ve just read. The menu, social media accounts, playlist, apparel, etc. will all flow directly from their understanding of the text. They’ll create the props and make the food items that will make their final display pop for their classmates, and then explain them in a more analytical paper. 

On the day of the festival, students have a chance to wander from booth to booth, seeing the visuals for each truck, tasting menu items, exploring how the different books have inspired different themes, and getting ideas for their TBR lists. Because of the fun format, students don’t feel like they’re being quizzed on their books so much as being invited to share them. The final festival becomes a buzzworthy school event, and something that easily rolls over into an anticipated tradition.

So this week, I want to highly recommend you try a literary food truck project of your own. You can grab the free curriculum for this project right here.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Want the best of teacher tech? Discover five top tools for ELA teachers available in 2020. Screencastify, My Shakespeare, Kaizena, Flipgrid, and Anchor all hold wonderful possibilities for your classroom.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Today on the podcast, we’re joined by education leader Reid Saaris. He’s the founder of Equal Opportunity Schools, a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that students of all backgrounds have opportunities to succeed at the highest levels.

He is an Echoing Green, a Draper Richards Kaplan, and a Stanford Social Innovation Fellow, and has advised federal, state, & local leaders, teachers, philanthropies, companies, and universities on topics like justice, impact, data analysis, communications, and learning. 

His most challenging and meaningful professional experiences have been as a classroom teacher. He’s the author of the new book THE KID ACROSS THE HALL. Today we’ll be talking about why what is often called the achievement gap in schools is actually an opportunity gap, and what teachers can do about it, starting immediately.

To follow along with his journey, visit reid4waschools.com. He's currently running for Washington State Superintendent.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

If you’re teaching Long Way Down (and ready for some Long Way Down lesson plan ideas!), let me just start by saying “YAY!”

It’s a reader-maker, an incredible book you can teach in a short time with a high impact.

Today, I’m going to be sharing some of my favorite ideas and resources for you to pair with this book. We'll talk about discussion formats, project ideas, Jason Reynolds-themed multimedia waiting around the web, and a creative writing pairing that I think you're going to love too.

Heads up, as I’m sure you’re aware, this book does have some language. You may need to give a heads up to parents, depending on your school community. But you can, at the same time, mention the Walter Award, Coretta Scott King Award, Printz Award, Newberry Honor Book Award, etc. Maybe throw in the fact that the Library of Congress named him the national ambassador for Young People’s Literature. 

Here's a quick peek at the visuals available in the FULL BLOG POST: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2025/04/long-way-down-lesson-ideas.html. 

Discussion Option: Hexagonal Thinking

Discussion Option: Silent Discussion on the Walls

Activity Option: Flash Verse Creative Writing

Activity Option: The Open Mind for Character Analysis

Links to Explore:

• One example of conversations happening in Creative High School English about Long Way Down in our Book Brackets
• Dear, Dreamer documentary about Jason Reynolds
• Long Way Down graphic novel opening
• There was a Party for Langston read aloud
• Ain't Burned all the Bright trailer
• Jason Reynolds on working with artist Danica Novgorodoff
• Long Way Down Curriculum 

In this episode, discover how to use the Harkness method of discussion in your ELA classes to help students understand how to share a rich discussion and navigate group dynamics more effectively for the rest of their lives.

Honestly, Harkness is one of my favorite classroom strategies of all time, and I've learned an awful lot. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

On this week’s mini-episode, I want to answer a question from our community about reading in class. Here it is “ Hi all. Next year my middle school will be implementing a 45-minute every-other-day reading block for all students. All teachers (ELA or not) will be required to cover the class. I am wondering…what you do with it…” In today’s episode, I’m going to weigh in on how I would use a gift like this. If you give kids time to read in class, hopefully you’ll find some helpful ideas in how you can structure it so you all enjoy that time and benefit from it as much as possible.

The most important thing in my mind would be to make sure every student has access to a good book during this reading block. You could make bringing your book the only grade for this block, but even if you do, it’ll be essential to have wonderful books available during this time because no matter what you do, some kids will forget their book. I’d work with your librarian or department to make sure that there is a shelf of great age-appropriate reads available in every room. Then, as much as possible, I’d try to integrate some book recommendations. That could mean coordinating with the English department to create recommended reading posters, sharing short videos of authors reading from their work - similar to a First Chapter Friday - inviting a couple of kids to share what they’re reading if they’re loving it, 

And probably putting together some kind of curated digital access so students can hook into great e and audiobooks that others have enjoyed. The English department could also be the ones to help every student pick out their first book at the start of the program to get the ball rolling productively. 

This type of program, like any choice reading program, is going to build in momentum over time. Kids will likely struggle to sit in silence for 45 minutes at a time to read, especially if they don’t have a book they like. As much as possible, the early days of reading blocks should involve plenty of book PR in all its wonderful forms, and PLENTY of fantastic books available in audiobook, electronic, and physical format. Provide graphic novels, novels-in-verse, amazing series books, fantasy, scifi, and other popular genres alongside the classics. Ideally, every teacher monitoring this block could have a bit of training in watching for unengaged readers, so they can step over and suggest switching to a different book if a student’s current read is clearly boring them. Over time, as your reading culture grows and their reading muscles are strengthened, it will get easier. 

Anytime you can get time to let kids read at school, in my mind it’s a win. But a quiet room and the opportunity to read will only delight a handful of students at first. This week, I want to highly recommend that whether you’re working on a whole school program or a short reading block for your own class, you remember that it takes time and sustained, enthusiastic book PR to help build a culture of reading where none exists. Keep curating great titles, offering recommendations, putting up posters, and connecting kids with whatever book will get them started on the reading escalator.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

The week before Thanksgiving it's easy to feel a little scattered! For teachers AND students. It can be nice to take a break from your main unit and focus on some activities that still promote ELA skills but give kids something freshly engaging to focus on.

Since I imagine your attention is a bit divided at the moment between lesson planning, menu planning, and maybe even packing lists, I'd like to give you three day's worth of activities that you can plug and play next week to take the pressure off yourself.

Links Mentioned in the Show:

Preview the fun Black Friday week deals (including The Lighthouse $1 trial) here. 

Free Native American Heritage Month Display: You can grab it here.

You can make your copy of the guided gratitude journal and thank you notes here.

Get the poetry tiles here. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Want tech that unlocks student creativity instead of replacing what's already working?

Join me as I chat with Jennifer Gonzalez, from Cult of Pedagogy, about her current favorite creative tech tools and tech-based class projects for English teachers.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

This week, I want to share the daily planning routine that is working better for me this year than anything I’ve ever done. 

Figuring out how to approach time when it seems that there is never enough can make a big difference in how you feel about your day, and that’s why I think a simple thing like a planner routine that feels really helpful is worth sharing. I’ve recently been digging into productivity for The Lighthouse, and I listened to Ali Abdaal’s wonderful book Feel Good Productivity and took James Clear’s masterclass on building habits. They both helped me understand why my planner routine works well for me, and why I think it can work well for you too.

At the start of this year, I knew I wanted to incorporate a few new things into my week, but I didn’t want them to feel overwhelming. I wanted to drink more water after years of ignoring it, try to create a gratitude practice that felt simple and doable, and really focus my energy on work projects that I care about. Little by little, I figured out how to help myself with all of these things with my 5 minute planner routine at the start of each day.

The first thing I do when I see the column with my new day is to draw six little water glasses down toward the bottom, and fill in the first one since I’m newly motivated to drink a glass of water the moment I come downstairs to the kitchen. This also reminds me to fill my water bottle and put it by my desk. If I’m going to take a walk or do kettlebells for 20 minutes that day, I put that next to the water with a little checkbox to remind me.

Above that I draw three colorful hearts and write in three things I’m grateful for that have happened lately. Though I don’t write a lot, I try to think carefully and specifically about what was so meaningful about these things so I really put my focus there. 

Then I go up to the area where I write my plans for the day and I pick out ONE really important thing I want to get done and I write that first. That is what my focused work time is going to go to, the very first thing I’ll work on with my freshest uninterrupted energy. It’s the thing I absolutely want to make serious progress on by the end of the day. It is never, ever answering emails. 

After that I write in other priorities, trying to keep email down a few rungs of the list, because I don’t want email to drive my work energy for the day. I like to check it once and clear it out as much as possible, and then move on. Honestly, I almost never check off all of the other priorities from a single day, but I work my way down and get through what I can when I have focused work time. 

Finally, I add all my meetings, family commitments, and errands into time slots throughout the day. I try to brain dump whatever might worry me in the back of my mind, so I know everything is there for me to do throughout the day and there’s nothing else to keep track of.

After five minutes, I’m done and I have my day lined up in a way that feels clear and good to me. I’ve assigned different tasks to different parts of the day, prioritized what is really  important to me, and set myself up for success with new habits that matter to me. 

