Want to love walking into your ELA classroom each day? Excited about innovative strategies like PBL, escape rooms, hexagonal thinking, sketchnotes, one-pagers, student podcasting, genius hour, and more? Want a thriving choice reading program and a shelf full of compelling diverse texts?
You're in the right place!
Here you'll find interviews with top authors from the ELA field, workshops with strategies you can use in class immediately, and quick tips to ignite your English teacher creativity.
Love teaching poetry? Explore blackout poems, book spine poems, I am from poems, performance poetry, lessons for contemporary poets, and more.
Excited to get started with hexagonal thinking? Find out how to build your first deck of hexagons, guide your students through their first discussion, and even expand into hexagonal one-pagers.
Into visual learning? Me too! Learn about sketchnotes, one-pagers, and the writing makerspace.
Want to get your students podcasting? Get the top technology recs you need to make it happen, and find out what tips a podcaster would give to students starting out.
Wish your students would fall for choice reading? Explore top titles and how to fund them, learn to make your library more appealing, and find out how to be a top P.R. agent for books in your classroom.
In it for the interviews? Fabulous! Find out about project-based-learning, innovative school design, what really helps kids learn deeply, design thinking, how to choose diverse texts, when to scaffold sketchnotes lessons, building your first writing makerspace, cultivating writer's notebooks, getting started with genius hour, and so much more, from our wonderful guests.
Here at The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, discover you're not alone as a creative English teacher. You're part of a vast community welcoming students to their next escape room, rolling out contemporary poetry and reading aloud on First Chapter Fridays, engaging kids with social media projects and real-world ELA units.
As your host (hi, I'm Betsy), I'm here to help you ENJOY your days at school and feel inspired by all the creative ways to teach both contemporary works and the classics your school may be pushing. I taught ELA at the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade levels both in the United States and overseas for almost a decade, and I didn't always get support for my creativity. Now I'm here to make sure YOU get the creative support you deserve, and it brings me so much joy.
Welcome to The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, a podcast for English teachers in search of creative teaching strategies!
Sep 12, 2024
On this week’s mini-episode, I’d like to challenge you to get your students set up on Canva and help them get comfortable on the platform with a simple assignment that will give you a great fall display, literary travel posters. Have you seen PBS’ The Great Read posters, which are available for free download on the PBS site? I’ll link them in the show notes. They’re fabulous. Each poster invites the viewer into a literary world. “Join Don Quixote on an Epic Quest” is overlaid on a lovely background of receding windmills with a small warning note, “Be Wary of Hulking Giants.” “Visit Wonderland” is fixed above a drawing of Alice falling down between purple mushrooms, with the catchy tagline, “See as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” The series includes Dune, Narnia, Harry Potter, 1984, Huck Finn, Gatsby, and more. They’re stellar additions to your classroom decor, for sure, but they also lend themselves beautifully as visual mentor texts for this little project. Ask students to choose a book that’s been meaningful to them in the past, one with a richly imagined setting. Show them the PBS posters and ask them what components seem consistent across the posters. Ask them to consider which posters they find most appealing and why, then use similar components in designing their own, on Canva. If you’re new to Canva, I’m going to link a free step-by-step course I made for you so you can easily learn the basics that will help you and your students with a project like this. Starting with a simple project like this one is a great way to get everyone oriented onto the platform and help students warm up to design work, at the same time that you create a fun book-focused set of posters you can use on your door, in your hallway, or around your classroom library. OK, that’s a wrap on today’s quick episode. I hope you’re heading over now to set up a free Canva for Education account if you don’t have one yet! And no, I’m still not sponsored by them, but feel free to suggest me to any Canva Executives you know. Check out PBS' The Great Read Poster Series: https://www.pbs.org/the-great-american-read/resources/downloads/ Take the free Canva Confidence Course: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/getCanvaconfidence See an example poster I designed (guess what book it's from!): 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!
