The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast

340: 💬 Grading Discussion in a way that won’t ruin your (Teaching) Life Oct 31, 2024

Grading discussion can feel like juggling cats. How can you be present in a class discussion while also trying to grade thirty people’s comments? But over the years, I’ve tried three methods that that have worked for me without causing too much strain. I call them the bump, the challenge, and the chart. In today’s mini-episode, I’ll walk you through all three so that the next time you feel you need to give credit where credit is due during a discussion, you’ve got a plan that doesn’t feel like a cat-splosion.

First, there’s the bump. With the bump method, discussion provides that intangible bump that defines whether kids on the borderline move up or down. A kid working hard in discussion will go from an 89.5 to an A-. A kid who is unprepared or often interrupts will stay firmly at a B+ with that 89.5.

This method is easy to explain to kids, and doesn’t require a constant running paper trail. I can’t recall ever having an argument over this with a student, but I CAN recall encouraging students to push themselves harder in discussion with this small carrot as a reminder that it matters both to the community and to their own results.

Next, there’s the challenge. For this method, I invite students to focus on something we’ve been working on and work together to have a discussion that crushes this one aspect of our group dynamics. I let them know that EVERYONE in class will get a 10/10 on that day as a free bonus grade if they complete my challenge. If they don’t, no harm no foul.

For example, say you’re working on making more text references. You might create a challenge in which if the class is able to make ten different text references (that feel relevant) during the discussion, everyone gets the bonus grade. The nice thing about this method is that it allows you to grade for something really targeted, helping the class move forward in its discussion evolution.

Third (and last, for now), there’s the chart. This method is the most time-intensive, but it gets easier with time. Keep a chart for each class with students’ names. At the end of a class period, jot down a check minus, check, or check plus for each student, based on their participation. Then assign grades at the end of term based on whether they are mostly check plus, mostly check, etc.

The pros here are that this method provides you a very clear paper trail and allows you to make discussion a significant part of the grade if that’s what you want to do. You’ll be able to defend a discussion grade by showing any student the chart at any time. However, if you find you are always juggling a lot in those moments between classes, it can feel like a major task that is always hovering over your shoulder. Maybe you’re wanting to pull books for a book talk, grab a student for a quick chat, or send an email, but you’ve got to fill in that discussion chart every single time. For me, it wasn’t a good long term solution, and I preferred to rely mainly on the bump with occasional challenges. But everyone’s situations is different, so I thought I’d share it here as a solid option if it feels right to you. Maybe you finish up class with an exit ticket or another activity that would give you time to fill in a chart like this without much stress. Whatever feels right for you!

OK, there you have my top tested methods for discussion accountability - the bump, the challenge and the chart. Whether you use one, use ‘em all, or maybe just use one of them as a springboard for a totally new option that just occurred to you, I hope these possibilities will help you destress the grading process when it comes time for your next discussion.

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339: 💬 When Discussion goes off the Rails Oct 29, 2024

We’ve all been in a discussion hurtling off the track and into the canyon, far, far below. Chances are, you’ve been in this type of discussion as a student AND as a teacher, and it’s no fun in either scenario.

So how do we prevent it?

And what do we do if it’s already happening and glaze is washing over our students’ eyes?

In today’s episode, the fifth in our discussion series, we’re diving into how to deal with discussions that go off the rails. Because even if YOU prepare in all the ways, those days happen. And it doesn't mean all is lost.

Ooh, by the way, do you have my free discussion toolkit yet? It contains many of the tools we'll be talking about today.

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338: 💬 Discussion Dominators and Silent Students Oct 24, 2024

Remember in elementary school, how some kids were so excited to answer a question that they would wave their hand back and forth in the air, lifting ever so slightly from their seat? The Hermione Grangers of 2nd grade. Yeah, that was me.

So I have real sympathy for students who become discussion dominators. Though on the outside, this appears to make them successful students, it’s really just as important for them to adjust their approach to group dynamics as it is for students who are completely silent in class.

Both groups present a challenge for educators looking to use student-led discussion methods, and today on the podcast, I’m sharing everything I’ve learned about helping kids on both ends of the participation spectrum.

Because in fact, helping one is helping the other. Quieter students won’t have a chance to participate until dominant students take a step back. Dominant students won’t understand why it’s important to step back until quieter students begin to use their voice. The first steps are the hardest on both sides of this story, but it IS possible, and the results ARE so worth working for.

This is the fourth episode of our discussion series, maybe the one you’ve been waiting for. Because we’ve all been in discussions carried by three kids while the rest watch, turning their heads like they’re at a tennis match. But not anymore.

Key Points:

Try brainstorming with the class about ways to get into the discussion if you’re feeling a little nervous or you like more time to prepare: ideas might include… be the first person to start a discussion or topic because you can read your question, quote, or answer to the warm-up, write down an idea as you read that you want to bring up, arrange with a friend to turn the floor over to you as they finish a comment, like “Jenny, we were talking about this before class. What were you saying?”, folks talking more have to make room for other voices
Remind everyone of the bean bag story we talked about in the last episode - the discussion is incredibly enriched when everyone contributes their personal history and knowledge, their curiosity and questions
Use the observer with nuance, asking them to think about how they can chart the discussion and report back with suggestions in a way that will help everyone improve the dynamics of balance
Individual conversations - you might try gently inviting a dominator to try limiting themselves to three contributions or even just listening for a day to see what others say. You might talk with a quiet student and suggest a goal of one comment on a single day, and brainstorm together how to make it happen. It’s a push and pull. As one group start to make small adjustments, the other group is affected. It never looks the same in any class!
Try the ABC Game

Think about all the group situations you’re in day after day: faculty meetings, dinner tables, school board meetings, neighborhood potlucks. Chances are you know dominators and silent observers in your adult life too. Maybe they never had the chance to explore these group dynamics issues in school. This process is a gift you can give to a student for their future. In an increasingly partisan world, where everyone is talking about the bubbles we live in, what could be more important than learning to talk to each other? Whether you use Harkness, Socratic, or your own twist on student-led discussion, I believe these messy life lessons of student-led discussion are worth the complicated emotions and conversations they require.

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337: 💬 Student-Led Discussion: Setting up Success + What Does an Observer Do? Oct 22, 2024

Welcome back to our ongoing discussion series. If you missed the first two episodes, covering five types of discussion worth trying and introducing the Harkness method for student-led discussion, you might want to pause and go back to the last two episodes before continuing with this one.

Today we’re diving deep into student-led discussion, specifically setting up a structure that will let you be successful.

I’ll be sharing both highlights from what I learned at the Exeter Humanities Institute about helping students be successful - which, by the way, I couldn’t recommend more as a summer PD opportunity - and also, what I learned personally working with twenty-five different classes of students as their skills with the method evolved over the course of our year together.

You’ll walk away from this episode ready to run your first student-led discussion, whether you choose the full Harkness method or create your own twist on student-led discussion.

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336: 💬 How Harkness Won Me Over (Completely) Oct 17, 2024

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.

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335: 💬 5 Discussion Types that Can Work for You, Even if You've Almost Given Up (The Discussion Series Begins) Oct 15, 2024

Discussion. Theoretically it’s the bread and butter of the English classroom, but sometimes it feels like all crusts and crumbs.

How can you get students excited to talk about voice and theme, metaphor and symbolism, when they have a million other things going on?

How do you inspire them to dive in together to the ways that literature illuminates life and life speaks back to the page, when they’re already nervous about speaking up in class and afraid they’ll look bad in front of their friends?

If a good discussion feels like a distant dream to you on rough days, and a tantalizing almost-there vision on good days, the new discussion series is here to help. We’re starting today with five types of discussion that can work for you, and in the coming episodes, we’ll be going much deeper.

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334: The Writing Tip Every Kid Needs (that I Learned in Bulgaria) Oct 10, 2024

The late afternoon sun filtered through the windows of our tiny 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. 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.

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333: How to Teach a Multigenre Essay Project Oct 08, 2024

Want to teach a multigenre essay project? Good!

Our students see story splashed across so many platforms these days. Video, audio, visuals, and words all mixed up together in a daily swirl. Understanding how to tell a story across mediums is a highly relevant skill for students, and one they can quickly see the relevance of every time they switch on their phones or pop in their airpods.

Enter, the multigenre essay project - a chance for students to tell a story of their own through multimedia details that bring it to life.

A multigenre essay project can work in your identity or memoir unit, or provide an alternative path for students who don't want to write a college essay because they've chosen another path.

Today, let's break down how you might structure a project like this so the tech doesn't feel intimidating and student stories have a chance to shine.

Mentor Texts Mentioned:

Good Morning, my Wife in Heaven, by YingFei Liang and Shumin Wei
Enryo, by Jessica Bukowski and Kristin Sato
"I've been on a Mission for seventeen years. It's my holy grail." From Humans of New York.

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332: The Rec Letter Tweak that gave me my Octobers Back Oct 03, 2024

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

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331: Does Essay Writing Feel like Torture to your Students? Try this. Oct 01, 2024

It's no fun announcing an argument paper and being met by groans. If your students have arrived at your class afraid of essays, you're not the only one. And we all know, buy-in matters. When students are confronted with a task they're horrified by, it's hard for them to access their skills and motivation to do their best work. So what are you supposed to do when you hit the groan skid?

Today I want to talk about some on-ramps and side paths to the argument highway. Visual tools and modern mediums to help you help your students realize argument isn't so scary.

By the way, an extremely step-by-step process with lots of modeling is a classic go-to for breaking down the essay writing process and making it feel manageable, and I don't want to ignore that. Brainstorming. Outlining. Drafting. Peer editing. Self editing stations. Final drafting. That's all wonderful.

But probably you do that already, and you're still here.

So let's explore some other approaches you can use to complement that oh-so-valid step-by-step process that just doesn't always work to help kids get past their paper-writing fears.

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330: Routines that aren’t Boring for Whole Class Novels Sep 26, 2024

If you’ve ever felt like you were stuck in a rut doing the same thing day after day, I’ve got a quick mindset shift to help. I do NOT want you to give up on whole class novels, so let’s talk about how to make them work.

In theory, whole class novels are the bread and butter of the English classroom. But if you struggle to get students to read at home and you’re finding the daily routine of covering a few pages every day a total slog, I hear you. You might have heard me talk about this with Amanda from Mud & Ink Teaching last year on the pod, and I really appreciated her ideas, which, combined with hearing from lots of teachers trying to figure out how to run a whole class novel unit successfully, have led me to think even more about this.

So here’s my suggestion - create days of the week that are focused on different things, and give that whole class novel a break sometimes. Sounds pretty simple, right? Too simple? Hear me out.

I’ve always been amazed at just how many things English teachers are supposed to cover, and going through every standard from 7th grade ELA to 12th grade ELA last year when I was creating planning materials for The Lighthouse just drove that point home. No doubt you’re trying to figure out how to advance your students’ work in vocabulary, writing forms, reading comprehension, public speaking, and listening. Plus, you’re a creative teacher who wants them to be engaged in real world work with an authentic audience.

Making a shift away from covering each night’s reading the next day in class will help you move forward across your priorities, and give your students more time to read in between text-centered classes.

Maybe on Mondays you spend fifteen minutes on choice reading and then you’re working on podcasts related to the essential question of your whole class novel. Tuesdays you’re doing a quick reading check-in activity and then a Harkness discussions on the chapters students have read across the previous few days on their own. Wednesdays might be focused on 15 minutes of choice reading and then writing practice, trying a variety of creative prompts around short stories, poems, audio clips, and articles related, again, to the themes of the whole class novel but read right there in class so you know everyone is on the same page. Thursdays might be a deep dive into the whole class novel with small groups or partners engaging in activities like close reading, reader’s theater, mini-debates, theme one-pagers, or whatever else you’re excited to do related to the novel. Then Friday could be for First Chapter Fridays, 15 minutes of choice reading, and some vocabulary work.

This is just one imagined example of how you could structure a week with plenty of variety. The bottom line is, you don’t need to talk about your whole class novel every day to DO a whole class novel.

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329: Turn Dusty Old Books into a Stunning Display Sep 24, 2024

Do you have old books lying around taking up space in your classroom? Books no one is ever going to read again? Recently in our Facebook group, Creative High School English, a fun visual thread erupted all about bookish page displays. So in today’s one minute idea-isode, I want to suggest you try one. You’ll clear space on your shelves, help the earth with your reuse/recycle mentality, and end up with a stunning display.

Here’s how…

Start by pulling the pages out of some old books. It will feel weird, I know. Save a few for the next time you’re going to do a blackout poetry project, but stack up the rest and head to your bulletin board or wall.

Ideally you’ll now work on a solid color, so paper the back of your bulletin board or choose an area of your wall with nothing on it.

Next it’s time to staple or tape your pages up in the design of your choice.

You might create a river of pages coming across your bulletin board, paper the bulletin board entirely in pages so it’s filled in entirely, or form the pages into a shape, like a tree, a bird, or a spiral.

Last but not least, it’s time to overlay a bookish quotation on top. Choose from the dozens of wonderful ones out there from the last few centuries of authors. You can cut out letters to make a big and bold statement, or hand letter your quotation onto a big piece of paper you can overlay on the pages.

OK, that’s a wrap on today’s episode. If you’d like more display ideas for your ELA classroom, head to the blog version linked below where you’ll see 10 fun visuals to inspire your next display.

Visit the Full ELA Bulletin Board / Display Ideas Post: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2024/09/10-creative-ela-bulletin-boards-for-middle-and-high-school.html

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328: The Short Unit that Never Fails Sep 19, 2024

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.

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327: Dystopia Book Clubs: A How-To Guide Sep 17, 2024

Let's talk about dystopia book clubs, a compelling unit option for ELA.

I taught my first dystopian fiction, 1984, to tenth graders in Bulgaria. They had very strong reactions to the way Orwell portrayed communism, since Communist rule had existed in their family's living memories. For some, Orwell nailed it. Others, outraged, clearly thought he was slandering their country's history. For everyone, the line between fiction and fact in the text felt blurry. Perhaps because of its intensity, its emotional nature, its closeness to actual events, they found it didn't read as fiction.

Thinking back, I'd now say they felt it was fiction with an agenda. Fiction with a clear argument that used evidence like characterization, setting, tone, and mood to drive home its thesis.