Whatever your priorities are, taking five minutes at the start of the day to intentionally block your time, choose a key task to work on, and build in new habits you’re trying to focus on in - as James Clear suggests - an easy and obvious way -  can help make them happen! That’s why today I want to highly recommend you consider a plan for your planner in 2024, and maybe even swipe mine. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Looking to bring more Antibias Antiracist work into your creative ELA classroom and curriculum? Liz Kleinrock of Teach and Transform has written a wonderful book to help, and she joins me on the podcast today to share some of the highlights. 

In this episode for creative ELA teachers, you'll learn specific strategies for helping make your classroom a place where students can share their identities, have difficult conversations, make mistakes and repair those mistakes, and learn through units that incorporate many voices and perspectives (even if you're stuck with a certain book list).

Find the show notes here. 

Connect with Liz

Visit the Teach and Transform Website

Follow Liz on Instagram

Go Further: 

Explore Alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram.

What if faculty meetings deepened relationships and helped people feel connected and inspired? In this interview, get ideas for changing the design of back-to-school with Dr. Susie Wise of the Stanford D School. 

You've probably seen me amplifying Amplifier already this year, in the episode about featuring contemporary Indigenous voices in your ELA classroom or the one about spotlighting Black artists, activists and authors in your ELA classrooom.

Amplifier.org is doing such powerful things with art. Empowering things. And I love it!

That's why when I saw their new interactive poster series on wellbeing and mental health, I just had to put a big spotlight on it. Because this is a resource you can use RIGHT NOW, and it's completely free to download.

So today join me for a conversation with Emily Goulding, executive director of Amplifier.org, about Amplifier's mission in the world and how it can help educators reach their students.

We're talking about...

• why Amplifier exists
• how it uses art to spark conversation and provide inspiration
• how the new wellbeing series that Amplifier has created can make a difference in your classroom through the simple act of downloading their free poster set

Connect with Amplifier

Visit the Education Amplifier site here and sign up to be part of their educator community.

Explore the Amplifier lesson plan bank.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Want to try Jamboard, but not sure how? In this episode, discover creative classroom options for Jamboard, and learn how to avoid the common pitfalls.

Guest Matt Miller from Ditch that Textbook shares creative uses for ELA! 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

In this episode, I take a look back over the trends, resources, and strategies that stood out to me as the most interesting during this year in ELA. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

This week on “Highly Recommended” we’re talking about the guy who has been one of my top go-tos for years when someone asks for a book recommendation for  a student. Jason Reynolds. 

In today’s episode we’re talking about a whole range of his fabulous books, including: 

• Ghost, Lu, Sunny, Patina (The Track Series)
• As Brave as You
• Stuntboy in the Meantime
• Long Way Down - graphic novel or regular
• All American Boys
• Stamped
• Ain’t Burned all the Bright
• For Everyone

Check out his website here, where he describes himself like this: “Here’s what I do: not write boring books.”

CAMP CREATIVE: TEACH GRAPHIC NOVELS WITH CONFIDENCE STARTS JUNE 12. SIGN UP TO JOIN US FOR THIS FREE PD HERE. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Wondering how to flip your classroom so you can teach two separate groups of kids in person and online?

In this episode, discover five flexible ELA unit ideas that require no texts, and how to teach them to your in-person and at-home groups at the same time.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Help your ELA students getengaged through theater and performance activities in class. There are so many options! We'll get into some of my favorites in this episode.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Ready to bring hexagonal thinking in as a creative discussion strategy for your students? Find out how in this podcast episode. You'll be amazed at the creativity and critical thinking that comes with hexagonal thinking.

In today's episode, we're turning the usual format around. Listen in as Amanda Cardenas from Brave New Teaching interviews me about hexagonal thinking, bringing her own unique and creative perspective as an A.P. teacher in Chicago to our conversation. 

Beat the after-lunch lethargy with these active classroom strategies for ELA.

Learn how to use stations, escape rooms, speed debating, hexagonal thinking, performance, and more to help keep your students up an engaged.

In this episode, we're running through my favorite ways to help shake it up with movement in the English classroom. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Ever wanted to put on a class play with your ELA students? With an audience and costumes and programs? 

Don't be intimidated, it IS possible! 

In this episode, Danielle from Nouvelle ELA, theater guru, shares her structure for a successful class play.

This awesomely engaging activity is more doable than you might think, and OH so much fun.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

If you're interested in teaching abroad, love travel, or are just curious what it's like to live in a country that's only been a country for a few decades, this episode's for you! If you're here strictly for the creative teaching ideas, I hear you. Don't worry, they'll be back in the next episode.

So you've heard about escape rooms, but you don't have 73 hours to spare? I hear you! In this episode, learn how to create a basic-but-awesome escape room using two easy tools, Canva and Google slides.

I'll never forget the "C" I got on my first English paper in college. I was walking across the quad in the warm eucalyptus-scented California air when I confidently pulled my paper from my bag to look at the comments. The day suddenly slid into grayscale as I saw my grade.

After a lifetime of "A" and "Great job" written at the bottom of every paper, fresh from winning the English award at my high school awards night, I was totally unprepared for the many, many scrawled notes about the problems in my paper.

I walked into class the next day in a daze, and listened to my professor as he went into a terrifying but effective rant. Apparently I wasn't the only freshmen to confidently turn in a paper that wasn't nearly complex enough.

His speech has stuck with me.

"Your rough draft," he said at one point. "Is a chair."

He scrawled an incredibly messy chair on the whiteboard for emphasis.

"And you have to take that chair," he sputtered. "And build a boat!"

We students glanced at each other, a little overwhelmed.

A boat?

Today I want to talk about the chair and the boat, and some of the process that happens in between. Because let's face it, most kids (high school me included) really struggle to understand the work that happens between ROUGH drafts and final drafts. And it's perhaps the most crucial part of the writing process.

The strategy we're going to dive into now, self-editing stations, can help scaffold editing for  your English students, saving them from falling into the usual traps, allowing you to intervene on behalf of key writing improvements you're trying to help them make BEFORE they turn in their work, and ultimately, saving your commenting time for only the most important personalized suggestions.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

When the lines between classwork and real world work get blurred, it often leads to engagement and deeper learning for our ELA students.

This episode is all about finding ways to connect our classrooms to the world beyond them.

Listen in for project ideas and tweaks on argument and research papers that can help teach the same vital ELA skills with a real-world relevant lens. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

My son and I love a few certain characters from the books we've read aloud over the years. Gum-Baby, from Tristan Strong, Boots, from Gregor the Overlander, Maniac Magee. For my daughter, it's Junie B. Jones and Ramona from their named series collections. For me, it was always Anne (of Green Gables) I returned to growing up, and Jo from Little Women. Oh, and of course, Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes.

Incredible characters are everywhere we turn in literature, and they make such an impact on us. We see through their eyes, experience their transformations, build empathy through their experiences.

Maybe that's why when I think about characterization, I tend to think about activities that showcase characters visually. That come at them from many angles. That require students to consider their evolution, their growth, their nature vs. their nurture.

Because sure, by all means, let's talk about what it means to be flat or round, static or dynamic. But then let's go much further.

Today on the podcast, I'm sharing six creative characterization projects I've come up with over the years, in hopes that one (or two, or three) will fill a hole for you. I love them all for different reasons, and I hope you will too.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Jason Reynolds' website headline reads "Here's What I Do: Not Write Boring books." How great is that?

As with everything he does, he seems to be speaking directly to the young people he's always trying to reach. There's a reason The Library of Congress chose him as the national ambassador for young adult literature.

Last year I created an Instagram series all about Jason's incredible work, and different ways you might use it in the classroom. But I've heard from a number of folks who aren't on Instagram, or who'd just like a deeper dive, so today I've decided to walk through that series here on the podcast, explaining everything I know about Jason Reynolds' arc of work and how you can use it in your classroom. As always, I will share my recommendations here with the caveat that you know your students, parents, and community best, so you should preview content before sharing it in class.

Ready to dive in? I'm excited!

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram.

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

You know how we feel here at Spark Creativity about Book PR. Basically it's the best. We're all about bookish posters, displays, podcasts, guest readers, First Chapter Fridays, book trailer Tuesdays, and book tastings. If it helps kids get excited about books, we're all in!

Recently I saw a lovely post over in my Creative High School English Facebook group from a teacher who hosted a Bookface competition, and it reminded me of just how much I love this idea! Bookface isn't new, but there's a reason it keeps on resurfacing. It's amazing! So in this quick episode, let's dive into what Bookface is and how you might use it as a vehicle for building reading enthusiasm. Of course, it's a fun visual strategy, so I hope you'll take a look at the show notes to see the examples I've created for you to share with your students as well.

Grab the #Bookface Student Guide Here: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/bookface

The Lighthouse $1 Trial is Open this Week:  https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/springopen 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

I've worked on so many projects this year, and not all the delightful resources, books, websites and products I've discovered fit neatly into a post or podcast. So today kick back with me and hear about some of the hidden gems I've encountered in my work this year that I think you'll love. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

If you’re a teacher in a Title I School, you need to know about First Book Marketplace.

I’ve heard about it in passing so many times, and this week I decided to dive in and figure out how it works. And boy, does it work.

Today I just want to walk you through how this site works so that you can start taking advantage of its many resources as soon as possible.