00:00:02
Sep 10, 2024
Video is everywhere in communication these days, including on Reels, TikTok, and Youtube, where our students are. Building creative video projects into ELA can help leverage students' interests in these platforms toward building skills in research, storytelling, speaking, and building an argument. Not to mention skills within the genre itself, which are bound to come in handy in many fields. So today let's dive into video in ELA. We'll cover the best tech platform for straightforward editing, and explore six different project ideas. Hopefully by the end of today's episode, you'll be feeling excited instead of intimidated to get started with your first classroom video project. Related Links: Tutorial for creating videos in Canva: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/videopage/createavideo Sign up for a free Canva for Education Account: https://www.canva.com/education/ Free Canva Confidence course: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/getCanvaconfidence Amanda Gorman's "Earthrise": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwOvBv8RLmo Ada Limón's "A Poem for Europa": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgWbeDNPD6o "Enryo" (stop motion animation film): https://smilodon-tulip-cb8w.squarespace.com/winning-submissions (2nd video down) Documentary Project Unit on TPT (also in the video projects section of The Lighthouse): https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Documentary-Film-Project-l-ELA-Project-l-ELA-Projects--10462782?st=a50b80660705713d043c9b0e88e8adbd&utm_source=Spark%20Podcast%209%2F10%2F24&utm_campaign=documentary%20film%20project 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!
00:00:20
Sep 05, 2024
On this week’s mini-episode, let’s talk about how to build an audio assignment in early in the year without feeling intimidated. Maybe you joined me for Camp Creative last summer and you’ve got alllll the student podcasting background, or maybe you’re new to the topic and feeling a bit wary. Either way, this episode is for you! Let’s walk through how to add a short audio assignment to your fall lineup that paves the way for more complex assignments later on. First things first, you don’t need to use Garageband or Audacity for your mini audio assignment. Just let kids record on Chrome, using the Vocaroo website. There’s really just a big red button for them to push, and then an invitation to download their audio. It’s that simple. Second things second, your first audio assignment can be just 90 seconds. This is a warm-up for what’s to come, and you just want your students to realize that they can communicate an idea through a recorded audio, and warm-up to the idea. And now, the part you’ve all been waiting for. What will they record? Here are three ideas. Let kids record a quick story about themselves as part of your icebreaker/relationship-building series. Give them a starter, like “Hi, my name is ______, and I think you’ll be surprised by what once happened to me…” or “Hey there, I’m ________, and today I want to tell you about the time I……” Be sure to say up front if you’re going to invite students to share these back to the class or keep them private. Ask students to record a short book review about their favorite book. You’ll get to know your students better as readers, and pave the way for your choice reading program too. If you want to go further, pull some of the most reviewed favorite books from your library or the school library and create a display with them, or create a slide deck featuring top recommended favorite books with links to student audio reviews. Finally, you might create a mini-audio assignment around the popular prompt “What I wish my teacher knew.” This one would be for your ears only, and likely help you understand your students better going into the year at the same time that they get a chance to get familiar with the idea of recording audio. OK, that’s a wrap on today’s quick episode. Remember, audio is a powerful means of communication, and students can explore it without any high-tech hoopla. Start with something simple, and build from there. 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!
00:00:04
Sep 03, 2024
We moved this month, and it wasn’t one of your quick moves. We did one of those once, from one cabin to the one next door, carrying our furniture and baskets of stuff across a soon well-worn path through the woods. But no, this one was an international move across four flights and nine time zones, with some of our stuff going by shipping container across the Atlantic, some by moving truck across the U.S., and some by plane with us. And then there was the cat. Anyway, I’ve been meeting a lot of new people and trying to describe my work, which is always a humorous challenge. "I write curriculum for creative English teachers," I might say. "I’m a podcaster." "I help English teachers try out new creative methods. I love it." People nod and smile, but really, they have no idea what I mean. There’s no glow of recognition like when I used to say “I’m a teacher.” All this introducing myself has made me think about what’s really important to me, and I want to re-introduce myself here, with my own little spinoff of NPR’s famous “This I believe” series (one of my favorite writing units, by the way, check out episode 76). So here goes. I guess you could call this my manifesto. 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!
00:00:07
Aug 29, 2024
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!
00:00:05
Aug 27, 2024
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!