That experience has flavored the way I've read all the dystopia I've picked up since - Fahrenheit 451, The Hunger Games, Scythe, Dry...

And I think it leads to fascinating questions to bring to kids. How does dystopia wield its influence? Where is the line between art and propaganda? What do dystopian authors have in their writing arsenal that other authors don't?

Today I hope to convince you that dystopian book clubs are worth your time, and give you the building blocks to design your unit. We're going to talk texts, activities, and assessment possibilities.

Links Mentioned:

1984 Apple Commercial

Motorola Empower the People Commercial

Dismaland (Maddox Gallery Writeup)

Dismaland Video Tour

WWI Posters from the Library of Congress

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326: The Literary Travel Poster Project 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!):

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325: 6 Creative Video Project Ideas for ELA 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.

Explore more of Amanda's work: https://www.mudandinkteaching.org/

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291: When Genius Hour WORKS (The Elective Series) Apr 23, 2024

Have you ever wished you could get students excited about genius hour, then immediately wondered what you’d do if half of them couldn’t think of a topic? Well, today on the podcast, creative teacher Melissa Moser is here to talk about one of her favorite electives to teach - Genius Hour, and exactly how she sets students up for success - even the ones who just don’t know what passion to pursue when it comes to a passion project.

This is a topic near and dear to my heart, and I think you’re going to love all the specifics Melissa shares.

Ooh, and real quick, if you’re wondering what I mean by genius hour, I’d like to suggest you hit pause and go back to episode 122, The Ultimate Guide to Genius Hour. You’ll enjoy this amazing case study so much more once you understand exactly what it means to give your students the time and space to study their own greatest interests in a genius hour project. OK, let’s dive in!

Links from Today's Episode:

The Ultimate Guide to Genius Hour (Episode 122)

The Genius Hour Curriculum

Information about The Lighthouse

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290: Try this Hack to Teach Varied Sentence Structure Apr 18, 2024

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 this week’s mini episode. Today, I want to share a fun visual trick for helping students vary their sentence structure.

I never really thought about sentence length until I was writing professionally. Sure, I knew to avoid run-on sentences, how to wield a semicolon, and what an appositive could do. But really it was when I realized I wanted to vary my sentence LENGTH in the articles I was writing for other websites that I started playing with structure more.

I wanted punchy moments.

I also wanted long, detailed stories that could twist and turn through the text, capturing my reader’s imagination with sensory imagery and vivid descriptions.

The combination of both led to more exciting writing with more varied types of structure. It’s not that I went into a line thinking “I want to use an appositive, three commas, and a semicolon here.” It’s that I was trying to write a long sentence after a short sentence, so I experimented.

There’s an easy way to guide students to do the same thing. I call it “Shaped Stories.” Simply create a handout or slide with a photo at the top, and a big black rectangle down below. Then add white rectangles on the big black one, each a space for students’ sentences going down the page, and make the white rectangles different sizes. Leave a tiny rectangle where a sentence will have to be just two or three words. Then add a wide, tall one where a sentence would have to be complex to fill it. Then try medium-size, and so on and so forth down the page.

When you invite students to set a story inside the picture prompt at the top, ask them to fill each box completely with their sentences. Show them your example, and feel free to review a few types of sentence structures that might help them out.

When it comes to varied sentence structure, shaped stories are an easy (and fun) hack for helping students practice. That’s why this week I want to highly recommend you take a peek at the visuals in the show notes for inspiration and then give it a try.

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289: How to Launch Book Talk Podcasts in Class Apr 16, 2024

Book talk podcasts can provide gentle choice reading accountability, target presentation of knowledge and speaking skills, and build a library of book recommendations for future students.

Not bad, right? Today on the podcast I'm going to walk you through how to launch a book talk podcast with your students, and why it will be fantastic.

Example Script: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Aj__-O8kwEJTXr_-3o7AU9B15sSQYIIFyn-cy-HSkUQ/edit?usp=sharing

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288: A Lesser-Known Amanda Gorman Gem Apr 11, 2024

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 this week’s mini episode. Today, as earth day inches closer, I want to share a favorite find, Amanda Gorman’s video poem “Earthrise.” This beautiful poem could fit in so many different places in your curriculum, so let’s talk about them.

First of all, let me tell you a bit about this poem, which of course I’ll link in the show notes. It’s shared on Youtube by The Climate Reality Project, and it’s from five years ago, before Amanda Gorman stormed the world scene with her inauguration poem. It’s a performance piece with video footage of Amanda and of the world intermingled as the tells the story of the first astronaut to see the world from space, then connects the way he saw the earth rise with the idea that we can confront the issue of climate change and make our own individual positive impacts and see our own earthrise. It’s a lovely, inspiring call to action which acknowledges this big, weighty issue without making things feel hopeless.

I can think of three ways you might use this poem which I’ll share here.

First, you could use it as a springboard to a project about influence, and what it means to be an influencer. Amanda Gorman uses her social media profiles, her performances, and her poetry to lend strength to causes she cares about. In a social media-driven world, she stands out as a youth icon who continuously searches out ways to use her influence positively. You could look at examples of her influencer work and her cause-driven poems and have your students create projects related to the nature of influence and what types of influencer they want to be influenced by.

Second, you could use this poem as a springboard for a video poetry project. Whether your students create their own original pieces or create a video around a poem they love, this is a chance to use their voices and their visuals to bring out the meaning behind a piece. Teach them the 3 second rule, that the angle or shot almost always changes every 3 seconds in professional video, and have them spot it in “Earthrise.” Then let them create a poetry video of their own, using the techniques you identify together in Gorman’s piece.

Third and last, you could use this poem as a springboard for a call-to-action poem. Have students consider the issues that matter most to them. Have them analyze how Gorman builds energy and hope in her poem with her literary and performance choices. Then have them use it as a mentor text to create their own poem calling people to hopeful action to make a difference in the issue that matters to them.

This one piece is, of course, the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Amanda Gorman’s work. This week I want to highly recommend you check it out as a wonderful starting point, and perhaps it will lead you down a lovely rabbit hole of her work and all the many ways it could fit into your curriculum.

"Earthrise" by Amanda Gorman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwOvBv8RLmo

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277: How Erica Used the AI PBL Project to give her Students Voice Apr 09, 2024

It’s never a bad thing when your classroom innovation lands you at a press conference with your state’s department of education!

That’s what happened to today’s guest, Erica Kempf. She decided to try out the project-based-learning unit I designed about the ethical use of artificial intelligence, and along the way she and her students made it their own and became the go-to sources for AI in their district.

They learned a lot in the process, and I’m so excited to have Erica here to share her story with you. Before we dive in, just a heads up that you can grab the free PBL AI curriculum set that Erica and her students used right here. So if you get inspired as you listen, you can download this unit for yourself and give it a try!

Grab the Full (Free) PBL AI Unit Here: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/aipbl

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276: Let All Books Count: A Tale of Two Kids Apr 04, 2024

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 this week’s mini episode. Today, I want to talk about a much-debated subject - when it comes to choice reading, what counts and what doesn’t?

If you’ve been here with me for long, I bet you can imagine that a lot of books were involved in the early life of my own children. They had tiny themed board book displays before they could roll over, and we were a constant at our little local library. But after their baby years, my two kids’ reading paths diverged, wildly.

My son’s path has been like mine. He went through epic series after epic series, hit the children’s classics, and is now deeply entrenched in wonderful fantasy books that he reads to himself every night, unless he’s not feeling well, in which case he plugs in an audiobook.

My daughter’s path, not so much. If I had a quarter for every time I’ve offered to read to her, tried to hand off a book I was sure she would love, or invited her to read with me and gotten turned down - very politely - I could probably book us into Club Med for the weekend.

Helping her become fond of books has been an eight year project, and lately I feel like I’m seeing it happen. But it’s been VERY heavy on three formats, and they happen to be much debated as “real” reading - graphic novels, re-reading old favorites, and audiobooks.

For my youngest, becoming a reader has meant listening to soooooooooo much Junie B. Jones and Ramona. It has meant reading all 18 of the hilarious graphic novel series, The Bad Guys, and suddenly announcing that it was “Better than eating candy.” It’s meant careful tiny steps forward with print text, one page at a time, in books about subjects she absolutely loves, like young girls discovering their magical connection to elemental horses.

Without the re-reading, the audiobooks and the graphic novels, I’m pretty sure I’d still be getting that polite smiling “no thank you, Mama” everytime I reached for a book.

It can be hard - believe me I know - to see a kid re-read an old book or plug into an audiobook - when you really want to see them explore new titles and improve their print comprehension. And I’m all for encouraging students to keep trying a lot of different things, and even to read two or three books at a time - maybe an old favorite, an audiobook, and a little bit of something new and challenging. I often have this pattern going in my own life. But this week I just want to highly recommend that we remember, all books are part of the journey to becoming a reader. Rereading, graphic novels, and audiobooks might just be a student’s gateway to a lifetime of reading.

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275: Teaching SciFi & Fantasy (The Elective Series continues) Apr 02, 2024

We’re about to dive into an elective that combines Beowulf, The Hobbit, Ursula Leguin, graphic novels, and contemporary YA! What holds all these threads together? That’s what repeat guest and creative teacher Caitlin Lore is about to tell you as we continue our series on creative electives across the country. Get ready for the big reveal in just a moment.

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274: Using Students’ Love of Youtube to our ELA Advantage Mar 28, 2024

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 this week’s mini episode. Today, I want to talk about Youtube, and how we can use students’ love for it to our ELA advantage.

One of my goals for this year is to create the curriculum for an elective based on Youtube. I’ve recently watched my son go through the transition from watching Disney Plus and Netflix in his chill time to watching exclusively Youtube creators. He learns magic and parkour skills from them, watches them unbox things he loves, and generally would rather be subscribing to their channels than being entertained by the billions of dollars behind the entertainment industry. He’s already made the first video for his own channel, and he was willing to work through a LOT of frustrations as he tried to figure out the problems of audio, angle, lighting, script, theme, file size, and everything else required.

I’m sure you’ve seen this same interest in Youtube in student after student.

So what does that mean for us, as educators? There’s an incredible hook here for our students. I’m thinking about a Youtube elective (or unit) that looks at so many ELA skills that matter in our students’ communication, through the lens of video. Hooks. Closings. Making an argument. Sharing research. Interviewing. Documenting. I’m imagining projects like short documentaries, time lapses, mini profiles, travel videos about your local community, PSA videos about issues kids care about, video versions of college essays or performance poems. The 21st century skills are EVERYWHERE, no matter what topics you and your students choose to dive into.

I could go on and on and on, and maybe later, in another episode, I will. But for now, I just want to highly recommend that we consider Youtube an ally in our teacherly quest to help kids see just how relevant ELA is to their real life lives. You only have to look as far as the National Geographic, New York Times, and White House channels to know that Youtube plays a highly significant role in communication today.

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273: First Chapter Friday: Nancy Tandon Reads Mar 26, 2024

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/

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272: You Need to Know about this Short Story Mar 21, 2024

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.” Today, let’s talk Ken Liu’s short story, “The Paper Menagerie,” one of the best I’ve ever read.

“The Paper Menagerie” might also be the only scifi short story I’ve ever read. Did you know it won the Hugo award, the Nebula award, and the World Fantasy Award? It can bring a new genre to your short story unit, add a layer to a scifi unit, or fit right in with any unit on coming of age or the American dream, and it’s available in full text on the Gizmodo website if you aren’t able to get Liu’s book right now.

I just read it again and as usual, it had me crying. It’s both the story of a boy and of his mother, how they understand each other and how they don’t. She comes from China, speaking no English, to marry and together they have a baby. As the baby grows, his mother makes him beautiful Origami animals that come to life for him. He loves these animals, and sees little point in the plastic toys of others. But one day he makes friends with a neighbor and realizes that he, and his animals, are different. So begins a journey in which he leaves his animals, and his mother, behind in his wish to fit in more as an American.

I won’t spoil the ending for you, but years later he discovers his mother’s story written into the pages of the paper animals, and he has it translated aloud to him, leaving the reader with a powerful and heart-wrenching ending.

This story is powerful, painful, lovely, and literary. This week, I highly recommend you follow the link in the show notes and read it for yourself, because I really think you’re going to want to use it in class.

The Lighthouse $1 Trial is Open until the end of Friday, March 22nd: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/springopen

Read the Full Text of Ken Liu's "The Paper Menagerie": https://gizmodo.com/read-ken-lius-amazing-story-that-swept-the-hugo-nebula-5958919

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271: #Bookface is Well Worth a Look Mar 19, 2024

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

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270: Try a March Madness Poetry Bracket Mar 14, 2024

Today, let’s talk about March Madness, and how to harness all that awesome enthusiasm to get your students excited about poetry.

Last year I worked with Melissa Alter Smith from #teachlivingpoets to create a March Madness bracket for The Lighthouse, and I learned a lot from her in the process! This is such a fun and easy way to bring more voices into your curriculum and help kids see a lot of different sides of poetry.

You can set up your poetry bracket on your white board or on Google Slides. Then you fill it in with poetry that you love. You can mix together classic poetry, performance poetry from The Button Classroom-Friendly Youtube channel, readings by contemporary authors that you find online, or favorites from Def Poetry Jam. There are so many options! You can get fancy and have poems face off initially that cover similar themes or are from similar outlets, or you can just randomly scatter in poems and see what happens.

All you need is a few minutes a day to read or play the two poems of the day in the classes that participate in the tournament. You can just have students close their eyes and raise their hands to vote, or you can build some writing and argument into it by having them rate the poems and defend their scores. Either way, keep track of the votes in each class and at the end of the day, move your winners forward in your tournament bracket.

By the end of your tournament, your students will be used to how this all works and it really should just take a few minutes a day that hopefully everyone will be looking forward to.

Need a few poets to get you started? Take a look at Harry Baker, Amanda Gorman, and Sarah Kay for a start. Or check out the poetry bracket Melissa has created on the Teach Living Poets site or, if you're in The Lighthouse, the one that she and I built in the Teach Living Poets section.

A March Madness poetry bracket is such an easy way to integrate more poetry from many voices into your curriculum and, of course, get more student buy-in for it! That’s why this week I want to highly recommend you give it a try.