Now, if you’re NOT a teacher in a Title I School, and you’re also trying to find resources to support your wish to bring incredible books to your students, I’m going to refer you back to episode 56, The Dos and Don’ts of Donors Choose, where I’ll walk you through the best way to get funding on that site.

OK, for now, let’s dig into First Book Marketplace and how you can get started with it right away.

Are you a Title I Teacher? Register for First Book Marketplace: https://www.fbmarketplace.org/register/ 

Not a Title I Teacher? Check out the "Do's and Don'ts of Donors Choose" post here: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2019/01/the-dos-and-donts-of-donors-choose-for.html 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Launch your choice reading program with all my favorite tools and recs, and grab the free toolkit.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Last week I received this email from Emily, an English teacher with questions I think we can all relate to. Here's what she wrote...

"I am in my 8^th year of teaching, and while I love aspects of it, I work 10-11 hours a day and am burning out. And, I feel that I'm on an island sometimes at my school—I have to re-teach skills that they should have been taught in earlier years, etc.

I have one foot out of the door of the teaching profession. I find myself awake at night trying to figure out how to do a good job teaching both reading and writing, and getting in all the skills.

How do you do whole class novel units? And teach all the skills? Say, I want to teach Gatsby, and focus on character contrast and figurative language. Is it ok to focus on just a few skills each unit? How do you make sure they get practiced sufficiently, while also making sure to have time for current events/reading informational text stuff? How long do you spend on a unit to make sure you can test them and build background prior? Do you have them write a lot of literary analysis essays?

How do we then factor in teaching all of the types of writing--expository, argument, narrative, while we have to teach all these reading skills?"

Today and next time on the podcast, I'm going to do my best to answer Emily's questions, because I think they're ones we have all faced as ELA teachers. How on earth are we supposed to cover all. the. things?! And teach them well?

Today we'll look at the big picture - how to plan the year to cover what you want to cover without getting overwhelmed. Next time we'll zoom in on planning a single whole class text unit in ELA, and how to make all the decisions that go with it.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Want to help the independent readers in your ELA classroom enjoy audiobooks? Whether you want to use Audible, Libro FM (do you know about their free educator advance listening program?), Libby, or Sora, in this episode I'll walk you through the process of creating easy access for your students at your own classroom listening station.

The bookstores of Bratislava, where I live now, are quite dazzling.

In one, an entire wall is made of the open pages of books. A moving portrait – Harry Potter style – sits in the center, occasionally turning its head to watch you read on the pillows below.

There’s a cozy book nook in one that sits in the center of an enormous circular bookcase – you actually get to read inside a nest of books.

I’ve walked into a bookstore filled with fluttering book page mobiles hanging from the ceiling, and I’ve walked into a bookstore with an enormous white tree, apparently made of modge podge and pages, holding up the ceiling of the children’s section.

I love it all.

And today I want to share an idea I got from one such inspiring Slovak bookstore. In my favorite one, Martinus – where I sometimes go to drink chai latte and write curriculum for you – there’s a large green velvet chair in a little corner. Above it hang fifty or so fluttering bookmarks, and beside it there’s an ipad waiting for passersby to plug in their headphones or connect their airpods. On the screen? A couple dozen audiobooks, always ready for a listener. It’s an audiobook listening station, and today I want to show you how to add one to your classroom.

Related episode: 141 - How to Set up your Classroom Library

Go Further: 

Check out the show notes at nowsparkcreativity.com for visuals and links.  

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Choice reading can sometimes feel like an out-of-reach dream. I recently heard from a busy teacher who wrote, "I love choice reading, but squeezing it in can be tough!"

Yeah, I get that. There's so much going on in ELA.

In today's episode, we're talking about how to squeeze more choice reading moments into your busy schedule. Even if you don't have time to hand over 10 minutes in class for reading regularly, you can still build your choice reading program with quick-and-easy additions like these.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Keeping students accountable to some expectations while helping them fall in love with reading is not easy!

I know you know.

Reading logs or book reports are not the way to go. 

But that doesn't mean you're not allowed to check in with your ELA classes about their reading at all. After all, you want to hear about what they're taking away from their books so you can help them if they need you.

In this show, discover four creative ways to check in with your readers in a way that won't make you feel like the book police.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Today I’d like to share one of my favorite episodes from the Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast archives. In this special episode, I invited five creative guests to give their take on impactful classroom design. This back-to-school season felt like the perfect time to share it again. I’ll be back with a full episode on Thursday, but at the moment I’m in the throes of a 6,000 mile move with my two kids and our cat, and my office is basically a giant pile of boxes. So please forgive the change in routine, but I think you’re going to love this wonderful episode!

See the full blog post with all the links: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2021/07/130-build-connection-with-your-classroom-design.html  

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram.

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Worried about the new AI and its repercussions in the world of ELA? In this quick episode, let me share why I think it might actually be a good thing for our profession. 

For many years now, students who are so inclined have been able to grab a paper off the internet.

I remember the paranoia I felt after learning that the students at a new school where I was teaching a decade ago had actually created their own website for sharing work. To hear other teachers tell it, the answers to EVERYTHING any teacher had taught in the past were just waiting to be picked from the digital tree branches over there. Students could grab quiz answers, homework, exam responses, essays, you name it.

I actually looked out the windows during an exam once to see if anyone was dangling answers down on strings from the roof. That’s how much people prepped me to expect cheating.

But that year my students held poetry slams, created a live radio show, performed original one-act plays, and put on an independent reading festival.

It wasn’t easy to cheat on any of it.

And little by little, I stopped worrying so much that they would.

While the internet today, and the new AI tools, make it easier than ever for students to cheat on extended writing questions sent home for completion, it’s really just a slight level up on what was already available. We’ve known kids could cheat on extended take-home writing for a very long time, and whether they’re doing it by copying and pasting or engaging AI, we know they have the option to engage help they shouldn’t.

But there are so many ways to design assignments that call for creative work in modern mediums that AI can’t do for them.

So today I want to share why I’m not worried about the new AI, and why I don’t think you need to be either.

Go Further: 

Explore Alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Welcome to the Thursday edition of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, a podcast for English teachers in search of creative teaching strategies. Whether you’re new to the show or a long-time listener, I’m so glad you’re here for today’s edition of “Highly Recommended.” This week, I want to make sure you know just how amazing the Google Translate App really is. 

Living here in Bratislava, and traveling around Europe with our family, we are constantly confronted by languages we don’t know. On Street Signs, parking signs, parking tickets, frozen pizza cooking instructions, directions for using new toys on Christmas morning, mail that lands in our box, and so much more. Which is why we really couldn’t do without our Google translate app.

At first we stared at the strange text and painstakingly tried to type it into the app. But then we discovered the camera feature. Did you know you can pick any two languages in the app, then take a picture of the first and instantly see it translated to the second? 

You can also speak into the app in one language and see your words typed out in another. Or hold the camera up to someone you want to understand and get their words translated. 

It’s an incredible tool, and one I use constantly in my everyday life. 

For your emerging bilingual or trilingual students, Google Translate can be a huge lifeline. They can quickly hold their app camera over handout instructions, printed writing prompts, or classroom posters and see it in their own language. They can take a picture or screenshot and have the translation available for the rest of the class. And of course, beyond the app, they can plug large sections of text into Google Translate online to help them better understand a podcast transcript, close reading passage, or news article. 

Google Translate can help your students keep up with your content and express the complexity of their ideas as their second or third language skills catch up with their thought processes. That’s why this week, I highly recommend you add it to your phone and get familiar with it. It doesn’t take long, and it could make all the difference to some of your students (and perhaps their parents come conference time, too). 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram.

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

This week I want to share a quick push for trying book clubs this year. If you haven’t jumped on this trend yet, I want to give you a few quick reasons why I hope you will! 

Book clubs allow you to give students...

• more choice in their curriculum
• more diversity in the voices you share
• a deeper exploration of a theme or genre (since they end up hearing about so many different books from their peers)

Book clubs allow YOU...

• to consolidate required texts to make room for other options
• to bring in a wider variety of authors you want to share
• to find helpful routines that take stress off lesson planning

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

This week I want to share a super simple strategy for building more book recommendations into your classes in just two or three minute installments, book trailers.

I first heard the idea of “Book Trailer Tuesdays” from Abby Gross, over at Write On with Miss G. I loved the idea right away, as a companion to First Chapter Friday or as its own unique program. But even if you’re not doing Book Trailer Tuesdays, book trailers are an amazing thing to build into your class.

Maybe you have a bookmarked list of trailers ready for those odd days when your lesson randomly ends five minutes earlier than you expect.

Maybe you change up your book talk routine now and then and show a trailer for a book or two that you have featured in your library.

Maybe you show a few trailers to help introduce a new genre, like novels-in-verse, or graphic novels. 

Maybe after all this book trailer fun, you have students make book trailers of their own and start building a collection you can show to your students in future years!

I hope you give book trailers a try this year!

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Want to showcase Black authors, poets, artists and activists in your ELA classroom? Celebrate Black History Month all year long with these ideas. 