00:00:19
Aug 27, 2024
On this week’s mini-episode, I’m sharing the coolest discussion warm-up I’ve ever learned, which I picked up at the Exeter Humanities Institute one week after my first year of teaching and the same week that I met my husband. You’re going to love it! As you know if you listen to the podcast much, my favorite discussion method is called Harkness, and it was first invented and pioneered at Phillips Exeter Academy. If you’re interested in diving deep with Harkness, there are several past episodes you could explore, including number 8 and number 73. But today I just want to share this super simple discussion warm-up I learned there, which I’ve used and riffed off of dozens of times since and love. Here’s the idea. As you roll out the runway to discussion, you invite students to write down a discussion question about the reading. Something they’d like to hear from others about - something that goes deeper than plot. Easy, and I know, not exactly revolutionary. But here’s the twist. Then you have all your students put their questions into a hat, and pull out someone else’s. They now have a new question to consider and contribute, and someone else is in charge of theirs. Now, you still might want to do a quick “turn to a partner and talk about your questions for two minutes” or even a quickwrite on the new question, but the main thing is, students will suddenly have a whole new motivation to bring up the question they’re holding in the discussion. After all, they aren’t putting their own question under public scrutiny. And I think they feel a little sense of responsibility to the person whose question they picked up. Now when you say “who wants to get things rolling by reading their question out loud?” there’s very little to lose in kickstarting the conversation. Similarly, when the discussion hits a bump, and you encourage kids to continue it with new questions, you’re more likely to have takers. It’s such a simple idea, but I’ve loved seeing it play out in conversations in class after class, so this week, I want to highly recommend that you give it a try too. And then maybe dive a little deeper into Harkness yourself and see if you love it as much as I do. Maybe you’ll even want to go to the Exeter Humanities Institute one summer too - it’s pretty amazing, and I’m not just saying that because I met my husband there. 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!
00:00:03
Aug 22, 2024
On this week’s mini-episode, I’m sharing the coolest discussion warm-up I’ve ever learned, which I picked up at the Exeter Humanities Institute one week after my first year of teaching and the same week that I met my husband. You’re going to love it! As you know if you listen to the podcast much, my favorite discussion method is called Harkness, and it was first invented and pioneered at Phillips Exeter Academy. If you’re interested in diving deep with Harkness, there are several past episodes you could explore, including number 8 and number 73. But today I just want to share this super simple discussion warm-up I learned there, which I’ve used and riffed off of dozens of times since and love. Here’s the idea. As you roll out the runway to discussion, you invite students to write down a discussion question about the reading. Something they’d like to hear from others about - something that goes deeper than plot. Easy, and I know, not exactly revolutionary. But here’s the twist. Then you have all your students put their questions into a hat, and pull out someone else’s. They now have a new question to consider and contribute, and someone else is in charge of theirs. Now, you still might want to do a quick “turn to a partner and talk about your questions for two minutes” or even a quickwrite on the new question, but the main thing is, students will suddenly have a whole new motivation to bring up the question they’re holding in the discussion. After all, they aren’t putting their own question under public scrutiny. And I think they feel a little sense of responsibility to the person whose question they picked up. Now when you say “who wants to get things rolling by reading their question out loud?” there’s very little to lose in kickstarting the conversation. Similarly, when the discussion hits a bump, and you encourage kids to continue it with new questions, you’re more likely to have takers. It’s such a simple idea, but I’ve loved seeing it play out in conversations in class after class, so this week, I want to highly recommend that you give it a try too. And then maybe dive a little deeper into Harkness yourself and see if you love it as much as I do. Maybe you’ll even want to go to the Exeter Humanities Institute one summer too - it’s pretty amazing, and I’m not just saying that because I met my husband there. 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!