Learn more about The Lighthouse: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/C4Z236

Teach Living Poets March Madness Bracket: https://teachlivingpoets.com/2023/02/26/march-madness-poetry-bracket/

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269: Teaching Research to Digital Natives Mar 12, 2024

Remember when research projects involved stacks of books and notecards? Yeah, me too. But we all know research has changed. I recently finished a couple of pedagogy books for English teachers - one by Angela Stockman on designing inclusive spaces for writers, and another by Katie Novak on Universal Design for Learning in the English classroom. And beyond the many wonderful ideas I took away from them, I was also struck by the variation in the sources they referred to.

Sure, they cited texts.

But they also cited Ted Talks, telephone calls, online articles, online compendiums, and more.

Their information came from a digital rainbow of sources.

Our students naturally work the same way.

As digital natives, they've grown up with the whole online world at their fingertips, and their natural first line of research is probably not a book. So how do we direct them through the research process, given the incredible variety of possible sources available to them?

That's what today's quick episode is about.

Important Links:

The AI PBL Unit: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/aipbl

John Spencer's Article, "Research is Critical in Design Thinking": https://spencerauthor.com/research-in-design-thinking/

Make a Copy of the Research Process Infographic Handout: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1C6gVB8WQi3KVgsxbFhhZz_Hs4lLPD8DFN5U4NvfHojA/copy

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268: Try These Google Translate Tools in Class Mar 07, 2024

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).

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267: So your Students aren't Doing the Reading? Here's Help. Mar 05, 2024

Today on the podcast, we’re sitting down with Amanda Cardenas to talk about a very big question. A huge question, really. What can teachers do when students aren’t doing the reading? And is reading out loud the majority of our texts the answer? Spoiler alert, we both can completely understand how this would seem like the answer, but in the long run, we don’t think it is.

Amanda and I are going to share a lot of ideas, and I’m hopeful that if you’ve been feeling stuck in a situation where kids aren’t reading and lessons aren’t working, you’ll find some helpful possibilities for shifts you might make to help. We’re getting into approaching unit design with an inquiry lens rather than a text-coverage lens, checking in with open-book Sesame Street quizzes, breaking up reading assignments in new ways, and planning the day-to-day of units without worrying about which exact pages students may have read the night before. It’s a lot of exciting stuff, so let’s dive in!

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266: Summer PD that Delivers Feb 29, 2024

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, let’s talk about some of the best summer PD options out there.

First things first, I’ve got to tell you about my personal favorite summer PD experience of all time, the one my husband still jokingly refers to as my “smoothie grant.” One summer, my school had money left from its PD budget, and invited teachers to apply for small, simple ways to produce something helpful to their work over the summer with a little bit of funding. I applied for a budget to go get a smoothie each morning in June and sit and read and design curriculum at my favorite beach cafe in Los Angeles for an hour or two. I still remember how fun it was to sit on the balcony after rollerblading the beach at sunrise, listening to the surfers walk by, drinking my apple pie smoothie as I reread the Odyssey and thought about how to rewrite the 9th-grade curriculum. It was the perfect way to add a regular bit of work to my summer and feel like it was fun to do. If your school has a budget for summer PD and what you really want to do is work on curriculum, consider getting creative with a grant like this.

Next on my list I want to mention the National Endowment for the Humanities summer institute series. These cool programs take place all over the United States, giving you a chance to travel to interesting places, dig deep into their culture, and collaborate with colleagues from across the country. This summer they’ll have Grand Coulee Dam: The Intersection of Modernity and Indigenous Cultures in Spokane, Freedom Summer: 60 Years Later in Jackson, Shakespeare and Digital Storytelling in Decatur, and quite a few more. My husband attended one of the institutes on civil rights years back and remembers it as being absolutely outstanding.

I consistently hear from people who have found the National Writer’s Project summer workshops extremely impactful, so that’s next. If you’re interested in diving deep into the teaching of writing, I’d look up your closest National Writing Project site and see what they have on offer.

If you’re looking for online options, you might explore the on-demand workshops from Facing History & Ourselves, or the free online course available from the National Museum of the American Indian, “edX Course: Foundations for Transforming Teaching and Learning about Native Americans,” or of course, Camp Creative, the summer PD I run each June (topic to be revealed soon!)

Finally, I’ll give a quick nod to the Exeter Humanities Institute, a weeklong workshop all about the discussion method, Harkness. I attended this institute after my first year of teaching, following a month-long experiment in each of my classes to use only Harkness as our method of discussion. I learned SO MUCH that week, and it really influenced me as a teacher on a fundamental level. I never used any other discussion method after that, because I just couldn’t imagine NOT using Harkness. Look into the method before committing to a week to go deep with it, but if you find it’s a good fit at your school, this week of PD will be an incredible boost to your ability to help your students shine through the method.

Of course, self-care, family time, and travel are all also great ways to renew your strength and creativity this summer as well. But if you’re looking for a quality PD experience, these are some of my favorite options, so I highly recommend you follow the links in the show notes and check them out!

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PD Links (as promised!):

National Endowment for the Humanties Summer Institutes

The National Writing Project

The National Museum of the American Indian Online Courses

Facing History and Ourselves On-Demand Learning

The Exeter Humanities Institute

265: Teaching Conversation in a Polarized World (The Elective Series Begins) Feb 27, 2024

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about electives.

Electives I want to design, like one about Youtube creation and one about Taylor Swift, and the amazing electives teachers in our community are designing and teaching around the world.

So of course I’m really excited that today on the podcast we’ve got the first show in a new series about creative electives. My hope is that this series will bring you inspiration for new electives you can propose or new units you can teach, modeled on your favorite parts of other people’s electives, within your current courses.

I’ll be interviewing teachers about some of their favorite electives - what they are, what they accomplish, and how they do it.

On today’s show we're diving into an interview with Amanda Beal, a creative teacher in Northern Minnesota. She’s going to be talking about a powerful elective for the world today, when we are so divided and yet so fearful of talking about the issues that divide us. I’m going to let her reveal the name and nature of this elective in just a moment - so stay tuned.

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264: Launch Tiny Podcasts (don't be intimidated) Feb 22, 2024

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.

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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!

263: Let's Reimagine the "Teacher Work Room" Feb 20, 2024

Ahh, the hum of fluorescent lighting. The slightly stained carpeting. The copier that is almost-if-not-already-out-of-paper. The dirty coffee cups. It's no secret that at many schools, the common teacher workspace isn't exactly inviting. No one really seems to be in charge of it, no resources really seem to be allocated toward it, and no one has time to care. (If that isn't the case at your school, AWESOME! And if that's because of you, that's so cool!)

But lately I can't help but ask... what if? What if the community workspace for educators had a tad more in common with those unique co-working spaces I see on Pinterest? Or those cool start-up offices with bagels on the counter and ping pong tables that pop up on Netflix sitcoms? Or the legendary work campuses of tech companies like Google and Youtube?

What if teachers actually enjoyed working in the faculty room/teacher room/copy room at your school, because it was.... like.... NICE?

When I saw a Facebook question in Creative High School English the other day from an administrator asking how they could do something nice for teachers, my mind turned automatically to this space - I'm going to call it a faculty room from here on out.

Ever since reading Ali Abdaal's book, Feel Good Productivity, in December, I've been leaning into my usual proclivity for creating pleasant environments since apparently feeling good where you do your work makes you more productive.

I don't think it would take much to overhaul many faculty rooms into a pleasant space to help create community, make teachers feel more supported, and even inspire more innovative pedagogy. In today's episode, I'm going to share a range of ideas - some of them free, some of them low cost, all of them mainly requiring someone who cares enough to ask for a small budget, gather a few colleagues to help, and get started.

(Someone like you.)

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Make your Copy of the Podcast Posters: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1spsn3iz9fxHkJiK3oxEIq8mdbbD7RvT4qxZCDM-Qkv8/copy

Make your Copy of the Pedagogy Posters: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/15RS-QhBuju2_YlkUOui8ruFgyLKndTyYythU-jcRuX8/copy

262: Let Students Design Escape Rooms Feb 16, 2024

This week, I want to suggest you let your students design an escape room.

Escape rooms are, in the iconic words of Zoolander, so hot right now. And they have been for years. Students love them! Who wouldn’t want to learn while exploring mysterious clues and piecing together puzzles?

The problem is, they take a little bit of forever to create. We’ve already talked about this quite a bit on the podcast!

But you know what they say (and yes, it’s based on the research), students elevate their learning when they teach.

So why not turn things around and have the students design the escape rooms? They’ll have to thoroughly understand the material they’re trying to share in order to embed it into clues and puzzles for their peers.

I’ve created a digital template your students can customize to create their own escape rooms on any subject matter you want them to teach each other. Just follow the link in the show notes to pick up this free resource.

Escape rooms are a flexible and fun way to learn, so that’s why this week I want to highly recommend you give them a try, with your creative students leading the way!

Grab the Student Escape Room Templates here: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/escaperoomkit

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261: Skill Practice that Isn't Boring: Grammar Edition Feb 13, 2024

So you want your students to get better at something, but drill-and-kill is clearly not the answer. Been there, done that, didn't like it. So what's a creative teacher to do?

Today I'm going to pull an example of a grammar skill and walk through five different ways to practice it without those groans you dread. While the skill I'm zooming in on may not be the exact one that's your focus right now, you can apply these five different strategies to pretty much anything. I'm hopeful that by the end of this quick show, your mind will be buzzing with new ideas for tackling the next skill your students need help with.

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260: Try this Super Bowl Activity for Rhetorical Analysis that's Fun Feb 08, 2024

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

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259: First Chapter Friday: Matt de la Peña Reads Feb 06, 2024

Welcome to the second episode of the author spotlight series here at Spark Creativity!

In this series, you’ll hear from authors sharing their work directly into your classroom. Today we’re hearing from Matt de la Peña reading his short story "How to Transform an Everyday, Ordinary Hoop Court into a Place of Higher Learning and You at the Podium," from the collection, Flying Lessons.

Stay tuned throughout the year to hear from many more wonderful authors, including Victor Pineiro, Payal Doshi, and Nancy Tandon. You can also check out the first episode in the collection, featuring Megan E. Freeman reading from her novel-in-verse, Alone.

Today we’re hearing from Matt de la Pena, reading from his short story “How to Transform an Everyday Ordinary Hoop Court into a Place of Higher Learning and You at the Podium,” from the collection Flying Lessons and other Stories.

Matt de la Peña is the New York Times-bestselling, Newberry Medal-winning author of seven young adult novels (including Mexican WhiteBoy, We Were Here and Superman: Dawnbreaker) and five picture books (including Last Stop on Market Street and Love).

Matt received his MFA in creative writing from San Diego State University and his BA from the University of the Pacific, where he attended school on a full athletic scholarship for basketball.

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. This short story is utterly fantastic, one of my favorites of all time to share with students!

⭐ Grab the Sketchnotes to go with this episode: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mxNfVE710zqUkfb8iGBjZGIA9A2aldz71E3VwNkf4do/copy

⭐ Project the Youtube version for your students in class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iajc4RH28Pg

⭐ Learn more about Matt de la Peña and his work: https://mattdelapena.com/

258: A Simple Trick for a Better Discussion Feb 01, 2024

This week, I want to share a quick way to help make your next discussion better.

The next time you plan a discussion in class, start it off with this quick warm up.

Invite every student to write an open-ended question about the reading or the current book at the top of their notes. Then ask them to pass their notebook to the left and let their neighbor respond for a minute. Then have them pass again. The next neighbor reads the question, the response, and then responds to both. Maybe do it two more times. Now pass all the notebooks back.

As you begin your discussion, invite someone to ask a question they responded to to the group. They won’t be taking much of a personal risk, asking someone else’s question. And you know at least two other people have given it some thought at this point. Your class is now primed to talk about the questions on everyone’s mind, since every question on paper has already received some serious thought from several people. When discussion begins to fade on the first question, invite the next.

I usually use warm-ups like this with a student-led discussion format called Harkness. So students know that I am not going to dive into every silence to rescue the group, and they ask the questions on their own. If you’re curious about that method, shoot me a DM on Instagram @nowsparkcreativity and I can do another show about it if you want.

I’ve repeatedly found that 5-10 minute discussion warm-ups make all the difference in creating a richer and more active discussion, so that’s why this week I want to highly recommend that you give one a try! I’m sure you’ll think of lots more ideas once the concept of a warm-up becomes built into your routine.

Go Further:

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257: Build a Common Errors Hyperdoc to Dramatically Speed up Grading Jan 30, 2024

We've been talking this month about the paper pile. The work bag shadow. The stack of essays you just might have taken to the ice cream social/Superbowl party/beach vacation/bar/hospital...

Today I want to share a strategy I honestly think every teacher can use to save time on grading and actually help kids improve their writing more.

This episode is going to be quick and, if you decide to try it, impactful. I'm not going to go on and on, because you'll quickly get the idea and then I'd rather you use your time to go IMPLEMENT.

We all know there are certain errors that come up time and time again. If you teach middle schoolers, you've probably used margin space in about a thousand papers to explain again the idea that they need to connect their evidence to their point, making the argument clear.

If you teach older kids, perhaps you've walked around the be-sure-your-thesis-is-arguable block so many times you could write the commentary in your sleep. And then there are the little things, like writing in the present tense, how to cite quotations, and using precise language instead of making mention of "things" and "stuff."

What I want to suggest is that you never re-write the fixes for these common errors in the margins of students' writing again. Instead, I want you to create a hyperdoc featuring each of these errors and their fixes to refer your students to whenever they make one, and feel free to get as glitzy as you want with color coding and linking and imagery and models.

What should go in your Common Errors Hyperdoc?

🔴 Maybe they'll see a colorful infographic you've designed to show the elements of an arguable thesis.

🟠 Maybe they'll have a chance to click on a screencast video of you walking through a model where a student's thesis was not arguable and explaining what the student needed to do to fix it.

🟡 Maybe they can read four types of model introductory paragraphs (that ChatGPT will be happy to help you write if you don't have student models from the past) introducing theses that ARE arguable.

🟢 Maybe they'll see a linked video from one of the many excellent University Writing Labs walking them through the process of making sure a thesis is arguable.