Black History Month is here, and while it’s vital that we celebrate Black poets, authors, leaders, playwrights, and activists throughout our curriculum, this is a great time to put a special focus on spotlighting all the wonderful Black voices in the ELA world. There are so many to choose from!! So today, I want to share some easy ways to do that, today, tomorrow, all through February, and all year long.

Start with the free QR code display featured in this episode. This easy display lets students explore the life and work of greats like Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison alongside contemporary figures like Jason Reynolds, Trevor Noah, and Michelle Obama. You can use the QR codes for bellringers and other activities throughout the month, and send early finishers over to explore. Make your free copy here. Consider printing on cardstock for more durability.

Check out the show notes here for more activities and links mentioned on today's episode. 

Explore Alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram.

Want to finish off your ELA year with as much meaning and creativity as you've brought to your curriculum all year long? Good for you! 

Skip the multiple choice and short answer and try a creative English final exam. In this episode, you'll discover five great options, including one of my favorites, the graduation speech.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

In this episode, learn three simple systems you can put in place at the start of the year to make class easier and more creative all year long. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

There are so many reasons why a student may be quiet in class. The language may be difficult. They may need more time to think than the pace of discussion allows. They may not have been able to read because of other things happening in their lives that they can't control. They may be really shy.

But there are ways to help quiet students build confidence and begin to participate.

In today's episode, I'll share what I learned over many years putting a strong focus on student-centered discussion in class. We'll talk about discussion warm-ups, individual conversations with kids who are dominating, discussion role cards, and my favorite strategy for student-centered discussion, The Harkness Method. 

To grab the free resources that complement this episode, sign up for the Better Discussions Toolkit right here (coming by email Friday if you're already on my list!).

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

In this episode, I'll share five strategies for amping up student engagement by giving them authentic audiences for their work.

It's more doable than it seems! Once you start looking, you'll find authentic audience options for your ELA students all over the place. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Welcome to the Thursday edition of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, a podcast for English teachers in search of creative teaching strategies. Tell me if this sounds familiar. You sit down to write a rec letter  after a long fall day of teaching, meetings, coaching, and everything else on your plate. Maybe it’s 9 pm and you’re trying to remember all of Erica’s shining moments from the last three months. But they’re a bit jumbled together in your head with your grocery list, your toddler’s sleep training regimen, and your other 120 students. Your eyes start to droop. The latest episode of Bake-Off just dropped and you are soooo ready to fall asleep on the couch. So you decide to push the college rec to the next day.

Ugh. It’s a terrible cycle that can start to feel like it’s dominating your life. And I’ve been there so many times. Today I want to tell you about  the simple switch I pulled that made a big difference.  I hope will help you too.

Early in my career, writing rec letters began to feel like my second full-time job. I taught all juniors. I liked them and they liked me, and it seemed like every time I turned around another student was standing in front of me hopefully, eyes wide, waiting to ask me to write their rec.  I found myself sitting in front of my computer at all hours staring at my blinking cursor. Combining dozens of rec letters with my role as varsity tennis coach in the fall soon left me sleepless and strained.

I asked for a meeting with my talented colleague in college guidance to find out what was most important to include in my letter, hoping to streamline my process and make my work more effective for my students. 

As an English teacher who has probably told your students a million times that they need specific evidence to back up their points, it probably won’t surprise you to hear that the top tip I received was to load my college recs with specifics. Of course, college admissions folks want us to paint them a picture of  our students with anecdotes, project descriptions, amazing moments in class when the student shone. And of course, you want to do your student justice by doing just that. 

But adding more specifics was hardly going to save me time. So I started asking every student who wanted me to write their rec to fill in a sheet FULL of specifics.

I asked things like: What are you most proud of from my class? When did you feel like you had a breakthrough with your writing, and how did you show it? Can you share about a specific day in class where you really felt like you shone? What’s one project that you feel like showed your ELA skills in top form? 

I asked them to be as specific and detailed as possible, to help me be as specific and detailed as possible. And of course, I used their details to remind me of my own take on their work, using my own perspective ultimately to describe their success. But those sheets made all the difference as a shortcut to more effective, quicker recs. 

Did all of my student love doing this? No. Some of them complained a bit, but it was a non-negotiable. It helped me write them a better letter, and it helped make it possible for me to fit it in on top of all the other things I was doing in my job. I didn’t feel even slightly guilty about it, and I don’t want you to either.

Grab your copy of the ELA Reflection Sheets Here: https://spark-creativity.ck.page/a8ec1e39d1 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram.

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Today we’re talking about a model that influenced every discussion I ran in my classroom from my first year to my last, across grade levels, years, and countries. I’ve run hundreds of Harkness discussions - terrible ones, experimental ones, pretty ok ones, good ones, and absolutely incredible ones. Today I want to tell you how Harkness discussion changed the way I see group dynamics and why I can’t talk about class discussion without centering this model. I want you to try Harkness, or some spin off of it that fits your classroom space and size, and here’s why.

Maybe you’ve heard me talk before about the new teacher conference I attended in Northern California when I was 22. At some point during that loaded weekend, someone handed me a sheaf of papers labeled “Harkness Discussions.” Inside, I found some example discussion charts, a summary of the model, and a dream. 

Harkness was originally developed at Philips Exeter Academy, where a philanthropist named Edward Harkness made a gift to the school that was channeled into creating and implementing a model of discussion centering student voices. It sounds pretty simple - students sit in a circle, ideally - but in practice rarely - around a large oval wooden table, and talk to each other in class. They face each other, look at each other, acknowledge each others’ ideas, rather than all facing toward the teacher leading the way.

By the time I started flipping through my packet in 2004, more than seven decades after that initial gift, teachers had been experimenting with and improving the model for a long time. I read everything I could find online, then decided to roll out a one month experiment in every class. I was waaay into experiments at that point, and my students were used to seeing my metaphorical jazz hands as I rolled out poetry slams, performance projects, transcendental showcases, and whatever else I cooked up late at night and on the weekend while I was working all. the. time. 

So they were game enough when I explained what we’d be doing. I showed them a picture of a discussion chart and explained that a student observer would chart each discussion and give a compliment and a recommendation for improvement at the end of the discussion (not mentioning specific names). I explained that my role would be to help them prepare in advance for the discussion but not to moderate it during the actual conversation. I warned them about the vast potential for awkward silence, promised that they’d get through it, and also promised not to ruin everything by rescuing them. We talked about what could make a student-led discussion go well. And then we started. 

During that first month of Harkness, I watched four different classes go through four very different evolutions. 

F block skipped the floundering stage and went right to the “we’re awesome and we can rock this” stage. They had lots of kids who did the reading and wanted to talk, so after the initial observer comments that not everyone was talking (which is pretty much always the observer comment in every class in the first few Harkness discussions), things progressed quickly. With a little bit of help from me in chatting with observers before class, observations became more nuanced, and the class moved into the common next stages of Harkness, like helping students work on not interrupting each other, finding ways to subtly invite and support comments from students who were reluctant to speak, bringing more specific textual evidence into the conversation, making better transitions, and asking good questions.

B block, on the other hand, floundered with the best of them. Maybe the trickiest transition into good Harkness that I ever saw over 25 different classes. Still, not to ruin the ending, but they got there by the end of the month. In D block I learned a lot about how to work with a slow-starting class. I integrated strategies like careful warm-ups to give students plenty to talk about, staring down at my notebook and writing “this is awkward” over and over again with careful focus during awkward pauses so that kids would know I wasn’t going to rescue them, and helping guide my observer in positively reinforcing the smallest improvements and giving a specific focused goal that was achievable for the next discussion. 

That first month built the foundation to continue for the rest of the year, though we stopped integrating the method every single day. Harkness became our go-to discussion method, more like once or twice a week, which is how I continued into the next years. But that sense of the method as a living experiment, an evolution that never ended, stayed with me.

The next year I surveyed my students about their experience with Harkness, and here are some of their comments: 

“I think I’ve always been able to share my thoughts, but I’ve definitely changed as a listener. I’ve learned how to pay attention.”

“I have changed. I seem to like to talk a lot more than I thought I would have. Harkness has allowed me to gain confidence in myself and what I believe is right.”

“Harkness teaches hesitant speakers to be more confident with their ideas. Conversely, it shows talkative people the value of listening to their peers’ opinions.”

“I have yet to feel like sleeping during a discussion.” 

“I’ve learned to think before I speak.”

Over the years, I watched powerful transformations. Learned how to help silent students break in. Learned how to help dominators step back. Learned how to team up with my observers to chart dynamics relating to ever more complex factors in the room, like gender, friend groups, types of question, and topic transitions. I watched a brave young woman, our student body president, break down in tears after class as she realized for the first time that quieter peers she didn’t think had anything to say had rich contributions to make when space was made for them. I watched emerging bilingual students realize others cared about their opinion and were willing to make space to hear it. Awkward silence became funny instead of scary. Wide-ranging student-led discussion became the norm.