00:00:03
Aug 20, 2024
The first time I really understood what flow meant I was barefoot in salty sand, building a beach sculpture in Mexico alone in the sunshine. Two hours seemed to disappear in moments as I gathered water-smoothed scraps of painted tile and bright shells and arranged them into swirls and towers underneath the cliffs. Take a second here and ask yourself - when do you feel that amazing feeling, where you are completely immersed in the thing you are doing so the rest of the world falls away? When do you think your students do? We’ve all noticed the challenges our students are facing right now in focusing their attention. They’ve got addictive technology, constant social FOMO, and a streaming feed of big world problems competing for their attention every moment of the day. So how are they supposed to find their flow, or even their focus? Today’s guest, Angela Watson, has turned her attention carefully to this matter in recent years. She’s here today to talk with us about how we can help our students find their way back to focus, and we all know how important that is right now. So let’s dive in! Go Further with Angela Watson Angela Watson is a National Board Certified Teacher with a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction. She has 11 years of classroom experience and over a decade of experience as an instructional coach. Angela’s mission is to help teachers live a more purposeful and conscious life. Through her mentorship, countless teachers have learned to take charge of their time and energy so they can prevent burnout and stay in the profession they love for years to come. Check out her new curriculum for middle or high school at Finding Flow Solutions. Explore her website, Truth for 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!
00:00:38
Aug 15, 2024
On this week’s mini-episode, I want to give my answer to a question I see all the time in our Facebook community, Creative High School English, and it’s this: What’s the best way to spend a teacher budget? So let’s dive into five great options. . Classroom Poster Printing Over the years I’ve seen a lot of wonderful classroom poster creation from fellow educators and artists across the world. And they look beautiful in framed 8 1/2 X 11. But what if you took your digital download and went bigger? Larger 18 X 24 inch posters in a glossy finish are just $15 when you print them through Canva, and then you can frame them, if you wish, in relatively inexpensive poster frames from Amazon. Larger scale decor in your classroom draws the eye without being overwhelming. Choose colors and art that you love and you can use it year after year. Maybe you want to print stylized book covers, the free PBS Great American Read travel-inspired posters, free digital downloads from Amplifier art, author posters, posters from your favorite Etsy or TPT designer, or something of your own creation. Classroom Printer and Ink While the school photocopier is perfect for everyday handouts, a color printer or your own is a huge asset for all. The. Rest. Gameboards, escape room elements, station signs, bulletin board pieces, library signs, and everything else. Plants While I’ve never had a green thumb, I’ve learned over the years that bringing nature into a space actually boosts productivity and health while providing a sense of calm. Your budget might give you the perfect opportunity to hang some plants by your windows or add a plant stand in the library corner. Books If you’re struggling with restrictions on your library, a budget might allow you for more controlled choice when you order novel-in-verse or graphic-novel book club selections. If you’re happily located in a state where reading is still unrestricted - I hate that I’m even having to write this - then your budget is a wonderful opportunity to shore up your library shelves with new titles your students are drawn to. Maybe your copy of Long Way Down never came back last year, so you buy three more. Or you go ahead and dive in with the whole Heartstopper series. Whatever works in your library, budget gives you the chance to go for it. Art Supplies If you like integrating sketchnotes, one-pagers, open-mind activities, and similar forms that combine visual and written communication, having a stock of art materials you can pull out at the right moment will be a major asset. Of course, there are a million ways you might spend your teacher budget, and you know your classroom best! But if you’re looking for ideas, this week I recommend you consider the big five of posters, printing, plants, books, and art supplies as stellar options. 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!
00:00:06
Aug 13, 2024
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!