🔵 Maybe they'll see ALL of this. Because you'll be able to create this and add to it over the years as you find new resources, giving it more and more depth as an incredible tool to help your writers.

I made you a template and some examples in Canva (try it on for size with this link).

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256: Highly Recommended: Try a Pancake Project (It's Not About The Pancakes!) Jan 25, 2024

This week, I want to tell you a story about pancakes.

You might know I love to cook and bake. My instagram stories feature enough pan-banging cookie demonstrations, bread-baking Sundays, and chocolate donut dipping and sprinkling to show my secret food blogger tendencies. So of course, I have a treasured pancake recipe, and my family loves a good weekend pancake morning.

But here’s the thing, pancakes take a little bit of forever. Especially these. And I don’t always feel like making pancakes for two hours on a weekend morning, even though I do love making food.

So a couple months ago when my son asked me to make pancakes, and I just didn’t feel like I had the hours to give, I suggested that he make them. At first he was a bit stunned.

"Me? Make the pancakes?”

But I said I would teach him how to do it and make them with him, if he would learn the process so he could start making them.

So that’s what we did. I showed him the recipe, helped him find all the materials, and guided him through it. Everyone loved the pancakes, and we all showered him with compliments. A couple days later, he made them again, and I only helped with egg cracking and butter melting. More compliments. More joy for him. He started making pancakes to warm up on school mornings. He asked to make them for dinner when his grandparents were visiting, and the grandparents loved them. Soon he was cracking his own eggs, and I didn’t even need to be in the vicinity of the kitchen anymore.

So why am I telling you this? Well, for almost every teacher and parent I know, time is the great struggle. How to do it all? And sometimes that means letting things go, even if you know you’re good at them and maybe they even feel like a part of your identity.

Is it possible you could teach student volunteers to make beautiful book displays in your library each month? And that those students might actually feel really proud and pleased with the job?

Might you be able to empower student leaders on a team that you coach to plan part of practice time, give pep talks, or help set up or clean up practice equipment?

Might you be able to let go of something in your household that your children or partner might be good at too?

Maybe you want to try student-led discussion via the Harkness method, rather than trying to spearhead it every day yourself.

Every time I see my son eating the lovely pancakes he makes, I have to smile to myself. While no one is now complimenting “Mama’s pancakes,” I love to see him feeling good about what he can do and I’m happy to have the time for other things. That’s why this week, I want to highly recommend you ask yourself what kind of pancake project can you launch? (That has nothing to do with pancakes).

So I wonder, is there something you can turn into your own personal pancake project?

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255: How to Set Up Self-Editing Stations Jan 23, 2024

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 really help scaffold editing for your 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.

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254: Highly Recommended: Try This For Black History Month Jan 18, 2024

This week, I want to share a quick resource to help you celebrate Black Artists and Authors in your classroom next month.

Last year I started a project to create heritage displays you can use in your classroom throughout the year for special months like Black History month, Women’s History month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Pride month, and more.

Each display has a colorful header and a series of interactive posters featuring artists, creators, activists, and authors. Students can read the bio and scan the QR code on each poster to go learn more about the featured person.

February’s display features Zora Neal Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Amanda Gorman, Jason Reynolds, and more.

It’s a super quick display to put up - you just print out the pieces and put them up on some colorful paper on your bulletin board, door, or hallway. I’d love to share this free resource with you and help you get ready for Black History Month right around the corner! Then you can snag some books featured in the display to put up on your windowsill, along the top of your shelves, and along your whiteboard tray, and you’ll be ready to rock.

Easy, right?

Here's the link to grab this free resource: https://spark-creativity.ck.page/93cae16cef

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253: No More Taking Grading Everywhere you Go Jan 16, 2024

I recently polled our community on Instagram about the paper pile. Because let's face it, it's a huge part of an English teacher's life. How many papers will you assign? How will you grade them? When will you grade them? These become defining questions. I heard from teachers who have graded papers at an ice cream social, at the bar, at a Superbowl party, in the emergency room, in the delivery room, in a parent's recovery room at the hospital room, at the beach, and more.

I certainly remember the folders of papers always weighing down my bag from my teaching life. And I remember grading past midnight.

I'm sure you can relate to all of this. But more than ever lately, are you asking the same question as me? DOES IT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY?

The teaching profession has suffered through many difficult challenges of late, and the teacher shortage is the newest on a long list. I see many colleagues leaving the classroom or thinking about leaving, and while I know there are many factors, the crush of grading still feels like one of the biggest.

After all, there would be more time to creatively deal with planning, admin tasks, differentiation, parent communication, and everything else if English teachers weren't trying to find four or five hours a week to stare down the paper pile.

So today I want to suggest something, just my two cents. I think it would be better to dramatically change the way you grade to give yourself back time, than to be pushed out of the classroom by your paper pile, or made miserable by it. I think this is a conversation we need to be having honestly with our colleagues, and I hope this podcast might lead you to bring it up with your department if you feel you can.

Today on the podcast I'm going to share six ideas for taking back some of your grading time, and then in several upcoming episodes I'll be going deeper with some of these strategies.

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252: The First Chapter Friday Series: Megan E. Freeman reads from Alone Jan 09, 2024

Welcome to the first episode of the author spotlight series here at Spark Creativity!

In this series, you’ll hear from authors sharing their work directly into your classroom. Today we’re hearing from Megan E. Freeman, reading from her book, Alone. Stay tuned throughout the year to hear from many more wonderful authors, including Matt de la Peña, Payal Doshi, and Nancy Tandon.

Megan E. Freeman attended an elementary school where poets visited her classroom every week to teach poetry, and she has been a writer ever since. Her bestselling novel in verse, ALONE, won the Colorado Book Award, the Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont children’s book awards, is an NCTE Notable Verse Novel, and is included on over two dozen "best of" and state reading lists. Megan is also a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet.

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

Grab the sketchnotes handout here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Ox4NNN9SZOG2oR1AQsHxyf0txLrrcR81gFP1sLbsIo0/copy

You can find the text of the first 60 pages of the book available free on Overdrive.

If you'd like to project this episode on Youtube with an image of Megan and her book to give kids a visual as they listen, you can find it here.

Learn more about Megan E. Freeman

Megan E. Freeman attended an elementary school where poets visited her classroom every week to teach poetry, and she has been a writer ever since. Her bestselling novel in verse, ALONE, won the Colorado Book Award, the Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont Children’s Book Awards, is an NCTE Notable Verse Novel, and is included on over two dozen "best of" and state reading lists. Megan is also a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, and her poetry chapbook, Lessons on Sleeping Alone, was published by Liquid Light Press.

An award-winning teacher with decades of classroom experience, Megan taught multiple subjects across the arts and humanities to students K-16, and she is nationally recognized for presenting workshops and speaking to audiences across the country. She studied theater and dramatic literature for many years, earning degrees from Occidental College and the Ohio State University.

Megan is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Northern Colorado Writers, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, Columbine Poets of Colorado, and Lighthouse Writers Workshop. She is an Impact on Education Award winner, a National Writing Project fellow , a Fund for Teachers fellow, and a member of the Colorado Poets Center. She used to live in northeast Los Angeles, central Ohio, northern Norway, and on Caribbean cruise ships. Now she divides her time between northern Colorado and the Texas Gulf Coast.

Visit her website here.

251: Highly Recommended: My Favorite Planner Routine Jan 05, 2024

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.

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250: Fire up your Choice Reading Program, with Abby Gross Jan 02, 2024

Today on the podcast, we're sitting down with Abby Gross from Write on with Miss G, who has become known for her thriving reading program and the wonderful tools she has developed to support other teachers with their own reading programs.

After spending the first part of her career teaching high school English, Abby unexpectedly fell in love with teaching middle school ELA. With her switch to the middle came a new goal of creating a community of readers and helping all of her students find books they enjoy. For the last four years, she has built a classroom library and independent reading program from the ground up, watching her readers flourish with choice, time,

The co-author of a guidebook for teachers, Keeping the Wonder, and a picture book for young readers, The Magic of Wonder, Abby is committed to fostering joy in learning and literacy. In addition to being an advocate for independent reading, Abby is a big believer in the power of curiosity and student-centered learning. support, and good books.

I enjoyed our conversation so much - this is truly a value-packed episode. I think you'll love Abby's practical, doable (and fun) advice for building more reading and book PR into your weekly routine. Get ready for quickly actionable tips on building strong Book Trailer and First Chapter programs, creating book posters and brochures, selecting and organizing your classroom library, and rolling out fun hybrid book tastings on the regular.

Connect with Abby

When she's not teaching, you can find Abby creating resources, blogging on writeonwithmissg.com, hanging out on Instagram, presenting workshops for Keeping the Wonder, and reading.

Check out her blog posts on Why You Should Try a Book Tasting, 10 Ways to Use Book Recommendation Posters, and Book Trailer Tuesday: How to Hook Students on Books in 3 Minutes to go even deeper on this subject. And be SURE to grab her FREE Book Trailer Tuesday Links for the Entire Year.

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249: Highly Recommended: Make Over your Work Space Dec 21, 2023

This week I want to talk about your work space and why it matters that you love it.

Do you remember having a locker in middle school? Remember taping pictures all over the door, adding one of those rectangular magnetic mirrors, maybe a little pink plastic basket with gum and lifesavers?

Setting up my locker was so important to me those days, and I really haven’t changed much.

When it comes to my workspace, I want to love it. And recently, as I listened to Ali Abdaal’s book, “Feel Good Productivity,” I got some insight into why that’s so important. There’s a key section in the book that talks about how much more productive you are when you are feeling happy. Abdaal suggests coming back to a question when you’re struggling to accomplish a task - “What would this look like if it were fun?” For him, the answer often meant listening to inspiring music while typing up paperwork as a young doctor. For me, it often means I put a vase of flowers in the window behind my desk as a step toward accomplishing my daily work goals. It means putting George Winston on the wireless speaker, clearing away clutter, lighting a candle. It means changing out the cute little postcard I bought in Vienna that sits on my windowsill for one of the other ones that fit my mood. It means filling my water bottle and jotting my big plans in a beautiful planner that is always right next to my computer.

But enough about me - what about you? What would some of your daily tasks look like if they were fun? What can you do to make the place that you work feel GOOD?

Would photocopying be more fun if there was a lovely bulletin board and twinkle lights next to it? Maybe you could make that happen.

Would grading feel better if you had a mug full of flair pens next to your computer and a cozy teal-colored blanket on your desk chair that felt like a hug?

Would notes home to parents feel enjoyable if you had a stack of lovely postcards you printed and kept in a little basket in your windowsill?

Would changing out your bulletin boards feel better with Taylor Swift blasting from your wifi speaker on your desk and a peppermint life saver in your mouth from your secret snack drawer?

These small things may seem frivolous at first. But actually, the research supports them as productivity boosters. So you don’t have to feel guilty for taking time to make your space pleasant, comfortable, and inspiring. And this week, I want to highly recommend that you make a quick list of work space changes you can make ASAP so you can enjoy your work more AND, as a result, get more done.

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248: A Simple Solution To The First Day Back Dec 19, 2023

There's nothing quite like knowing exactly what you're going to do on the first day back after break as you cruise into the winter vacation. Giving yourself that mental cushion means that maybe when you wake up in the middle of the night over break, you can think about what cookies you want to make in the morning and which book you want to read by the fire instead of what to teach on the first day back!

Because it's OK to take a break.

So in today's short and sweet episode - because I know you're BUSY right now - I want to suggest an easy lesson for the first day back - the one-word project.

I first heard about the one-word project fifteen years ago when I was living in Bulgaria. Struggling a bit to adjust to my new surroundings in post-Communist Sofia (Bulgaria's capital), I started listening to Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love on my regular jogs around my neighborhood, Mladost 1-A.

It helped to listen to Elizabeth Gilbert process her life in Italy, India, and Bali as I tried to process my first foray into Eastern Europe.

One of the things she talked about - I think it was during her time in India - was this idea of choosing a word to define the year ahead. Unlike a six word memoir, which stems from all that we have been, the one word project helps us envision the future we want and choose a way to guide ourselves into it.

Now this project could be incredibly quick if you just pass out paper and invite kids to choose a word. But I'd scaffold the process a bit to make it more meaningful.

You might start by having students write some reflection on the past year, 2023. What was most meaningful for them? What did they learn that they valued? What do they want to build on that really mattered to them? What would they say their theme songs were in 2023?

If they're up for it, you might let them share with a partner, or add their theme songs to a big list on your white board.

Next, turn their attention to 2024.

You know how I feel about one-pagers. I think the combination of visuals and text can really help highlight meaning. So I suggest you invite students to start by just jotting ideas in a notebook for possible words they'd like to use and ideas, goals, and visuals of their own lives that relate to those possibilities.

Then you can share a one-word prompt that invites them to write and illustrate their one word. They'll want to write that defining word in big bold letters, then illustrate it with the smaller goals and steps that will help them to truly live that word in 2024.

Maybe some of your students aren't big on paper and markers? No problem. The one-word one-pager works great on a platform like Slides or Canva too. In fact, if you're hoping to help students get onboarded to Canva in 2024 this could be a wonderful starter project.

If you'd like to share a basic template with them to help them get started, feel free to use the one I used for the model above! You can find it here.

Once your students have created their one-word visual, either on paper or digitally (and printed them out), I highly recommend you turn them into a display! Covering a wall (with permission from students) in the words your students hope to use as guiding lights for the year can help keep them front of mind. You can even revisit them every few months with some reflective writing about how things are going with regard to their goals.

If some kids prefer to keep their words private, that's totally understandable. You might suggest they tape them into the front of their notebook or hang them by their bed at home. But most kids will probably be OK with displaying their goals.

If you still have time in class, you might introduce students to the idea of SMART goals, a popular form of goal setting in many workplaces these days.

If you haven't heard about this format, here's what SMART stands for:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Time-Bound

Invite students to create three SMART goals in different areas of their lives for the term with their one-word in mind.

So, for example, let's say a student's one word is "Strong."

Maybe they really want to become an incredible athlete in 2024 and make the varsity hockey team the next winter. A SMART goal would be to choose a strength benchmark they can realistically work up to and a time by which they will achieve it. Like "I will be able to do 10 pull-ups by May 1st."