And that’s where we’re going to leave it today. Next week we’re digging into specifics. Expect to see one episode in your feed Tuesday on setting up success and the role of the observer, and another on helping discussion dominators and silent students. I’ll be coming at it through the perspective of Harkness, because that’s the discussion country where I’ve got my citizenship, but you can apply similar ideas to Socratic Seminar or whatever spinoff of student-led discussion you prefer. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram.

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Get Penny's tips on gently challenging what's not working at your school.

Find out how she integrates choice reading and writer's notebooks to ignite student interest. 

Discover her favorite choice reads for students right now and the authors who have helped inspire her practice. 

Research is such a vital skill in ELA, but it's not always easy to get students to buy in. Let's explore some fresh takes on the traditional research paper. 

In this context, we'll talk about Dave Perkins' idea of "The whole game at the junior level." Find out how this simple concept can transform any unit, and change the way your students see their work in the classroom. 

I'd love to connect! Come say hello on Instagram, @nowsparkcreativity or join the fun in my collaborative Facebook group, Creative High School English. 

This week on Highly Recommended  I’m sharing my favorite online tool for Shakespeare, the free website My Shakespeare. 

So what makes it so great?

Well, let’s start with the fact that it as FULL texts available for Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Julius Caesar. 

That give you OPTIONS. 

You can choose one for a full class text OR have students choose plays that interest them for Shakespearean book clubs.

But whole texts are jus the tip of the iceberg. Wait till you hear about all the scaffolds and multimedia pop-outs available right on the texts. You won’t believe this amazing resource. 

Tune in and I’ll walk you through it in just a few minutes on this week’s short “Highly Recommended” episode.

Haven't signed up for Camp Creative: Teach Graphic Novels with Confidence in June yet? Grab your free spot here. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

In this episode, Jenna Copper from Doc Cop Teaching and I dive into one of her most successful and engaging classroom strategies, a discussion format in which students rotate between the roles of discussion panelists and audience tweeters.

In this podcast, discover NINE creative ways to bring Taylor Swift's music into class. Find out how to have students create their own eras, practice public speaking on song-inspired topics with song-inspired tones, build book bracelets or character playlists, practice rhetorical analysis through songs and music videos, and more. 

Special thanks to ALL our wonderful guests - Ashley from Building Book Love, Amanda from Mud & Ink Teaching, Delia from @mrsreganreads, Allie from @bayeringwithfreshmen, Meredith from Bespoke ELA, Melissa from Reading and Writing Haven, and Krista from @whimsyandrigor.

Helpful Links:

The Eras Project: Make your copy of the Canva template here

Bookish Bracelets: See an example in this reel

Practice Rhetorical Analysis with Songs: Grab the free rhetorical triangle templates here 

Practice Character Analysis with Eras: Pick up the free resource

Teach Narrative Terms with "Love Story": Grab the  free resource

Help Students create their own Antiheroes:  FREE anti-hero character sketch chart

Guide Students to Practice Tone when they "Talk Swiftly": use this link to download the free teaching tool

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

So you've assigned a book you love (or maybe a selection of several) to your students for the summer, and soon enough they'll be back to share their takeaways. But maybe this year you want to hear from them through a form other than the traditional summer reading essay. You want to kick things off with creativity, and also push them to think beyond any internet summary and commentary they may have perused alongside the book. Today on the podcast, I'd like to share four easy alternatives to an in-class essay.

Each activity can easily be completed in a day, and can also lead into a larger class discussion of the text. Plus, they're more fun to grade than a stack of 100 essays. Is an in-class essay on the summer reading a valid choice? Sure! But if you'd like to change it up, here are some ideas.

The Open Mind Characterization Project

Hexagonal Thinking

Theme One-Pagers

Silent Discussion

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Learn from Liz Kleinrock, Teaching Tolerance teacher of the year, about how she approaches big conversations about difficult topics with her students.

If you wish you had more information about how to safely address issues of race, gender, social justice, and equity in your classroom, this episode can help.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

On this week’s mini-episode, I want to talk about learning names, and my easy trick for mastery. It took me many years, but finally, after a year in which I had a Kalina, Karina, Ekaterina, and Katrina, I figured out a plan that really worked.  

I hate not knowing students’ names. It stresses me out, big time. Maybe you’re the same? The worst is when I think I know someone’s name and then it’s actually someone else’s name, so I feel like I betrayed them both. 

So finally, after about five years of teaching, I stumbled upon the idea of name tents. I printed everyone’s name in big block letters on a different color of cardstock for each class, and I set them out on day one before students came in. They sat with their name card, I read the card every time I wanted to talk to them. Bingo. 

But it was still hard. I didn’t know their names when I saw them at lunch, or in the hall, and they had to sit in my random seating chart every day which wasn’t always ideal. 

Then one year I decided I would have them decorate the name tents. They added favorite quotes, activities they liked, books or authors they loved, and drawings. This helped me get to know them better and gave me starting points for pre-class banter. It was a step forward in the name-learning evolution. 

But then came the moment I struck gold. I had my camera in class for taking a first day class photo, since one of my favorite first day activities was to challenge students to choose a place on campus and create some kind of fun class pose for a photo I would then print for our room. And yes, it was an actual camera, before I had a smartphone. I noticed my camera while students were decorating their name tents, and I asked if I could take their pictures holding up their name cards. Though some kids joked around about it feeling like a mug shot, no one really minded once I explained how it would help me memorize names quickly. 

In two minutes I circled the class, giving myself an easy way to study each student’s face with their name and some of their top interests. That night I scrolled and practiced, repeating any name I didn’t get the on the first try over and over as I went back and forth from picture to picture. After a couple of sessions, I had every name down, and I walked in the next day with happy confidence. It made a huge difference to me to be able to focus on getting my classes up and running without worrying about memorizing names. I kept the name tents out for a while so everyone could learn each other’s names and interests, but I didn’t rely on them any more. And I repeated the same process in every class for the rest of my time in the classroom. 

This week, as many folks return to school around the country, I highly recommend you give this strategy a try. The combination of name tents and photos (assuming you’re allowed to take photos at your school) is a name-learning match made in heaven.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Need a creative approach to your next short story? Or short story unit? (By the way, here are some fabulous classic and contemporary short stories if you need some). Stations can provide so many inroads, while allowing students to proceed at their own pace and based on their own interests. PLUS, they give you a chance to move around the room and help out individual students or small groups that need you.

So today on the podcast, I want to share some creative options when it comes to short story stations. We'll talk about the fundamental elements that can help make stations a success (like clear tasks, resources, scaffolds, and models) as well as ideas specific to approaching the key elements of short stories.

Could you use all these activities with short stories even if you WEREN'T doing stations? Sure, that's definitely an option too. But they would make excellent stations.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

The late afternoon sun filtered through the windows of our tiny English department office as I ran in to grab the papers I’d just printed. As I waited for them to finish, I examined the old books stacked on the shelf above the printer, brought to our school in  Bulgaria by another ex-pat teacher many years ago, judging by the dust. One caught my eye - William Zinsser’s guide to writing nonfiction - On Writing Well. I snagged it with my papers and headed upstairs. Little did I know, I had just picked up my new favorite writing book, and the one that would give me my most consistent improvement for my own writing. It’s the switch that made me start this podcast with “The late afternoon sun filtered through the windows” instead of “It was late one afternoon.” Did you spot it?  Welcome to the Thursday edition of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, a podcast for English teachers in search of creative teaching strategies. Today we’re talking about a simple but highly impactful piece of writing advice you can give to every student. I heard it first from William Z all those years ago, and now I want to share it with you.

OK, here’s the simple rule. English students need to watch out for the verb “To be.” Sure, it’s useful. I just used it. But it’s actually too useful. It can quickly become the driver of any piece of writing with constant lines like: “He was bored,” “they were hungry, “she was late,” “we’re tired.”  When we see writing like this, we might be tempted to launch into a fairly complex explanation of show don’t tell. But it’s even easier to give students a highlighter and ask them to find all the “to be” verbs in their piece. Have them highlight “was,” were,” and “are,” then pause to take in the fact that their whole piece is now bright yellow. Then show them how to flip the switch.

Let’s take “he was bored” as our model. How can a kid write “he was bored” without the “to be” construction? 

How about this: “After six hours of waiting at the airport gate, Ben had finally mastered the art of sleeping standing up.” 

Or we can try “They were hungry,” switching in “Jen and Jenny felt sure they could eat a dozen of the salted caramel cream donuts immediately. Each.” 

As you can see, in general the switch away from “to be” leads to far more specific descriptive writing. It’s like a game, shifting writing from black and white to full color. 

Will there still be times when “to be” makes sense? For sure. You don’t want kids to change it every single time. But making them aware of the potential can make a huge impact on their writing. I know it has on mine over years of writing for you! 

If you’re looking for a way to help students remember this tip, try spending fifteen minutes on a poster project. Invite every student to create a poster featuring a boring “TO BE” sentence in black and white, with the “To be” verb construction in red. Then have them make a second poster for a new version of the sentence with more vivid description matched by more vivid, colorful imagery. Put the best ones up on your wall as a reminder of this tip, then refer back to your models when students are editing their writing. 