00:00:19
Aug 08, 2024
On this week’s mini-episode, I just have a very quick idea for you and it’s this. As back-to-school hits, it’s easy to immediately become isolated in your classroom. You’ve got a million to-dos for your space and your students. But the school year is going to feel better if you feel connected to the teacher across the hall, the teacher next door, and the teacher upstairs. Know what I mean? So this week I want to recommend that you host your department for something this back-to-school season. And I’m going to give you a few quick ideas for what that something might be, though really, the what doesn’t matter nearly as much as the why. One super simple way to get the department together would be to suggest a lunch potluck in your classroom during the return week. Just send a nice email out saying you’d love to catch up with everyone and you’ll be there with some kind of shareable food. Invite everyone to come, bringing their own shareable food. Emphasize that a veggie tray or chips and dip are just fine - no need for anyone to spend hours making homemade strawberry rhubarb pie unless they WANT to. (That would be me, I would want to). Feel free not to even bring up work at this little lunch bash, just welcome the new folks and chat with the returners and generally take a second to remember that you’re going into fall as part of a team. Another easy option would be to suggest an ice cream or Boba or even afternoon tea after work outing, following up on one of the teacher workdays. Again, very little prep needs to be involved as the “host.” Simply choose a venue and send out an invitation. If you want to use a fun Canva template for your invites, so much the better, but there’s no need to spend more than five minutes on it when you’re already busy. Last but not least, a third option is to invite your colleagues to a pedagogy breakfast. Now, you may laugh, but I’ve actually done this quite a few times, and it was fun. In this case, either choose a coffee shop or bakery near your school and invite your department to gather there in the morning before work for half an hour. You could invite everyone to share an idea they’re excited about that they found over the summer, something that worked well the year before, or something around a particular theme on everyone’s mind, like AI in the classroom or how they’re promoting choice reading. Of course, there are dozens of other ways you could get together for some no-fuss department bonding. Bowling? After-work swim at the lake? Happy hour? My goal today is just to say that as you turn your attention toward building community and connection with your students this fall, you might also want to think about some easy ways to do it with the adults you work with. Feeling like part of a team, maybe one that shares fond memories of the oatmeal-raisin scones down the road or the time Diana rolled three strikes in a row to defeat Shonda, will only help you feel safer and more supported at work. Maybe your decision to host a no-fuss gathering now will also lead others to sprinkle in team gatherings of their own throughout the 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!
00:00:04
Aug 06, 2024
Back-to-School season is the perfect time to set up your reading program for success throughout the year. Heading into the school year with a well-organized library, a plan for routines like First Chapter Friday and Book Trailer Tuesday, a kickoff book tasting, an appealing book display, and a regular time to read will help so much in inspiring your students to read for joy throughout the year, and hopefully for the rest of their lives. Lately I've been thinking about a well-run reading program like a 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! Helpful Links: Grab the Free Bookface Challenge Kit: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/bookface How to Make Digital Bookshelves: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2023/08/the-step-by-step-guide-to-creating-digital-bookshelves.html The Ultimate Guide to First Chapter Friday: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2022/09/the-ultimate-guide-to-first-chapter-friday.html
00:00:19
Aug 01, 2024
On this week’s mini-episode, I want to answer a question from our community about lesson planning. Here it is: “How do you plan? I’m struggling to put together a series of lessons that culminate into a bigger assignment. For example, if I want my students to end up writing a persuasive essay, what would I plan to prepare them to write it? Do you go with a theme? Make it part of a novel study? I’m struggling!” OK, this is a big question, but I’m ready for it. In today’s episode, we’re digging into planning and demystifying the process. You’ve probably heard the phrase “plan with the end in mind.” The concept of backwards design, now widely used for planning, comes from Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins’ book, Understanding by Design. The University of Illinois’ “Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence” online site has a useful quick summary. Let me give you the speedy version here: First, you figure out what you want your students to be able to do. Then you figure out how they could show that they can do it. Then you plan the activities and assessments that will get them there. So let’s apply this planning frameworks to today’s problem - how do you plan a unit around a persuasive essay? The goal is to have students write a strong essay, presumably with some specific characteristics appropriate to their level. Along the way, they can show their mastery of elements of the final work through smaller argument practices, then they’ll show their overall mastery in the essay. But what would be good activities to build in along the way? The easy go-to for preparing for an essay would be to write lots of short pieces throughout the unit, which really could be centered on anything. You could embed work like this into a novel study, a deep dive into short stories, book clubs, poetry, or even podcasting. This will give you an inviting structure in which to situate your writing practice. You can practice thesis statements, introductions, text analysis paragraphs, and conclusions based on your larger unit. And you can think about how to come at each one from different angles and with different types of prompts to help students stay interested. You can share mentor texts, incorporate peer review, station work, and writing makerspace elements. There are so many ways to practice these skills. Here’s how I might plan the first week of a poetry unit focused on a final product of a persuasive essay. Monday I might do a deep dive on a contemporary poet, sharing two of her performance pieces and doing some creative writing around her work with my students. Then I might share an online