Maybe they want to become stronger in math, as it's an area of struggle for them. A SMART goal might be "I'm going to ask my older brother to tutor me once a week on Tuesday nights and raise my math grade to a B by the end of this quarter."

Maybe they want to become a stronger boyfriend, as they feel their relationship could be going better. A SMART goal might be "I'm going to try to ask my girlfriend how she's feeling in a thoughtful text every weekend."

Giving students time to really reflect on how to integrate their one-word vision into their lives is a gift to them, and a great way to start the year!

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247: Highly Recommended: This Book Project Kids Like Dec 14, 2023

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.

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246: Inspire Winter Break Reading with a Book Tasting Now Dec 12, 2023

Did you know that in Iceland they have a special holiday tradition called "Book Flood" on Christmas eve? People gift each other books, then relax and read them while drinking hot cocoa or eating holiday chocolate.

Isn't that just the best idea? I love it.

This year I want to suggest you help your students have a book flood of their own, by making sure they have a great book (or two) to take home over winter break from your school or classroom library.

And that means making a special effort to help your students find something they will actually want to read!

What better way than a book tasting? Don't worry, I know you have a million things to do right now, so I'm going to share the quick step-by-step in this podcast and provide you with all the free curriculum to make it super easy.

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245: Highly Recommended: "Sketchnote Fever" Dec 07, 2023

This week I want to talk what to do if you're trying to help your students take advantage of the benefits of sketchnotes but they're stuck.

We’re going to dig into a special video series by Sylvia Duckworth called “Sketchnote Fever” and how it can help.

Students often struggle at first with sketchnotes, because they feel ill-equipped to add icons and doodles to their notes if they aren’t natural artists. Someone probably told them when they were 6 that they were bad at art, and they’ve integrated that into their identity by high school.

HOWEVER. Sylvia has a wonderful series of short videos teaching by demonstration how to draw simple icons to help illustrate ideas. If you take a few minutes before a time when students will be taking notes and play one of her super short videos, like “School icons,” “Subject icons,” “frames,” or “banners,” students will have a chance to practice these easy icons and build confidence in how to integrate them.

Ask your students to keep a special place in their notes where they always draw their icons from the videos, so they slowly build a visual library they can refer to - then REMIND them to refer to it!

Little by little, students will become more proficient at creating meaningful sketches to complement their text notes. Which means that they will become better at making their notes memorable through the critical thinking and dual coding that happens when translate what they hear into words and imagery that work together to make meaning.

So this week, I want to highly recommend that you follow THIS LINK and check out Sylvia Duckworth’s amazing “Sketchnote Fever” series. You’ll discover 34 super quick videos and printable handouts of the icons featured in every single one. Isn’t that amazing? Thank you, Sylvia!

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244: Creative Winter Poetry Activities for ELA Dec 05, 2023

The week before winter break can be a great time for wintery poetry.

A mini-unit like this is flexible, seasonal, and easy to fit around whatever else is going on in those final (frantic? fun? festive?) days. You may have favorites of your own to incorporate, but today I just want to share three quick and creative ideas for your toolkit.

#1: Winter Holiday Lipograms

Ever since Melissa Alter Smith of Teach Living Poets introduced me to lipograms, I've been so intrigued by this poetic form. A lipogram is simply a poem in which a poet avoids a certain letter (or letters) of the alphabet, but I love the way Melissa had her students avoid all vowels except one.

For this project (grab the free curriculum I designed with Melissa here), students will choose one vowel and then write a holiday poem using only that vowel. There are three quick brainstorming activities they can do to help them generate enough words with their chosen vowel to write a poem (it's harder than it may sound!).

2: Winter Poetry Tiles

If you've ever played with magnetic poetry on your refrigerator, you already have the idea of digital poetry tiles. These kits are so easy to use to create poems, and they help students relax and move beyond writer's block.

All you need is a Google Slide and a bunch of individual word images to move around on that slide. You can make it as complex or as simple as you like.

Get the full walkthrough in the full shownotes at nowsparkcreativity.com.

Designing these kits does take a little time, and might best be enjoyed with a fun movie and a warm mug of cinnamon apple cider. (Or you can always use mine, which you can peruse here or grab from The Lighthouse).

3. Winter Poetry One-Pagers

The Poetry Foundation has a lovely collection of Winter Poems, including Mary Oliver's "White Eyes," which I would really recommend. Its lovely language and gentle structure gives students plenty to dig into without being overwhelming.

Whether you use "White Eyes" or another winter favorite of yours, why not try a poetry one-pager?

Maybe you've tried one-pagers for novels and you're ready to branch out. Or maybe this will be your first one-pager. Either way, it's a great activity to help students dig into a poem and show their understanding through both words and visuals - a skill vital to many types of real-world communication in our world today.

As always, I suggest sharing a template with students (this is mine on TPT). When you design your template, think about the types of things you want your students to really explore in the poem.

For example, your one-pager instructions might ask students to include:

a border of imagery from the poem
poetic devices they notice along with quotations to illustrated them
connections between the poem and other poems, pieces of art, or books
connections between the poem and current events or their own lives
themes from the poem along with illustrations of those themes through quotations and/or imagery
a look at the poet's style
a key symbol or image from the poem

If students need full scaffolding, you can let them know where on the page to include each element. If they have some experience and are ready for more independence, you can let them choose where to put everything, or even to use blank paper instead of a template.

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243: Highly Recommended: The Chunk-and-Schedule Method Nov 30, 2023

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.

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242: Building Better Book Clubs, with Martina Cahill Nov 28, 2023

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.

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241: Highly Recommended: Reframe Argument like This for Students Nov 23, 2023

This week I want to talk about argument, and why it seems so esoteric to kids when they learn about it at school, and so relevant when they watch it unfold on their screens.

This week a member of our Lighthouse community threw out a question - is the five paragraph essay dead?

It really got me thinking about my experience as someone who basically writes all day long. I write podcasts, blog posts, Instagram carousels, social media captions, interview outlines, and emails from morning til night. And I am very often trying to argue something. I argue that slam poetry will help you engage students with poetry. Or that it’s important to build art and design into ELA classes because communication is increasingly through multimedia. Or that student podcasting is not as hard as it seems.

But do I use the 5 paragraph essay structure that I learned back in high school? Do I use formal language and avoid contractions and keep slang out of it and always always always use 3rd person?

Interesting question.

I often do use elements of the 5 paragraph essay. Hooks matter. Introducing what a piece is going to be about from the get go so people know what to expect. Supporting ideas with anecdotes, statistics, or relevant visuals to help bring home a point that makes the argument. Wrapping it all up, at least to some extent, with a concluding bow.

But I almost never go with formal language or 3rd person, and the extensive online writing class I took long ago basically told me I had better use contractions or suffer the consequences of sounding stilted and distant. Slang, pop culture references, and a good GIF help me make my point. Even emojis have been recommended to me by professionals in the online community as important additions to certain types of writing.

So this week, I want to suggest that you talk with kids about how argument shows up in their world - maybe even ask them to go on a scavenger hunt for argument.

What TikTokers are out there making an argument?

What are Youtubers trying to sell, and how do they make their case?

What Instagram accounts make an interesting enough point about, well, anything, that your students stick around to read it?

These are arguments being made as surely as students are often asked to make arguments about The Great Gatsby, and the two are more related than it might seem on the surface.

Think about ways you can build argument into other types of assignments, in addition to the argumentative essay.

But export the language.

Teach kids the power of a hook on a research-based Instagram carousel.

Show them how they need to use real evidence to back up the main points in an infographic, and how they still need a full sources cited.

Let them try writing emails to the school board about something they’re passionate about, and don’t stipulate the number of paragraphs so much as the clarity of the ideas and the evidence to support them.

I think of the 5 paragraph essay as a super-scaffolded practice round for the writing waiting for kids in the world.

Is it dead? Nope.

Is it the end-all-be-all of argument? Definitely not.

Can we frame it that way for our kids, kind of like batting practice for a professional athlete?

Yep. And this week, I want to highly recommend that we do.

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240: Easy Ways to use Performance Poetry in ELA (and why you Should!) Nov 21, 2023

When it comes to an engaging poetry unit, I believe the #1 building block is performance. There's something about watching contemporary poets stand up and deliver their work that is undeniably engaging.

Kids might hate the piece they see performed. They might love it.

They might feel their skin crawl watching it because they think the poet is so awkward... or get goosebumps because it so exactly describes their own experience.

But whether they love it or they hate it, in my experience, they're INTO it. They're THERE for it. And they love debating about it.

So today on the podcast, I want to talk about performance poetry, and how to use it in your classroom. By the end of this episode, you'll walk away with my favorite clips, lesson ideas, and classroom event possibilities.

See the Full Show Notes at Spark Creativity

The Black Friday Catalogue

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239: Highly Recommended: Use One-Pagers as a Creative Gateway Nov 16, 2023

This week I want to talk about how one-pagers can be a powerful gateway to creative options in your classroom.

Let’s start with the one-pager basics. A one-pager allows students to express their takeaways from, well, just about anything, on a single paper through a combination of words and images. A one-pager can includes quotations, analysis, key terms, imagery, special fonts, symbolic colors, and more. You probably already know that my #1 tip for one-pagers is to give students a template that connects the elements that you want with a location on a template, so kids don’t feel overwhelmed as they begin to experiment.

You can try your first one-pager with a novel, a Ted talk, a poem, a short story, a play, a song, a podcast... You get the idea!

One of the great things about one-pagers is that they open the door to this form of dual expression, where kids are communicating their ideas through both words and visuals. Take a second to talk to them about how prevalent this is in the world. Ask them to consider political campaigns, social media, Youtube, online news. Get them started thinking about how often they see only words or only pictures, and how often it’s actually a combination that expresses ideas most effectively and memorably.

As students realize that their simple first step of a one-pager is actually guiding them into a new genre of expression, one that parallels many forms of real world communication, they may open up to more type of creative projects in class. You may find them more excited about research carousels, infographics, book trailers, and more real-world projects that bring visuals onto the scene to complement their writing. You may find that fewer students scoff that art is a waste of their time.

If you haven’t tried a one-pager yet, this week I want to highly recommend that you dive in! I’ll link my free templates for any novel in the show notes. And if you have, give a little thought to how you can use them as a gateway in students’ minds. It’s a powerful shift in how we see the world, and one that can benefit your creative classroom.

Free One-Pager Templates Here

Black Friday Menu for Next Week Starting Monday (Each Button Goes Live on its Day of the Week)

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238: Let me Plan your ELA Lessons the Week before Thanksgiving Nov 14, 2023

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.

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237: Highly Recommended: Don't Grade it All Nov 09, 2023

This week I want to share advice I only wish someone had given me long ago - don’t grade everything your students create in class.

It’s easy to feel pressure to put a grade on everything students make. They often come in expecting to see a letter on top of every single piece of paper they create for you.

But ew. It’s impossible to keep up, and it doesn’t necessarily benefit them for you to try.

Instead, think about how you can grade what really shows what they’ve learned, and build in ways to validate their effort on other things.

Maybe you do 5 bellringers a week, and the grading load is crushing you. Try walking around with a stamp and stamping them as students complete them. They see that you’re noticing their work, and you can give them a completion grade for the week, taking off for kids who repeatedly DON’T do the work. Or you could invite students to choose their favorite on Friday that really shows their mastery and effort, and turn that one in for you to see.

Let’s look at another scenario. Your students are working on their argument writing, and you’re planning to do a series of five prompts with them. Think about how you can build in self-editing stations (with tips from you build into the stations), peer editing, and revision practice focused on specific skills you know they need to work on throughout the unit. Then invite them to turn in a final draft of just one of the prompts for you to grade.

I could go on and on with examples, but the main thing is to remember: you don’t have to grade it all. Use stickers, stamps, check marks, peer feedback, and selected pieces to turn in for grading to validate your students effort, and save your grading time for what really counts. I highly recommend you give yourself permission to stop grading everything, and see how much creative planning time you can get back into your day!

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236: When your Students just... Don't Care Nov 08, 2023

We've all been there. You walk into a class, unveil your lesson plan with all the joy and care of a museum curator lifting the veil on a new Van Gogh, and your students just... don't care.

They've got their own problems. Their own stresses.

They decided in 4th grade they didn't like reading.

In 5th grade that they "weren't creative."

In 7th grade that they needed to give serious attention to social media if they wanted to stay cool.

And now they're sitting in your class, eyes not-so-subtly glued to the little glowing screen under their desk or the clock above your MLA poster display.

So what do you do? In today's podcast, I'll share five different paths you might take to help them tap back into ELA. Choose your favorite, connect the dots on two or three, or try them all.

Focus on Connection

One way to chip away at apathy is to focus on connecting with students on a personal level. Maybe you come up with fun nicknames for kids you're trying to gently attract back into the ELA sphere. Maybe you make it to some sports games and get to talking with your student-athletes about the season. Maybe you work on some templates for positive notes home, and you send a slew of them every week. Maybe you do some serious student surveying about their interests, past reading lives, favorite types of projects, favorite EVERYTHING, so you can keep their personalities and histories in mind as you design curriculum.

When you focus on connection, you help student start to feel more at home in class and more interested in paying attention. The relationships you have with kids can help them overcome their apathy, often in connection with some of the other strategies we're talking about today.

One of the quickest, easiest ways to get started with relationship building in my experience is to use Attendance Questions. This quick five minute activity for the start of class is an automatic point of connection with every student. Whether you go with silly or serious questions, you give every student a chance to tell you something about themselves. You can grab three weeks of fun questions to get started for free right here.

Incorporate Student Interests in your Work whenever you Can

I was reminded of how crucial student interests can be last year when I interviewed C.J. Reynolds about enjoyable classroom management strategies. He shared his wish that his teachers could have explained the hero's journey to him in terms of the movies he was loving as a teen, and how quickly that would have helped him understand it.

C.J. tries hard to keep a handle on the T.V. shows, movies, Manga, etc. that his students love so that he can build it into class content and assignments, and ask kids about it in the in-between times.

It's a strategy worth trying.

Might your students be excited about writing argument practice about the One Chip Challenge?