Such a simple rule, but it makes such a big impact. Remind your students that “to be” can BE boring, and you’ll help them level up their writing game across genres. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Need help planning your ELA units? I hear you. 

Let me take you through my personal strategy for planning units, weeks, and days for English classes in three simple steps. 

Starting with the big picture makes it soooo much easier.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

As I sat in the warm theater watching my son's sixth grade class recount their favorite memories of school last week, I couldn't help but notice how many of them involved a field trip. Probably 95% of the kids' recollections revolved around special, memorable events that didn't happen every week - a trip to Austria, a trip to the river, a trip to a kitchen space where they learned to cook a lunch and then eat it following a project-based-learning unit on restaurant design.

I remember field trips from my school experience too - to learn about wolves at Minnesota's Wolf Center in 5th grade, to hike through snowy fields and see the stars on a seventh grade overnight, to examine the inside of a mine on Minnesota's Iron Range when I got older.

A field trip is a powerful thing, and it can come in so many forms. Today, I want to share some ideas for field trips you can take without a bus, and without a budget. Because I know both can be hard to come by. But that doesn't mean you can't set up some truly broadening experiences for your students from right within your classroom walls.

Let's talk about virtual field trips, because there are a lot more options out there than you might think! Whether they're already curated online, waiting for you to design a webquest around them, or even shared in person over Zoom by a museum curator or an author in their studio.

Visit the sites mentioned in today's show...

Link: Holocaust Museum of LA Free Virtual Tours for Students

Native Knowledge 360 Education Initiative

Link: Google Arts and Culture 

Link: "Discover Civil Rights History," "Risking it All and Riding for Freedom," and "Sitting Down to Take a Stand."

Link: Globe Virtual Tour

Link: Nat Geo Experiential Learning

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

You don't have to choose between choice reading and whole class texts. You can have both, and student will benefit from each in different ways.

In this episode, I explain how to create a free choice reading program for your ELA students to complement your main curriculum, and give you six fun ways to spark student engagement with it. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

As the back-to-school season rolls around, attendance questions are a super easy strategy to help you build community and get to know your students. In today's episode, I'll share what they are, how to get rolling with them, and how to use them flexibly throughout the year. 

Here’s how they work….

At attendance time, instead of calling roll and having students say “here,” have them share their answer to a question. The question should usually lead to a SHORT answer – one or two words – but if your class is dealing with something or reeling from something, you could always take more time.

The questions can be serious or funny, asked aloud or projected on an image slide.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Discover great podcasts to use in your ELA classroom, and get tips for how to use them successfully.

Find out how to keep students focused as they listen and how to make it easy for them to access podcasts individually.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Today on the podcast, we’re sitting down with Martina Cahill, who goes by The Hungry Teacher online. One of her great gifts is helping middle school ELA teachers rock it with choice reading and book clubs, though I believe a lot of what she teaches can easily apply to high school too, especially when it comes to cultivating a culture of reading, trying out different forms of book clubs, and rolling out book tastings that make an impact. 

If you’ve ever wondered what you can do in advance to help make your book club unit a success, you’re going to find some really helpful ideas in this conversation. 

Helpful Links: 

Ready to jump into book clubs, but need a bit more information? Be sure to grab Martina’s Book Club blueprint.

You can find Martina on Instagram where she shares more about book clubs, independent reading and writing. 

You can also visit her website here.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

A literary food truck project is a great creative assessment for lit circles and choice reading. Find out how to take it digital in this interview with Amy Marquez and Alyssa Medrano, a creative librarian-English teacher team at Collegiate High School in Texas. Then sign up for the free food truck project curriculum right here. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

On this week’s mini-episode, I want to tell you about a one week unit that has never failed to produce incredible results from my students. I’ve done it with 10th graders and 11th graders, honors students and their counterparts, American students and Bulgarian students speaking English as their second language. And I’ve loved it every. Single. Time.

Wow, it’s kind of fun setting up all this suspense, but as you know, Thursday episodes are quick, so we better hop to it. The one week unit I’ve loved every time is a poetry slam unit, and I think you should try it too. Let’s walk through the week.

On Monday I introduce the concept of slam. I explain the arbitrary judging, the standing up with your poem and your guts and your dream, and I explain that we’re having one on Friday. I share some of my favorite performance pieces to help kids start thinking through what performance poetry is, and I invite them to score the poems on a 1-10 as if we were having our own slam already. Hilarious disagreements ensue, and everyone quickly realizes that judging is incredibly subjective. As we get ready to prep for our slam on the next three days, I let kids sign up to be on committees that will take care of the Slam venue, the slam judging and P.R., and the slam program and emceeing. 

On Tuesday, we roll into poetic devices and performance techniques, looking at, analyzing and scoring more performance poetry and beginning to workshop ideas for their own poems. We write “I am from” poems. We meet in committees. Everything seems incredibly important, because everyone knows they’ll be performing a poem in just three days.

On Wednesday, we watch more poems, write more poems, and meet in committees again. At this point, most kids are zeroing in on a poem to perform in the slam. I check in with the venue committee to make sure they are formally requesting use of whatever school space they want to use on Friday and that they get approval. I check in with the program committee to make sure they are getting everyone’s titles, figuring out a fair order, and prepping an emcee who will do the event justice. I check in with the judging committee to make sure they’ve reached out respectfully to possible guest judges in the community and that they are getting some acceptances. 

On Thursday, everyone is writing madly and practicing intensely. They perform alone, perform for partners, ask me questions, and keep experimenting. We might watch a few more performances. We’ll definitely meet in committees again.

On Friday, everyone arrives ready (and very nervous) for what is always one of the best days of the year. The venue committee has the ambiance dialed in, usually with refreshments, fun lighting, and a surprising location. The emcee steps up to the plate and keeps everything going. The guest judges lend an air of professionalism, and make everything feel higher stakes. The poets tend to surprise themselves. I love it every time! 

OK, that’s a wrap on today’s quick episode. I hope I’ve convinced you to try a poetry slam this year when you teach poetry. For me, it’s the mini-unit that never fails to engage kids around poetry in a way they didn’t expect.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram.

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Would 12 year olds learn to spell 1000 words without the National Spelling Bee? Would high schoolers practice layups for hundreds of hours without the lure of Saturday games and the dream of college ball? 

For that matter, would you be as interested in upping your teaching game if you didn't know you would have 30 curious faces staring at you come Monday?

Having a REASON to learn something is half the battle... maybe more than half. When you incorporate a showcase project in every unit, you give students motivation to learn the lessons along the way that will help them succeed. 

Maybe your poetry unit wraps up in a poetry slam, and students know they'll be on stage in front of their peers to perform. That's strong motivation to understand alliteration! 

Maybe your genius hour project finishes with the publication of student podcasts. To the actual world. Whoa. Motivation for sure!

Maybe your speech unit finishes with a presentation to the school board. Suddenly rhetorical devices feel a lot more relevant.

You get the idea!

In this episode, I'm talking about the secret sauce I like to mix into every unit, and why it helps so much.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

You want the last day of ELA to be special, but what does that mean exactly? And who has the energy to think up this special plan when you're juggling allll the end-of-year things?

If you'd like a fast, easy solution to the last day of your ELA classes, today I'm proposing (ha ha, I just accidentally typed PROMposing) stations. Stations are an easy way to get whatever dots have to be dotted and Ts have to be crossed at the same time as you build in a few fun things and keep everything lively so the time flies. The goodbye speech can only last so long. 

Grab the Summer Reading Bookmarks: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/12waoiIk0gdYMVYZPM8DnU17_RgJZhLlFKofqy2oFjM4/copy 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram.

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

In this episode, featuring five creative guest experts, discover six powerful ideas to transform your ELA classroom into the inclusive, creative, inspiring place you want it to be.

These tips are low cost or no cost, and easy to put into place. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Welcome to the author spotlight series at Spark Creativity.

In this series, you’ll hear from authors sharing their work directly into your classroom. So sit back and listen in. Today we’re hearing from Nancy Tandon, reading from her book, The Way I Say It.  

Nancy has worked as an elementary school teacher, a speech-language pathologist, and an adjunct professor of Phonetics and Child Language Development, all of which helped plant seeds for stories about awesome kids doing brave things.

Her debut middle grade novel, The Way I Say It (Charlesbridge, 2022) was an American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce and Indies Next pick as well as a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection.

My hope is that you’ll play this episode to your students on an upcoming Friday, sharing the guiding sketchnotes handout below with them so they can jot down their key takeaways as they listen.

Grab the Novel-Specific Sketchnotes Sheet: Click here

Play it from Youtube for your Students: https://youtu.be/CE6UDEl9p5Y 

Learn more about author Nancy Tandon: https://nancytandon.com/ 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram.

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

If you tuned into the podcast last week, you know I received an email from Emily, an ELA teacher with big questions. In a nutshell, she asked - how do we fit it all into our English classes? The writing, the review, the whole class novels, the skills...

Last week, we took a look at the big picture - how to plan the year to cover what you want to cover without getting overwhelmed. This time we're zooming in on planning an ELA unit for one whole class text, and how to make all the decisions that go with it.