article about this poet, arguing that she should have been the winner of a prestigious spoken word poetry competition and ask student to identify the thesis statement in the article and discuss, in partners, whether or not they find the argument convincing. Tuesday I might look at a contemporary poem in both its written and spoken form, and have a mini debate about which format feels more compelling. Then dive into a mini-lesson on thesis statements and have kids practice writing a thesis for the question we just debated, plus gather two pieces of evidence that could help them make their argument. Wednesday we might start by trading those theses and giving each other feedback based on a checklist, then move into a pop-up poetry workshop and create performance pieces of our own. Thursday we might look at a performance piece and work on annotating a text version of it, then again practice developing a thesis statement about it and gathering evidence. Friday we might start with a mini-lesson on writing a full introduction and then write a practice introduction around that thesis statement looking at several models, before moving into our regular First Chapter Friday program for choice reading. Now I’ve planned one week of the unit building toward my final assessment but also moving through a poetry unit that I find valuable for both engagement and other types of learning goals, and continued with my choice reading program as well. In the following week, we can practice text analysis paragraphs and conclusions, and look at some more mentor texts involving poetry-related arguments, as well as continue exploring the work of contemporary poets and furthering our choice reading goals. Planning a unit means juggling a lot of different pieces - the learning goals, the types of activities that can engage and support many learners, the meaningful, ongoing programs you want to be consistent about, and of course, engagement. It gets easier the more you do it! This week, I highly recommend keeping backwards design in, well, the back of your mind, the next time you go to plan a unit. 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!
00:00:06
Jul 30, 2024
Maybe you've heard the story of how I almost quit teaching on my first first day of school. Despite the fact that I had spent three months preparing moment-by-moment lessons for fall. Despite the fact that I was wearing my super cool white embroidered top from Bass and carrying my first ever leather shoulder bag. Despite the fact that I had asked all my friendly, talented and kind new colleagues what I should do on the first day. I totally blew it, big time. And I want better for you. I want you to feel happy and confident on day one, so you hit the school year running instead of crawling like me. Because I almost quit that day. But then I didn't. Today I've got some stories, and some advice... 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!
00:00:13
Jul 25, 2024
On this week’s mini-episode, I want to share my top strategy for taking the pressure off you while delivering a great experience for parents on back-to-school night, stations. Back-to-school night, like the first day of school, can be a stressful time. You’re trying to get a lot of information across quickly, and it can feel like the only way to get that accomplished is by talking fast and furiously for the eight or so minutes you have with your rapidly moving parents. A colorful presentation that you love is great, if that works for you, but if you’d prefer to go interactive, why not try stations? It takes a lot of pressure off you, and it’s easy to repeat in session after session without losing your voice or sweating through your fancy schmancy parent meeting clothes. With stations, you can get parents up and moving around your classroom, get them the information they want, and even create a chance to chat and answer questions informally. If you want to try this method, here’s how I’d break it down. Have your stations set up around the room before parents enter. Throw a welcome slide up on the board with your name, a fun photo (or collage) from classes past, and your contact information. Once parents are all inside, welcome them and invite them to move around the room to the different stations, letting them know how much time they have to move around so they can pace accordingly. At each station, they should find an obvious sign telling them what to do, as well as any supporting papers they need to pick up or fill out. Here are some ideas for stations: #1 Info Sheet + Q & A With you: At this station, parents can grab a paper with your name, course description, contact information, and a QR code that takes them to any website or LMS you’d like them to have access to. You can hang out here and chat with them, answering questions and getting to know them a bit. #2 Slideshow + Examples of Student Work: At this station, set up a computer or iPad to run a digital slideshow of student work from past years. Scatter a few great projects here too. This will give parents a sense for the type of work their kids will do in your class. #3 Tour the Library: Invite parents to browse the shelves in your library. Maybe they’ll find a title they once loved and it will inspire them to talk books with their students. By focusing on this important space in your classroom, they’ll realize that reading is going to be an integral part of your class. #4 Learn how to Support Students: If there are certain things you wish parents would do, like set their kids up with a library card, ask them what they’re studying, remind them to leave their cell phones in their lockers, etc., create a station with these tips. Then leave out some post-its and invite parents to add their suggestions of what has worked well for them in supporting their child’s learning. #5 Write a Note: At this station you could go one of two ways. Invite parents to write a note of encouragement to their child that you can then share at a key moment. Or invite parents to write you a note letting you know how they feel you can best reach their child. That might mean telling you about a project their child loved in the past, about their favorite books, about their favorite subjects, about important events in their lives that are impacting their school time, etc. You can always add more stations or choose just a few of these. You could also pair the stations with a short talk from you at the beginning. There are lots of recipes for a successful parent night – just choose what makes you feel comfortable and confident introducing them to all the wonderful work their kids will be doing. Back-to-School Night can be stressful, but this week I just want to highly recommend you create an experience that makes you feel relaxed and confident. 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!