Might they enjoy analyzing the tone in Taylor Swift Songs?

Might they look up in shock when you reference the crazy trend their favorite Tik-Toker just started as you move into your rhetorical analysis unit?

Incorporating your students' interests anywhere and everywhere you can will help you build relationships with them (which we already talked about!) and it can also help you reel them in to be more interested in the work. A kid who dreams of being a Youtuber might be a lot more interested in creating a video documentary about a local change-maker than about writing a research paper about a historical changemaker. And you can build in a whole lot of the same skills...

Ride your Choice Reading Program to Better Relationships and Motivation

As an introvert, it wasn't always easy for me to chat with my students between periods. I wasn't the teacher out in the hall cracking jokes and inventing hilarious nicknames. But once I started working seriously on my choice reading program, it became a major vehicle for helping me connect with my students and motivate them more across all of our class content.

I vividly remember my student Toran, in Bulgaria. He seemed to survey our class from some higher plane, smiling ironically at my attempts to engage him and generally staying out of every activity and discussion he could manage to avoid. He was smart, but he didn't really seem to care.

After a few reading sessions in our choice reading unit, I realized he was reading nothing but super dense history books, many hundreds of pages long. He was incredibly interested in history, and willing to spend hours poring over it any time he was given the opportunity.

Bingo.

Our conversations changed entirely. When he realized how eager I was to help him find books that matched his interests, and to hear what he was learning, he warmed up to me and the class in general. I still remember his incredible slam poem about living in Bulgaria from later in the year, when he was one of our class slam winners. What a long way he came.

I could tell you a lot of stories like this, but instead I'll encourage you to go and find your own! When you focus significant energy on your reading program, you'll find new ways to connect with kids, see their reading skills, motivation, and stamina improve, AND oten see their interest in your class go up. That's been my experience across classes, years, and even countries.

Not sure where to start with independent reading? I boiled down all my best advice and resources into one epic toolkit for you. Grab my free choice reading toolkit here.

Choose Projects with a Hook

If you've been around here for long, you'll know I think projects can be a powerful motivator for any unit. I like to use the name "Showcase Projects." With a showcase project, students are going to be sharing something amazing that they create, and they're going to be working on that amazing something all through the unit. In fact, that showcase project is going to function as their motivation to learn the skills needed in the unit.

To follow up on the documentary project I mentioned before, maybe you're going to host a film festival of short documentaries your students produce at the end of a unit on research and interview skills. As you teach them about hooks, B roll, researching background information on their documentary subjects, building interview questions, effective film angles, media mixing, and more, they'll have a powerful reason to pay attention. Their documentary will soon be competing in your school film festival, and more people will be watching it than just their teacher.

Wrapping a poetry unit with a poetry slam, a theater unit with a play performance, a nonfiction unit with a podcast project, a novel unit with a literary food truck festival - these are all examples of connecting a project with a strong hook and an authentic audience with materials students may or may not be excited about at first.

I have had consistent success using special projects as a hook to help students get interested in all different types of content, so I can honestly recommend it as a great way to fight against apathy and disconnection.

Try Different Types of Texts

Sometimes kids who have been turned off to ELA just need another way to engage with a text than a long novel. A novel-in-verse is a great option, and Jason Reynolds has some stellar ones, but so do a lot of other folks! Check out this fun show from last year about a novel-in-verse book club unit that kept seniors engaged all the way to the end of the year in Caitlin Lore's classroom.

Book clubs in general can be a great way to reel students back in, since they provide for choice within any genre or theme focus you want to share. A memoir book club with books by people students admire could work well, or an identity book club with titles that students can relate to.

Graphic novels are another amazing option. This genre has exploded in recent years, and the research tells us that graphic novels are a major hook for student readers. Swapping in Gareth Hinds' versions of classics like The Odyssey or Romeo and Juliet might help students re-engage, and you can always bring in parts of the traditional text to complement the graphic novel once students have become interested.

Then there are all the options available through the media, like National Geographic's amazing series of short documentaries, podcasts, and short films. You can teach ELA skills with such a range of texts, and online multimedia is freely available, so you can always build a short and engaging unit around it to help start a new chapter with students who aren't engaging.

Choose your own Adventure

You know best which of these pathways might best help you help your students. Maybe it's a combination, but remember, you don't have to put it all in place at once. Try out some attendance questions this week, start working on some content based on students' interests next time you're building new writing or speaking prompts, think about your choice reading program or start previewing some graphic. novels... whatever you can fit, whenever you can fit it. And slowly but surely, I think you'll see more engagement. More students caring. More classes that gain momentum instead of feeling like a struggle.

I'll be cheering for you!

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235: Highly Recommended: Gene Luen Yang's Ted Talk Nov 02, 2023

I want you to watch Gene Luen Yang's Ted talk called “Comics Belong in the Classroom!”

Here's why.

It's a hilarious look at why comics are such a powerful medium for our students, how they accidentally got classified as a negative influence on young people (with totally false evidence) and the power they can actually wield for good - Avengers-style.

I was so amazed to learn that library usage goes up 82% in libraries that feature graphic novels, according to a School Library journal article.

This Ted Talk is a quick watch. Gene Luen Yang gives a stellar overview of why comics and graphic novels are so helpful for students, how they fell from grace, and why they deserve their current rise to popularity.

Grab a minute to watch it HERE, and then maybe share it with your department! If you've been struggling to get others onboard with a graphic novel book club, a graphic novel unit, or new graphic novels for your choice reading library, this talk just might help.

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234: Closing the Opportunity Gap, with Reid Saaris Oct 31, 2023

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.

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233: Highly Recommended: Teach Living Poets Oct 26, 2023

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!

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232: Building More Inclusive Classrooms with Dr. Mark Gooden Oct 24, 2023

Today on the podcast, we’re sitting down with Dr. Mark Gooden, the Christian Johnson Endeavor Professor in Education Leadership and Director of the Endeavor Antiracist & Restorative Leadership Initiative (EARLI) in the Department of Organization and Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University.

He’s got a new book out, 5 Practices for Equity-Focused School Leadership, offering five methods to increase educational equity and eliminate marginalization based on race, disability, socioeconomics, language, gender, and sexual identity, and religion.

In this interview, I asked Dr. Gooden to bring his work right into the ELA classroom. You’re going to hear his thoughts on what it means to be an anti-racist teacher in the long term, how to listen better to the people in your community, how to fight for diverse books, and more.

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231: Highly Recommended: Try using your Whiteboard like This Oct 19, 2023

This week I want to give you a few quick ideas for using your whiteboard to help share great books with your students.

First things first, your whiteboard tray. I am seeing a lot of folks making a super quick display that’s really impactful by spreading books along their tray, then writing a one-sentence teaser above the book. This display is so easy to change up, and you can even get students involved in making new versions.

Next up, you can use your whiteboard to showcase what you’re reading. Create a little corner that says “Ms. Potash is reading…” and then print cover screenshots of what you’re reading. Again, so easy to change up, but it opens up conversations if kids have read or want to read what you’re reading.

I recently saw the Book Wrangler on Instagram talking about magnetic book shelves that he’s using in his library under the circulation desk. These would be a great add on a whiteboard too. Small magnetic shelves would let you feature a few books front and center of your classroom, and you could write headers or descriptions next to the shelves.

Finally, here’s an idea that could combine them all. You know I’ve been creating free display materials for various theme months throughout the year, most recently Hispanic Heritage Month. Caitlin Lore, who was on the podcast last year, has generously shared pictures with me of how she uses these displays as a starting point to devote her entire whiteboard to stunning displays for these various theme months. You could do the same, and incorporate all of these other ideas. Feature books from the theme along your whiteboard, add some to magnetic shelves, read one yourself and feature it in your corner, and then add display materials and posters wherever there’s still room.

So if you’ve got room on a whiteboard this year, I highly recommend trying one or all of these quick flips to turn it into a P.R. station for books and authors. It won’t take long, but it may just inspire a lot of new reading.

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230: Creative Short Story Station Ideas for ELA Oct 17, 2023

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.

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229: Highly Recommended: These Stunning Posters Oct 13, 2023

This week I want to tell you about the most beautiful, powerful, impactful classroom posters I’ve seen on the internet. And they’re totally free.

This isn’t the first time I’ve talked about Amplifier Art on the podcast, and it probably won’t be the last. I’ve even had their executive director, Emily, on the podcast to talk about their incredible wellbeing series.

But since it was Indigenous Peoples Day this week, I think it’s the perfect time to recommend their “Thriving People, Thriving Places” campaign. These posters help to rewrite old narratives and counter stereotypes by featuring modern Indigenous leaders showing strength and courage.

Here’s how Amplifer describes the series: “The Thriving Peoples Thriving Places campaign was a collaboration between Nia Tero and Amplifier, and uplifts the stories of fifteen Indigenous women leaders from locales spanning from the Philippines and New Zealand to the Brazilian Amazon and the Arctic.”

To find these posters, just visit Amplifier Art’s Free Downloads section, then choose Indigenous Resistance and click down at the bottom to show all the posters. Here's the link.

While you’re at Amplifier, I highly recommend looking around at their wellbeing series as well, and all their amazing free poster downloads, to see what else might be a helpful addition to your walls. It’s really an amazing site, and you can easily sign up for their updates while you’re there. They’re hosting their first ever educator’s conference in Los Angeles soon, if you happen to be in that area.

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228: Taylor Made for ELA: The Swift Collabisode Oct 11, 2023

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

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227: Highly Recommended: Don't Play Email Whack-a-Mole Oct 05, 2023

This week I’ve got a productivity tip to give you so much more focused time in your classroom.

Let’s talk about email, and how often you check it.

I can still remember the exact feeling of sitting in my kneeling desk in my first classroom, watching red flags spring up in the eight different inboxes in my First Class email dashboard. No sooner would I zero out my personal inbox than there would be a new announcement to teachers, or request to coaches, or task for advisors.

It was like playing whack-a-mole, trying to respond to everyone all day long.

But I worked hard at it. Every time I was free before school, between classes, before lunch, after lunch, and before practice, I’d quickly log in so I could reduce the stacking emails in every conference.

Whack. Whack. Whack.

And so it went on for years.

Want to know how much I check my email now? Once a day. Unless I really can’t get through it all, then I might follow up later after turning my attention to another project that needed me more.

Here’s the thing. In my experience, your inbox will be as demanding as you let it be. If you feel you must respond to everyone within 20 minutes, that’s what they’ll expect from you. But really, for almost everything, a day is a totally reasonable turnaround time.

Sitting down to respond to emails when you really have the time and energy, instead of task switching in and out of your inbox constantly just to “make progress” can be a huge time saver for you. Not to mention energy and mood saver. The last thing you want is to feel frustrated and angry starting class after getting a problematic email, or to walk into lunch with your mind overwhelmed by an announcement you just read.

Try saving email for one chunk of focused time in the day, and see if you begin to feel more free - in your mood and with your time - for other aspects of your day that are more rewarding and interesting to you.

So, if you’ve ever felt like you’re caught in an email hamster wheel that never ends, this week I highly recommend you try an experiment. Check it once (or if you must, twice) a day for a week instead of 10 or 15 times. See if it’s a win for you.

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226: Banned Books Week Starts Now (Here's Help) Oct 02, 2023

As Banned Books Week kicks off, I know not every teacher is in a position to showcase it. In some places, it's simply too dangerous for an educator to display banned and challenged books and talk about intellectual freedom with students (the Fahrenheit 451 realities are overwhelming).

But for those in a position to share about this with students, today I want to give you some options. Choose the ones that are right for your classroom and community.

As usual, it's not about telling our students what to think, it's reminding them that this is an important thing to think about.

The American Library Association has compiled a lot of great data about censorship and challenges taking place around the country. In 2022, there were 1,269 attempts to ban or censor library books or resources. This is the highest number in the last twenty years.

You can get a concise picture of the statistics and related issues on this page of the ALA website.

Banned Books Week: Display Ideas

One of the easiest ways to raise student awareness of book censorship is to put up a display for Banned Books Week. Again, the ALA has amazing resources for ideas. Check out their Pinterest page here for dozens of ideas, or try one of the easy options below.

Try a Fahrenheit 451 theme for a quick and easy Banned Books display. Cut large orange and red paper flames to line your shelves and/or small ones to stick into the pages of your books, then add a sign that says "Read Banned Books" and perhaps a few quotations from Ray Bradbury.

Another easy option for a Banned Books display is to put up caution tape, or, if you can't easily get any, print out strips of text saying "caution" on yellow copier paper and tape them up to look like caution tape.

Banned Books Week: Free Posters for your Display

To complement your displays of banned books, try adding one of these free poster resources.

I loved this idea I saw on the ALA Pinterest page so much I had to try making my own version for you. Rachel Moani created an amazing book display for the Lacey Timberland Library featuring characters holding up signs showcasing the insane reasons their books had been banned.

You can make your copy of my easily printable version here if you'd like, or make your own. I didn't try to include every reason each book had been banned or challenged, but I included one or two.

The Alexandria Public Library has some great free posters waiting for you to download as well! Check them all out here.

The National Education Association has a "Freedom to Read" poster available here if you need something more subtle.

These two infographics from the American Library Association can help students get a clearer picture of what's going on. You can download and print them from the ALA website.

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225: Highly Recommended: Present or Publish your Work this Year Sep 28, 2023

This week I want to talk about getting you in front of an audience this year.

My first year in the classroom I had an amazing mentor. Anne, my department chair, invited me to her house for lunch regularly. I brought pastries, she made fruit salads, and then over oatmeal-raisin scones and papaya, she listened to me talk about everything I was learning and doing. She nodded and smiled, and focused on supporting my enthusiasm rather than telling me what to do.

If only everyone had a mentor like that in their lives.

I remember one piece of wonderful advice she gave me then, and that was to start publishing. She suggested a local teaching newsletter that I could submit an article to, and I did, and it was accepted. Even though I was 22 and in my first year of my first teaching job.

That got me started thinking of myself as someone who could share my ideas with others. I submitted an awful lot more articles after that, and began applying to present on what was going well in my classroom. Sometimes I presented to a crowd at some lovely hotel. Sometimes I presented to my colleagues at my own school. Both were satisfying, and pushed me to see my classroom as a place for trying new things, analyzing the results, and sharing what I learned.