Discover my process for choosing a path through the reading, adding complementary texts, choosing consistent programs, and designing a buy-in project to help give the whole unit a solid shape.

You can use this step-by-step plan to approach English units you'd like to redesign or build from scratch this summer. 

____

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Want to engage your students with murder mysteries? Make them laugh while they learn with SNL clips? Hook them with great Ted Talks?

Uh, yeah, of course! Learn more about all these great strategies in this popular episode with special guest Amanda from the "Engaging and Effective" blog.

I think you're going to love Amanda's fresh take on engaging students and helping them to buy in to your curriculum.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Ready to refresh your writing program with new, creative options? In this podcast episode, learn about unique writing prompts, writing alternative endings to fiction, using collaborative writing projects, spiraling writing instruction, building an argument unit around a mock trial, and more!

Looking for creative vocabulary activities that aren't boring? Want students to get excited about using words in interesting ways? Check out these colorful vocabulary options for your secondary ELA classroom. 

See the images and sign up for the vocabulary quiz templates in the show notes at: https://nowsparkcreativity.com 

Come hang out on Instagram @nowsparkcreativity. 

You’ve probably heard me talk about my first poetry slam. The project that became my go-to vehicle for teaching poetry every year that followed.

The book I was handed - 6 American Poets - was chock full of great poetry. Dickinson, Whitman, Hughes… but I knew that I, like every paper worth reading, would need a solid hook. 

That’s how I ended up staying up til one in the morning the night before my poetry unit was set to kick off searching for poetry slam clips without swearwords. 

Eventually I found some incredible clips and the philosophy that would guide much of my time in the classroom.

I thought of the philosophy then as “using showcase projects.” 

Now I think of it as finding the glue that would keep students engaged with my material.

So how can you find your own glue? Let’s talk.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Grab the free Better Discussions toolkit

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Is your school closing due to the coronavirus outbreak? Here are some creative ideas for you to stay connected to your students and keep them working on their ELA skills, regardless of their internet access at home.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

I can still remember the faded, chipped blue print of my childhood game of Memory. The thick cardboard squares we flipped in search of pairs, thrilled when we found a match, frustrated when we accidentally revealed a match to our opponent.

I’ve played a million games now as a parent too, watching my children’s eyes light up when they rack up more matches than I do, which is pretty much every time. I think my daughter was beating me consistently by the time she was four.

The memory game seems to stick in our game culture like no other. I see a new twist on it everywhere, most recently National Parks memory when I stepped into the store at Sequoia National Park last week. 

So how can we use this go-to in the classroom to gamify ELA? Well, in a million ways. Let’s talk about how you can make your own memory game, with pretty much any material you want to cover.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Get my popular free hexagonal thinking digital toolkit

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram.

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

This week I want to share a wonderful website and resource with you, Melissa Alter Smith’s brainchild, Teach Living Poets.

When I first started teaching poetry, it couldn’t have been clearer to me that students needed modern poets to relate to. Though we eventually enjoyed unpacking poems like Wallace Stevens’ “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” that was only because we started with a lot of performance poetry, modern poems students leaned into and even loved. 

Melissa Alter Smith, founder of the #teachlivingpoets hashtag, creator of the website of the same name, and author of a book on the subject, has created an incredible resource for teachers who want to bring more modern poetry into their classrooms.

Since I interviewed her on the show to share her Amanda Gorman lessons, I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate on a number of projects with her showcasing other living poets and crafting poetry workshops for teens, and I'm so impressed by her imagination and the way she pushes kids to think deeply about poetry and then express themselves both through analysis and creative writing. 

That’s why today I want to highly recommend you go and check out her work. Take a tour of teachlivingpoets.com, visit the amazing virtual library of work available to you there, and find a new poetry workshop to add to your lessons this year. See how your students respond, and then go back for more!

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

If I told you the ELA elective we’re about to dive into has an “awkward party” unit, would you believe me?

Well, it does, and I can’t wait for you to learn about it and start planning an awkward party lesson of your own. Today on the show, we’re continuing our creative electives series with veteran teacher Lisa Blake, who's been teaching for 33 years in Northern California. She's built a life skills elective to give her students confidence in how to learn new skills, not just to teach the skills themselves.

As she empowers them to explore and discover paths to success, she's not just teaching them to cook, sew, and manage the small talk at an awkward party, she's teaching them to believe they can tackle an area they know nothing about. And you can do the same for your students, whether it's through an entire elective like Lisa, or a smaller life skills unit. So let's dive in and learn how!

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

In today’s short episode of “Highly Recommended”, I want to recommend an article I read at Edutopia this week, because it’s chock-full of the research you need to support conversations at your school about grading less. Changing the culture of grading in our ELA classrooms won’t just benefit teachers, it benefits students too. So today I want to share two highlights from the article, “Why Teachers Should Grade Less Frequently,” by Stephen Merrill and Youki Terada, and then give you the link in the show notes so you can go read it and send it to everyone in your department. Seriously.

Terada and Merrill share the research around nine reasons that grading less benefits both educators and educatees (students). This is not a both-sides-of-the-story type of article. It is VERY clear about its argument. Less grading for the right reasons is the way to go. Hopefully, if you’ve been around here for long, that sounds like a familiar story.

One of my favorite points in the article is #3, “Grading Obligations reduce teacher creativity and innovation.”   According to the research, most teachers are splitting their time between grading and lesson planning, devoting about the same amount of time to each. As a result, and I imagine you’ve experienced this at some point or another, many folks are unable to give the necessary time to the reflection and discovery that would let them unlock their most creative classroom ideas. 

Another key idea comes in #6: “Grading reduces opportunities for student practice.” According to the research, repeated practice counts for a lot when it comes to improving writing, and prioritizing feedback over reps isn’t the answer. If teachers feel they must grade everything students do, students won’t have as many opportunities to build the pathways that lead to better writing.

The big components of this article are ones our teaching community has been talking about for a long time. But what I love about this article is how it boils the ideas down into a three minute read with clear evidence and research links to back up what English teachers have learned through experience. That means you can point to the evidence online as well as the evidence in your classroom when you take these ideas to your colleagues, and explain your methods to parents who think papers are meant to be coated in red ink before they’re returned. Remember, I’m dropping this link in the show notes right now, so be sure to click over and read this great article from Stephen Merrill and Youki Terada!

READ THE ARTICLE: https://www.edutopia.org/article/why-teachers-should-grade-less-frequently 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Get my popular free hexagonal thinking digital toolkit

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram.

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

A beautiful and inspiring work space isn't just for primary students.

In this episode, I'll share ideas for age-appropriate creative decor for your high school classroom. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Welcome to day five of gratitude week here at Spark Creativity. Today, on our final day, we’re looking back at an interview with my friend Angela Stockman about how to get started with her innovative writing makerspace concept. She is a force of creativity, hope, care, and innovation in the education world, and I’m grateful to know her and to share her work with you. 

Check out the original show notes: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2018/09/the-power-of-writing-makerspace-with.html 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Grab the free Better Discussions toolkit

Snag three free weeks of community-building attendance question slides

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram.

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

This week I want to share a productivity tip that has changed my life in ways large and small. 

Three years ago we were all in the heart of a pandemic. My children were very young - five and eight. My mom was sick. There was a lot of pressure on our family, as there was on pretty much every family. I had been sharing teaching ideas on this podcast and by email for a long time, and it was clear that my community of teachers online needed more from me than a few ideas each week, given what they were being asked to do - radically change their curriculum to an online or hybrid one with little or no training or preparation. 

At this time, I took a course with a guy named James Wedmore about how to be more effective in sharing my ideas online. But it was really one tiny part of that huge course that changed everything. It was the idea that anything can be completed if you break it down to its smallest parts and then schedule them into your calendar. I decided to try the process with opening a teacher membership, which is now The Ligthhouse. I wrote down all the tasks, starting from the tiniest - choose a name. And I scheduled them. Day one, choose the name. And so on. Little by little by little, all the tasks got done. I was able to start and complete the biggest work project of my life while homeschooling both kids and still doing everything at work that I was doing before, when both kids actually attended school. 

So that’s a long story, I know. But for me, it shows the power of the chunk and schedule. What is that you do not have time for? That you dream of? Whether it’s getting your masters degree, planning an incredible unit on Jason Reynolds’ Long Way Down, applying to present at a national conference, running a 10K, or something else, break it down into its tiniest moving pieces. Then write them down in your planner. Make them the first thing you do on those days instead of the last. I honestly think you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish once that dream project becomes a series of tiny, manageable tasks. 

Because I was able to accomplish a task I found incredibly intimidating during a time in my life when I was unexpectedly busier than I had ever been, I am putting a lot of gusto behind this when I say... I highly recommend you try the chunk-and-schedule method the next time there’s something you want to do that you just can’t seem to find the time for that you want. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

What would you do if you had nine weeks to help ELA students imagine the real-world use of ELA skills? Inside the unique elective wheel program at Lisa Jones' school, students explore each discipline for nine weeks before moving onto the next. To show them literacy in action, Lisa has crafted an elective with three real-world projects to help them imagine how they might use their ability to communicate across modern mediums. Listen (or read) on to dive into these three real-world projects with us. Whether you'd like to create a Literacy in Action elective of your own, or just add more real-world projects to one of your other courses, you'll find plenty of ideas in the show today.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

This week I want to share two quick ways to make back-to-school night in your English classroom something you can enjoy this year. 