00:00:06
Jul 23, 2024
If I told you the 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!
00:00:16
Jul 18, 2024
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!
00:00:06
Jul 16, 2024
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!
00:00:10
Jul 11, 2024
This week let’s talk about careers. I don’t know if you can relate, but I graduated from high school with a general awareness of maybe six careers - law, medicine, teaching, ministry, science, and business. Let’s talk about how we can show our students a broader view of what’s out there - and build in some ELA skills to the process. A fun way to start any careers unit is with a careers scavenger hunt, an easy form of research students can do as they move through their days. Just ask your students to begin noticing the careers they’re interacting with, making a list of every career they can think of that relates to what they do for one day. Challenge them to come up with at least twenty-five. For example, they wake up and check their phones (social media influencer, programmer, designer, app creation, phone sales), pick up coffee (coffee shop manager or owner, organic coffee farmer, pastry chef, interior designer, contractor, advertising agent), go to school (teacher, administrator, politician, secretary, department chair, electrician, engineer), head for the mall (clothing designer, clothing buyer, social media for clothing lines, marketer, photographer, restaurant manager, chef, furniture buyer, urban planner etc.). As students begin to think about all the different jobs associated with their own daily routines, it’ll help open their eyes to the many careers out there. Similarly, you can help students begin to think beyond the surface by having them write down a field they’re interested in and research to discover twenty-five different jobs in that field. What jobs are connected to film director? SO many. To doctor? To teacher? To chef? This is a really fun activity to stretch student’s imaginations. Then have students walk around to see each other’s lists, jotting down the one career on each other list that most appeals to them. Diving a little deeper, one unique way of approaching a careers unit is to start a class careers blog, inviting each student to shadow someone whose line of work interests them and then make a contribution to the blog based on what they learn. The contribution could be a video they make about the experience, a narrative profile they write about the person they shadow, a Q & A style written interview, a photo essay, or something else. If you’re going to publish the careers blog online so that all students can access the many wonderful resources they create for each other, and so that other students can add to it in the coming years, be sure to get the permission of those being shadowed to publish their image and story online. Another lower stakes project is to let students create timelines of start-up companies, based on NPR’s show, How I Built This. Let students choose an episode based on a company they’re actually interested in, and create timelines to show how the company grew (generally slowly, with lots of setbacks and lots of commitment and creativity from the creator!). Then share these timelines in a gallery walk or with mini-presentations so students get a taste of many different stories. Similarly, you could create a class podcast, having each student contribute by recording an interview with someone about their career. Students could learn to reach out with inquiries, write interview questions, and record sound clips. So many valuable real-world skills here! Hopefully after completing a few of these activities, your students will have a broader view of the working world and a little more motivation to care about the skills they’re learning in your classroom. After all, restaurant owners need to be able to write e-mail newsletters these days. Business owners may draw clientele through podcasting and social media captions. App designers must be able to pitch their ideas through strong presentations to venture capitalists. You know what I’m getting at. A careers unit has the potential to be incredibly engaging - who isn’t curious about their life options? And it also has the potential for plenty of ELA skill practice - research, interview skills, writing and speaking. So today, I just want to highly recommend that if you’ve got a little hole and a lot of students who don’t really know what they want to be - you consider adding a creative careers unit to your lineup. 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!
00:00:06