So today I want to give you the same advice my mentor gave me nineteen years ago.

Put your work out there. Ask to present to your department, your whole faculty, or at a local or national conference. Submit a presentation proposal to your state council of teachers of English conference or to the annual NCTE conference.

Write about what you’re doing and send it off to English journal, Read Write Think, We are Teacher, or Edutopia.

Pitch yourself as a podcast guest! Send in an Op Ed to the New York Times. Whatever feels like a good step to you, do it! I believe you’ll start to see your work in a new light when you share it.

You’re a change-maker, an agent of creativity in a profession that is lucky to have you. And I highly recommend you share your best ideas with as many other people as you can.

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224: Here's How to Help Quieter Students into Discussion Sep 26, 2023

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!).

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223: Highly Recommended: The Bread Loaf School of English Sep 21, 2023

This week let’s talk about a unique masters program - and the one I did - The Bread Loaf School of English.

Quick Details:

Summer Program out of Middlebury College
M.A. In English, but almost all participants are teachers, so there's a teaching angle!
Campuses in Vermont, Oxford (England), and California
Unique Classes and Activities (Opera, "Discovering the Imagination," and my Independent Study on Travel writing were three of my personal favorites...)

Learn more here: The Bread Loaf School of English

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222: Creative Halloween Activities for October in ELA Sep 19, 2023

Have you reached for a turtleneck sweater yet? Bought one of those big pumpkins or bright purple mums at the stand along the road? Sipped your first spiced latte?

It's that time of year again!

As the leaves turn and we move into the flow of the school year, it's a nice time to sprinkle in a little holiday fun for Halloween. Today, I've got a creative buffet of options for you, and I hope you'll find a few you can't wait to surprise your students with next month.

In this episode, we'll talk about murder mystery parties, escape rooms, spooky podcasts, creepy poetry, and more.

Find the Links:

Make your copy of the Halloween writing prompts here.

Explore episode 31, when Amanda from Engaging and Effective shared several year’s worth of experience crafting a wildly successful high school themed classroom murder mystery lesson.

Check out the full post about student-designed escape rooms.

Read the full step-by-step instructions and pick up my free student guide to creating a blackout poem here.

Grab the easy printable Halloween book display set - Make your copy here.

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221: Highly Recommended: Ask for What you Want Sep 14, 2023

This week let’s talk a different kind of topic, asking for what you want in education.

When I was five, my mom took me to a raspberry farm. I leaped out of the car, basket in hand, ready to harvest heaps of my favorite berry. Only to see a closed sign. I headed back to the car, distraught.

“Well,” said my mom. “Let’s just ask if we can pick. It can’t hurt.” I watched with very little hope as she knocked at the farmhouse and made her request. Soon we were piling up berries in the sunshine.

I’ve always remembered that day. The power of asking for what you want. It stuck with me in my teaching career.

I’ve asked for...

...classroom art supplies

...a season off from coaching when I was pushed past my max.

...admin guests to judge my poetry slams.

...books from the library for my choice reading program.

...budget for a visiting theater professional to give workshops for a week.

...to run a PD day for my entire school and gotten it. Help from my tech team to run a podcast project.

...to present at CATE and write for ECIS and spend a week learning Harkness and go to graduate school…

The answer to all these requests was yes.

Do I always get everything I want? No. But just think if I had never asked

So today, I’m highly recommending that YOU ask for what you want.

Ask your local librarian if they can help with your classroom reading program. Ask your department chair if there’s budget for 10 new graphic novels. Ask your local paper to come and cover your 11th grade poetry jam. Ask parents to come and speak during Career week. Ask if you can paint a wall of your classroom with chalkboard paint. Ask your colleagues if they want to go speak to the school board about something important to you. Ask if you can present on hexagonal thinking at a PD day. Ask the ice cream shop to donate prizes for your debate contest.

Don’t be afraid to ask for whatever it is that you need.

For budget, for PR, for time, for support.

Isn’t it worth a try?

I know it is, because I can still remember those big perfect raspberries.

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220: Try Teaching The College Essay like This Sep 12, 2023

I have to admit that even though I wrote three college essays, got into college, went to college, got my graduate degree in English and taught English for many years, I never really understood the college essay until a year ago. When I listened to this workshop on this very podcast, given by two high school college counsellors and two experienced university admissions officers.

Sure, I knew that the essay was a chance for kids to show off their writing skills and share about themselves. I knew that specific, vivid examples and clear writing were important. But I didn't really understand the one message that came through in all caps from the workshop - that students should write about what they actually care about - there's no secret mystery topic that colleges are actually hoping to hear about.

So it won't come as a surprise to you that I think you should start your college essay unit by playing this workshop, but then what? Once student know what colleges ACTUALLY want from their essay, how can you help them write it? Well, that's what THIS podcast is for. To give you a step-by-step plan for helping kids write their essays this fall.

By the way, I've created a curriculum set to help you out with teaching the college essay. You can sign up for the free kit right here.

Mentor Text Links Mentioned: "Enryo" and a piece from the online collection Humans of New York

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219: Highly Recommended: Vocaroo Sep 07, 2023

This week let’s talk about the simplest audio recording tool out there for students, Vocaroo.

Getting into activities like student podcasting, multigenre projects involving audio, or film projects with audio overlay can feel really intimidating.

But not with Vocaroo.

Vocaroo is actually a website you can visit on Chrome. In the middle of the page there's a big red button. Student simply click it and start recording. Then when they’re done, they click to download the audio file. It’s that easy.

With this one simple (free) tool, you can have students record short podcasts, poetry or personal narrative to overlay on a video, documentary scripts, or anything else you want. You don’t need a mic, and you don’t need to dive deep into the details of programs like Garageband and Audacity, though those might be great steps for someday.

So next time you get a great idea for a project involving audio, I highly recommend you calm those nerves and head over to press that big red button and try Vocaroo for yourself. It’s the easiest route to student audio, and it takes just ten seconds to master.

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218: A Beginner's Guide to using Podcasts in the Classroom Sep 05, 2023

So you've heard the buzz about podcasts, and you're intrigued. You want to play an episode in class, but you wonder what that would even look like? What would kids do while they listen? What would they do after they listen? Which show would be best? How would it fit into everything else you're up to?

Yeah, I hear you. It's a whole new genre and you might be the first teacher on your hall to use it. A few easy wins to help you get started wouldn't hurt!

So today on the podcast, I want to help you get started with... podcasts! I know you know they can be a great resource for learning, because here you are, listening to one. So let's talk about how to try one out in class ASAP.

Strategies and Links Mentioned:

Play a Podcast and Practice Sketchnotes

Episode 46 with Mike Rohde

Episode 140 with Sylvia Duckworth

Popular free sketchnotes templates

Play an Episode and use it as a Prompt

Baths vs. Showers from Smash Boom Best

Episode one of The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel

Feature Podcasts on an Interactive Bulletin Board

Play a Podcast Episode to Provide Helpful Information

Active vs. passive voice from Grammar Girl

Episode 160 of this very podcast - The College Essay Workshop

Play an Episode to Introduce an Author

Hip Hop and Shakespeare, or the Pop Sonnets episode of Shakespeare Unlimited

This short episode from "A Little Happier" about Trevor Noah's memoir

Interview with Jerry Craft

Play an Episode and Use it as a Mentor Text

Sign up here for the free mini-course on Student Podcasting

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217: Highly Recommended: Research with a Twist Aug 31, 2023

This week let’s talk about research, and the ways it shows up across the world these days. Because I’d like to highly recommend you build some research activities into your class this year that don’t end in papers.

I vividly remember my seventh grade social studies class, where we sat in groups at rounded tables trying to look cool and learned about how to take notes on a single source using a notecard. We built up our notecard stack over time, then arranged and rearranged our research into our first ever research paper.

Teaching the research process is just as important now as it was back then, but there are a lot more ways to help kids show off what they’ve learned. You can practice the skills of finding good sources, taking notes, analyzing information, and sharing and citing that information with student podcasts, Instagram-style carousel posts, or infographics, as well as papers. This will allow you to weave research into more arenas, and give kids more creative variety in showing what they’ve learned.

So this year, as you think about building in research skills, I highly recommend you consider having students share their takeaways in a new medium. Something that incorporates visuals or audio as well as writing. Try a quick infographic assignment, a 5 minute research-based podcast, or my favorite, the Instagram-style carousel, where kids create a connected series of square images that teach their viewer about their topic through both writing and visuals.

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216: Let's Talk Graphic Novels with Jerry Craft Aug 29, 2023

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.

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215: Highly Recommended: Book Trailers Aug 25, 2023

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!

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214: Build a Bridge to the Library this Year Aug 24, 2023

Librarians can help classroom teachers in sooooo many ways, and classroom teachers can return the favor by reminding kids they can always go further than the classroom library to the larger collection at the school or local library, and tap into their librarian's intricate knowledge of the collection to find even more books to love.

Forming a bridge between the work you do in class and the life of your school or local library will help kids be connected to book sources and experts beyond the time they spend in your classroom.

So today I want to dedicate a full episode to talking about the power of this collaboration and sharing creative options.

If you're thinking sadly that your school doesn't have a librarian, or that your school librarian is frantically trying to serve the needs of thousands of kids with a tiny budget and no staff, then remember that many community librarians would love to get your call and help you bring more books into your students' lives.

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213: Highly Recommended: The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel Aug 17, 2023

This week I want to share a fast-paced and fun podcast for middle schoolers, The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel.

It's a peabody-award winning mystery podcast, stuffed full of cliffhangers and featuring a full cast of professional actors - most of them middle-schoolers. The plot unfolds in bits and pieces as we follow a group of middle school kids who don’t quite fit in, and don’t know why their friends keep disappearing one by one. The show is frequently broken up by “announcements” from the show’s eccentric (fictional) billionaire sponsor, Oliver Pruitt, with his take on things or with commercials for his “special” school, Pruitt Prep.

This show would make a great text for middle school - there’s so much you could talk about from a podcasting perspective in the way that it builds suspense, incorporates plot layers through the asides with Oliver Pruitt, and weaves in sound elements. But it could also make for great writing prompts, listening skills practice, and discussion or debate fodder.

I highly recommend listening to just one episode to see what you think, and I bet you won’t want to stop there!

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212: The Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Digital Bookshelves Aug 15, 2023

So you want to share your favorite books with your students to help them love reading. Excellent! But maybe you lack the budget to keep up with their growing love of reading. Maybe you're wishing you could order about 25 different graphic novels (that waiting list for Heartstopper isn't getting any shorter) or your best Jason Reynolds and Kwame Alexander Titles keep disappearing. I hear you! These problems are only a sign that you're doing great things with your choice reading program.

But what can you do, besides add to your Amazon Wishlist and apply for grants?

Well, you can get your students connected to electronic books and create recommended reading digital shelves for them. And it's actually so much fun. Today on the podcast, I'm walking you through the step-by-step, nitty gritty details so you can start building your shelves immediately. I've had a lot of questions around this strategy, and my goal is to answer every single one so you can feel confident in your success.

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211: Highly Recommended: An Easier Back-to-School Night Aug 10, 2023

This week I want to share two quick ways to make back-to-school night 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.

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210: Creative Alternatives to the Summer Reading Essay Aug 08, 2023

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

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209: Highly Recommended: Alone Aug 03, 2023

This week I want to share one of my favorite recent reads - Alone, by Megan E Freeman.

I picked up this book after hearing what a smash hit it was with Caitlin Lore’s seniors back when I interviewed her for our episode about verse novel book clubs. If a ton of seniors loved it AND it was middle school appropriate with a younger protagonist, I figured it was a must-read!

I knew coming in that it was a survival story, set in a dystopian future, and that it was a novel-in-verse.

I read it in two days, and loved it just as much as I expected. It’s compelling, dramatic, and lyrical, and it manages to maintain suspense without being too frightening.

I’ve often seen it compared to Hatchet, but for me it felt quite different. Much more familiar. While the main character in Hatchet crashes a plane onto an island where he has to survive alone in nature, 12-year-old Maddie must survive in her own city when she wakes up to find every other citizen has been evacuated for some kind of mysterious national emergency, and she was accidentally left behind. It’s easy to start imagining what you would do in the same situation as you read.

Besides loving the book, I appreciated the notes from Megan Freeman at the end. Particularly the way she shared a section of the book written in prose and then its makeover into verse. This could easily become the basis of a creative writing project for kids working through any novel-in-verse or novel-in-verse book clubs.

So if you’ve got a couple of hours and a hammock, beach, or cozy couch available this week, I highly recommend reading Alone, by Megan E. Freeman and thinking about how to incorporate it into your book clubs, First Chapter Friday program, or choice reading library.

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208: A New Approach to Differentiation with Kareem Farah Aug 02, 2023

Today on the podcast, I’m glad to welcome Kareem Farah, founder of the Modern Classrooms Project. As a teacher in Washington D.C., Kareem faced problems that many teachers can relate to - students missing class all the time, and classes made up of students at hugely varied levels. He wanted to try something new, because he felt the practices he had been taught were not working.

Together with his friend Rob Barnett, he created a new instructional model that took into account the fact that students were approaching the materials from different levels and often, on different days following absences.

He now shares his methodology through his non-profit, The Modern Classrooms Project, in use by 58,000 teachers in over 150 countries. In this interview, Kareem and I talk about the blended learning approach of the MCP and how to try it out for yourself, and dig deep into how to combine this approach with creative practices and projects.

Watch Edutopia's wonderful video about the MCP

Grab the free course and resources here.

Check out the non-profit website here.

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207: Highly Recommended: Book Clubs Jul 27, 2023

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

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206: Help Students Consider the Ethics of AI with this Free PBL Unit Jul 25, 2023

AI is here. And everyone is paying attention. Many people are wondering if AI will take over their jobs, others how it can help them do their jobs. Some folks are asking if AI can help us solve global warming, while plenty of people fear that SuperIntelligence might eventually evolve beyond humanity and stop caring about us, dystopian sci-fi style.

And what about our students? Maybe they're wondering how it can help them with their work, while still making room for their originality, creativity, and sense of morality.