In today's episode we're talking about how to take the pressure off back-to-school night with stations, and how to use QR codes to quickly and easily share anything that needs to happen online, whether that's signing up for an app, sharing a class website, or giving interested parents your Amazon class wishlist. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Wish your students kept talking about classwork out in the halls? Want to tap into the research when it comes to creating opportunities for deep, meaningful learning in your classroom? Of course you do! In this episode of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, learn from author and researcher Sarah Fine, who visited thirty schools across America with her co-author, Jal Mehta, to discover when and why student learning goes deepest.

Welcome to the Thursday edition of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, a podcast for English teachers in search of creative teaching strategies. Whether you’re new to the show or a long-time listener, I’m so glad you’re here for today’s edition of “Highly Recommended.” This week, I want to suggest you take the plunge and help your students create a tiny podcast. 

The first time I rolled out a podcasting project was with my tenth-grade honors students. Our humanities team had decided to create a project connecting the English and History curriculum for the students’ honors Humanities portfolio, a new program we were trying. None of us really knew how to podcast, though we probably all enjoyed the occasional episode of This American Life. After all, this was thirteen years ago and podcasts were just taking off.

Nevertheless, we asked our tech team for help, figured out a program our students could use, and then launched the project.

Our students blew us away. 

I think it’s important to remember that kids are often interested in exploring beyond our skills with tech. The answer to any question is generally just a Youtube search away. 

That’s why in my mind it’s worth the risk of assigning a project you might not be 100% confident in. Learn alongside your students. Try assigning a 2 minute podcast - it could be a book review, a bit of research, an opinion on a current issue, a chance to teach a life skill or profile a career, or whatever fits your curriculum. Let kids know they can record the whole thing using the big red button on the Vocaroo website, OR they can explore other options they might be interested in. See what happens. 

I’ve heard from so many teachers who’ve seen great success with their podcasting projects. Communication today extends far beyond the written word, and kids are eager to develop their media skills, so today, I want to highly recommend you spend just a couple of days on a tiny podcast project, and see where that leads you.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Want to learn more about student podcasting? You might like this free, easy roadmap to student podcasting. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

This week, I want to share a great way to tie rhetorical analysis into the upcoming Superbowl. 

First things first, we know this Superbowl has a hilarious additional wrinkle, in that the world is excited to watch not only the game, but Taylor Swift attending the game. That extra detail may help more students be interested in a Superbowl-related activity this month.

So let me explain this rhetorical analysis one-pager activity (by the way, link to this free resource is in the show notes).

The activity focuses in on two incredible Superbowl performances of the past - one by Whitney Houston during the war in Iraq, and one by Amanda Gorman during the pandemic. Each performance is uniquely tied to its context, providing students the opportunity to examine rhetorical situation in a way that will really help cement its role in understanding rhetoric. Rhetorical situation can often be more confusing for students than the basics of ethos, pathos, and logos.

You can have students choose either of the performances, based on their preference, and then work on the one-pager template to explore the speaker, audience, and context of the performance in three of the sections and then the rhetorical appeals in the heart of the paper, paying attention of course to ethos, pathos, and logos. 

These powerful Superbowl performances past are a perfect way to help kids understand how tied rhetorical appeals are to their context, and it will make for a fun lesson connected to what’s happening in the world at the moment. That’s why this week I want to highly recommend you follow the link below to grab this free resource and try it out. 

Grab your copy of this Superbowl Rhetorical Analysis Activity here: https://spark-creativity.ck.page/b5d2366aaa

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

Teacher planning is hard this year with all the uncertainties of fall. Will you be remote teaching? Orchestrating blended learning? Both?

In this podcast interview with Angela Watson, teacher productivity and mindset expert, discover strategies for using summer to reset, regroup, and plan for fall despite the uncertainties.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

This week on "Highly Recommended" I’m sharing my absolute favorite way to start school - the name tent one-pager. 

Long-time listeners to the show will know that my first ever first day of school was an utter disaster. It was probably the day I came closest to leaving the profession. But at least I learned a valuable lesson - NEVER read the syllabus out loud on day one! 

A few years after my first first day, I discovered name tents. I was struggling so much with remembering my students’ names, and I felt terrible as I saw their disappointment when I was still grappling to remember the right name after a few days.

So I started printing name tents for them.

Then I let them decorate the name tents. 

 A few years after that, I became pretty obsessed with one-pagers, and realized how easy it would be to turn the name tents I loved into a getting-to-know you activity.

With a name tent one-pager, you just divide the name tent half page into sections that correspond to categories, like favorite book, favorite quote, favorite type of project, or whatever else you'd like to learn about students right away. 

Then, with their permission (and depending on school regulations), you can snap photos of kids holding them up so you can study them at home. But even if you can't do this, you can use the name tents for as long as you need until you get everyone's name down. 

Name tent one-pagers are a three-in-one deal. They’ll give you something engaging for day one, help you build relationships and community, AND solve your name memorization struggles.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! 

This creative spin on classroom decor gives you dozens of options for creative, interactive writing, reading, and arts integration lessons in your ELA classroom. Get inspired with these fifteen fun ideas.

Ever since I interviewed Brown Professor emeritus Eileen Landay in episode seventy-seven about arts integration, I’ve been wanting to return to one particular concept she shared, Brazil’s “Literatura de Cordel” and the many creative possibilities it provides.

It’s such a simple idea, stringing up a line across your classroom and filling it with different media. And it’s so easy to use in many different ways.

I think every classroom would benefit from a cordel, so in today’s episode, let’s talk about how the cordel was first used in Brazil and how you can use it as an effective go-to tool now.

Visit the show notes for all the links and lots of illustrations here. 

Explore Alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram.

Love hexagonal thinking? Love one-pagers? Combine them in one visual critical thinking activity for your creative ELA classroom.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Want to do lit circles with your older students without the usual prescribed roles? Find out how one teacher made them work beautifully in her classroom. 

I love how Krista integrated her lit circles with a full class non-fiction novel,  the way she stoked enthusiasm for her book choices by reading the first chapter aloud from ALL OF THEM, her advice for letting go of control when it comes to lit circles, and so much more. Listen for the whole story! 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Today on the podcast, I’m so excited to bring you the first writer ever to win three very important prizes in literature - the Newberry Award, The Kirkus Prize, and the Coretta Scott King Award - for a single book.

Would it surprise you to know the first person to win all of these for one amazing book is a graphic novelist?

That’s right, today we’re talking to the creator of the new Kid Series, which now includes New Kid, Class Act, and School Trip.

This is a special episode designed to be played right to this special author’s favorite audience - students. My hope is that you'll play this episode - or a part of it - in class.

I've designed a sketchnotes sheet for you that students can use while they listen (make your copy here).

Check out all three of Jerry's popular graphic novels for middle schoolers here. 

Explore Jerry Craft's website here. 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Want to get students excited about your reading library? Try First Chapter Fridays.

This quick episode gives you all the details you need to get started. If you've got a great book and ten minutes, you can give this a whirl immediately! 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Ready to put your writing makerspace into action? In today's episode, get five easy ideas for incorporating it into your writing instruction in your creative ELA classes.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Join me each week for innovative teaching strategies you can use immediately in your ELA classroom, from choice reading help to book clubs, project-based-learning to AI, student podcasting to genius hour, we cover the good stuff. Whether you're trying to figure out how to engage your eighth graders, trying to help your 11th graders through the college essay, or trying to shepherd you twelfth graders through to the end, you'll find help here! Follow along on Instagram @nowsparkcreativity or visit my website at nowsparkcreativity.com 

If you're spending too much of your salary to equip your (public school) classroom to meet your students' needs, find out how to leverage Donors Choose to get what you need.

Starting a project on Donors Choose can help you update your library, gather books for a novels-in-verse or graphic novels book club, purchase new technology, or whatever else you need for your clasroom! 

But there are ways to go about it that will help your project be more successful, and ways that will sink your funding ship. So let me help! 

Follow these eight easy tips for Donors Choose success.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Students always on Snapchat? Harness their love of the app with #booksnaps, a powerful reading comprehension strategy that brings annotation into the 21st century, whether students use Snapchat, Google Slides, Flipgrid, Seesaw, or some other program to create their snaps.

In this podcast episode, learn how booksnaps came to be and how to use them with Tara Martin, their creator.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Want to try mock trials with your ELA students?

Wish they didn't email you things like "hey i need to know what my grade is tonight if possible thx"?

Wondering if there's really a way to use board games in class that will help kids learn?

Christina from The Daring English teacher is here to help! 

Learn about how to get started with mock trials, a funny way to teach your students to write a good e-mail, how to wrap up a unit with a board game final project and much more in today's jam-packed episode.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram. 

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!