Maybe they're wondering how it will change their future professions, or create the profession that will someday be theirs. Maybe they’ve heard some people say it should never be used in schools, and others say that to shut the door on it is like abandoning the calculator in favor of pencil and paper, except times a million.

At this point, the questions on our minds as educators and the questions on our students' minds might not be so different. After I interviewed Ben Farrell from the New England Innovation Academy last spring, and he talked about bringing students into the conversation to let them share their ideas on how AI should be used, I was inspired to create my own version of an AI Ethical Use PBL unit, and now I want to share it with you. I designed this project in consultation with John Spencer, because I've always admired his work in the PBL and Design Thinking spaces.

Today on the podcast, we're walking through the whole project, which you can sign up to have delivered free to your email right here. I'll guide you through the steps of the project, and hopefully by the end of the show you'll feel ready and excited to find space for this unit in your curriculum this year.

205: Highly Recommended: Attendance Questions Jul 20, 2023

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.

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204: Students need Diverse Texts and Choice - Here's Help Jul 18, 2023

Today on the podcast, we’re talking about why offering our students diverse texts and giving them choice over their reading is so vitally important.

My guests, Dr. Claudia Rodriguez-Mojica and Dr. Allison Briceño, have recently written a carefully-researched and well-crafted book called Conscious Classrooms, all about why students need to be surrounded by diverse texts and how teachers can choose and integrate these texts.

While Claudia and Alison share examples in their book from their work with younger children, the research and practices they provide are equally important for students of all ages. We’ll be talking about how to choose diverse texts for your class, why it matters so much, and how to help your students develop a critical lens about representation when they read.

You can learn more about the book, Conscious Classrooms, and order a copy of your own, right here.

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203: Highly Recommended: Name Tent One-Pagers on Day One Jul 13, 2023

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.

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202: Silent Discussions Made Easy Jul 11, 2023

Silent discussions are a handy go-to option for helping every student participate in a discussion. They can help break up discussion ruts, show your classroom community how much quieter students really have to contribute, and let everyone think carefully about a topic before diving into a big oral discussion or related writing prompt.

Sounds pretty good, right? I've found them to be gold. So in today's episode, let's talk about three easy ways to try your first silent discussion.

Sign up for the colorful (free) silent discussion templates mentioned here.

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201: Highly Recommended: Penny Kittle's "Beautiful Words" Project Jul 06, 2023

This week I’m sharing an idea from Penny Kittle that is so lovely and adaptable, I’m sure you can find a wonderful way to use it - the "Beautiful Words" project.

Penny Kittle often shares strategies that involve looking to writing for inspiration and beauty. I’ve learned a lot from her about how to make mentor texts valuable, and how they are EVERYWHERE.

One of her prompts to students is that they search out beautiful words as they read the books they're reading in book club, and write them down in their notebooks. She shares vivid examples of students who have drawn out their beautiful words with striking representations in color and sketching.

I recently tried this project out for myself and loved it. It’s endlessly adaptable. Here are just a few ways you could use Penny’s idea:

Give students five minutes to find and sketchnote the most beautiful words they can from the reading prior to a whole class discussion, then invite pairs to share with each other and then someone to share with the whole class to begin a conversation around the writer’s style and word choice
Invite partners to find and illustrate beautiful words from the whole class text to put up on the wall, then use them as writing prompts to practice different types of sentences or writing strategies
Let the search for and sharing of beautiful words operate as a check-in and conversation starter to accompany book club reading, independent reading, or summer reading
Run a beautiful words contest in your school library and put all the entries up on a gallery wall and let people vote secretly for their favorites

However you use it, I highly recommend Penny’s “Beautiful Words” project!

See examples from Penny Kittle's website here.

And here's my example...

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200: Do THIS in July to make August Better in your ELA Classroom Jul 04, 2023

I know how it is. One minute you're paddleboarding along the lake, the next your mind is back-to-school as you consider whether to add book clubs in September, buy new plants for your windowsills, or try to fight a Jason Reynolds book into your 9th grade team curriculum (Yes! Do it!).

Don't try to tell me that's not you, because here you are, reading this teaching blog in July. It's nothing to feel bad about! Mixing a little fun creative work into summer relaxation is allowed. So is taking the summer 100% completely off of course - whatever works for you!

But if you're looking for some ideas, things you can put into place right now this minute so that the year is exponentially easier and nicer, you've come to the right place. Because today, I'm sharing some fun favorites you can put into place now so you can enjoy them all through the school year.

Looking for the syllabus templates, attendance questions, and other activities mentioned in the show? Visit the full blog post on the website here.

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199: Highly Recommended: Playing the "Whole Game" Jun 29, 2023

A few years ago I read Sarah Fine and Jal Mehta’s book, In Search of Deeper Learning. These two researchers criss-crossed the country, searching out schools, programs, and classes where deeper learning was truly taking place behind the marketing hype about how “innovative” the school aimed to be.

One of the key concepts that stayed with me was an idea they shared from another education writer named David Perkins, who argues that students need to “play the whole game at the junior level.” Mehta and Fine found that when students played the whole game, more deeper learning took place.

So what the heck does that mean? Think of a baseball game full of six year olds. They don’t really know how to play, right? They could probably spend years just practicing batting, throwing, and catching before their games would be very meaningful.

But why do kids want to play? They want to be in games!

They come to practice and work on their swing and their fielding and deal with the mosquitos and the occasional boredom BECAUSE there’s a game on Saturday. With cool uniforms and their parents in the stands and maybe chocolate-covered frozen bananas afterwards. Do you think as many kids would sign up for little league if their first game was going to be when they turned 18?

I bet you’re already making the connection. When we practice skills with students, it helps a whole lot if they can see why they’re practicing those skills and if they’re going to have a chance to put them into action in a way that parallels something they might do later on in the real world.

I highly recommend thinking about how you might build a few more “games” into your curriculum, or if you’re already building units this way, how you might use this powerful research to help explain to others why you do the projects you do.

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198: Take One of These Virtual Field Trips with your ELA Students Jun 26, 2023

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

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197: Highly Recommended: Canva Jun 22, 2023

This week on "Highly Recommended," I’m sharing my absolute favorite tool on the internet, which just so happens to be free for educators - CANVA!

So here’s what Canva does - it give you (and your students) the ability to do the kinds of things that only designers used to be able to do. Once upon a time, you needed to spend fifty hours learning Photoshop to layer colors and images, get rid of backgrounds, match image colors to font colors, and so many other small strategies that made a visual project look professional.

And now you don’t.

You can design handouts, flashcards, games, models, web graphics, and classroom newsletters in a flash using Canva templates. And your students can get results they’ll feel proud of as they create podcast covers, illustrated quotations, graphic novels, children’s books, infographics, social media posts, and more.

Canva design has a lot in common with Powerpoint and Slides, they’ve kept the menus relatively simple so you can create without feeling overwhelmed. The best way to learn how to use it is to go in and experiment, and then if there’s something you can’t figure out how to do, you just Google your question “How to remove a background in Canva,” etc. Soooooo many people are using it now that you’ll quickly find answers to your questions, as a million or so other people are asking the same ones.

Summer is a perfect time to register for a free account and start experimenting.

Visit Canva for Education here!

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196: How Caitlin's Verse Novel Book Clubs Engaged Seniors 'til the End Jun 20, 2023

Today on the podcast, I’ve got a great story for you. It’s the story of how one senior class stayed engaged right up to the end through an incredible book club unit on verse novels. The heroine of this story? English teacher Caitlin Lore.

She’s about to tell you how she captured her seniors’ attention and held it. Wait till you hear about her title selections, her book tasting, her pop-up poetry workshops, her book club meetings, and her poetry Palooza! I think you’re going to love this episode!

Ooh, one more thing. You’ll hear Caitlin mention some special resources she used for this unit from The Lighthouse.

If you’re listening/reading as this comes out, I want to tell you that The Lighthouse, my teacher membership full of hundreds of creative lessons and projects to inspire you and save you time, is open until tomorrow night.

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195: Highly Recommended: The High School Classroom Library Jun 15, 2023

So here’s the thing. High school kids have about 10,000 things on their agenda just above going to the library to pick out a book. And if they do make it to the library, the librarian (through no fault of their own!) likely won’t know them well enough to help them get the book that is going to have them flipping the pages at midnight when they know they should be asleep but the plot is just so amazing they can’t help but read.

These days I see a classroom library as an absolutely essential part of any high school ELA classroom. They can all be books borrowed from the school library - in fact, that’s pretty much always what I did when I was first getting started with choice reading. Or they can be books you gather over the years through donations, book sales, garage sales, and Donors Choose projects.

Having books right in your classroom that students can borrow and read in your choice reading program makes a huge difference. Especially if you can showcase some of them covers out and incorporate them into your choice reading system with book talks and fun displays.

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194: 4 Graphic Storytelling Activities from Graphic Novelist Laura Lee Gulledge Jun 13, 2023

Today on the podcast we’re sitting down with Laura Lee Gulledge, the graphic novelist behind The Dark Matter of Mona Starr. She's an Eisner Award nominated cartoonist, teaching artist, musical librettist, and collaborative muralist based in Charlottesville, VA. Her books include YA graphic novels The Dark Matter of Mona Starr, Page by Paige, Will & Whit, and the interactive Sketchbook Dares: 24 Ways to Draw Out Your Inner Artist.

If you've ever wondered where to start with getting students drawing and creating their own graphic stories and mini-comics, today's episode is for you! Laura Lee has generously shared ideas and materials for four different creative lessons you can try with your classes. We're diving into her graphic novel - The Dark Matter of Mona Starr, her creation process, and a wide range of activity ideas for class.

Quick Links for two of the storytelling activities:

You can find the materials for the mini-comic project on Laura Lee's website here.

Laura Lee's "Draw Darkness" (grab it here).

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193: Highly Recommended: The Libro FM Educator Program Jun 08, 2023

Do you know about Libro FM's free audiobook program for educators?

It's easy to sign up - they approved me in just one day!

You can register for a free account and sign up here.

Once you’ve enrolled in the ALC program, you’ll quickly build an audiobook library in your account. Even if only a few books a month in the educator program feel exactly right for your classroom, that could be 30+ books a year you’re adding to your device, for free.

Then you can use them for First Chapter Fridays, a classroom audiobook listening station, to preview books you might want to order in paper copy for your library, and just for your own joy!

I HIGHLY recommend you take a minute to sign up today, and you can always figure out how to use all your books later. The sooner you sign up, the sooner you can start building an audiobook library to use later on!

You might also want to tune into episode 166, How to Build an Audiobook Listening Station for your Classroom.

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192: Who's on your New Pride Month Display? Jun 06, 2023

Interactive wall displays are one of my favorite new things. Adding a QR code to a poster gives students the opportunity to take things further. If you've been hanging out with me this year, you know I've created interactive displays for you to celebrate Black History Month, Women's History Month, and AAPI Heritage month. Now it's Pride Month, and I've got another one for you.

Maybe you're already out of school, or maybe you've still got a few weeks left (here's looking at you, New York teachers). Whether you use it now, or put it up to celebrate LGBTQ+ creators throughout the year, this new interactive pride display features ten creative LGBTQ+ authors to share with your students.

Today on the pod, I'm going to introduce you to a few of these creators, so you know more about what's behind the display. If you already get my emails each week, you'll be getting this display on Friday. If not, you can sign up for the free display in the blog post here.

Here's who we're talking about...

Erika Sanchez

Becky Albertelli

Alice Oseman

Rainbow Rowell

Adam Silvera

REGISTER FOR CAMP CREATIVE NEXT WEEK

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191: Highly Recommended: Jason Reynolds Jun 01, 2023

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.

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190: My Top Contemporary Text Ideas for your ELA Classes May 30, 2023

I see a lot of posts each month inside our Facebook group, Creative High School English, asking for text recommendations for different courses. What's the best book to teach ninth graders? The best short story to teach tenth graders? The best performance poetry for seniors?

I love this type of collaboration, because we all make discoveries at our local libraries and bookstores, and in our own little internet corners. You may not know about my absolute favorite yet, and I may not know about yours. With that in mind, today on the podcast I'm going to share my top favorite recent discoveries. This is going to be my (rather long) answer to the next post I see asking for a great course title to order!

We'll be exploring:

Poetry and Short Stories
Graphic Novels
Full-Length Texts

This one's not exhaustive by any means, they're just lovely recent favorites that really stood out. I hope you'll find one for your summer TBR and it will wend its way into one of your courses next year.

SIGN UP FOR CAMP CREATIVE: TEACH GRAPHIC NOVELS WITH CONFIDENCE, HERE

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189: Highly Recommended: My Shakespeare May 25, 2023

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.

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188: Feel like it's Impossible to Teach it All (Part II) May 23, 2023

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 in? 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 a 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 units you'd like to redesign or build from scratch this summer.

____

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187: Highly Recommended: The Dark Matter of Mona Starr May 18, 2023

The Dark Matter of Mona Starr, by Laura Lee Gulledge, is a STELLAR book to consider for your choice reading library, book clubs, or even full class text.

Here's why...

It takes on the issue of mental health and well-being in a positive, real way without being prescriptive or moralistic.

It showcases healthy friendships and family communication.

It has INCREDIBLE art, art that goes beyond bringing the story to life and takes on a life of its own.

Listen in for my review, and be sure to sign up for Camp Creative, coming in June! In this totally free week of PD all about teaching graphic novels with confidence, you'll get...

My favorite titles, so you don't have to wait on hold for 30 graphic novels on Libby
A book tasting activity to help you introduce a range of (fabulous) graphic novels to your kiddos
Bright visual tools to make teaching graphic novel vocabulary easier than re-reading a Colleen Hoover novel
Creative activities you can use with ANY GRAPHIC NOVEL that bridge analysis of text and graphic elements
Done-for-you curriculum for launching a creative final project, without spending five hours in Canva prepping it

In short, everything you need to teach your first graphic novel unit next year and smash it! Plus, a fun group of aspiring graphic novel gurus to move through the week with when you hop into our camp community.

SIGN UP HERE FOR CAMP CREATIVE (I can't wait to work with you!)

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186: Feel like it's Impossible to Teach it All? (Part I) May 16, 2023

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

"I am in my 8th 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 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, and how to make all the decisions that go with it.

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185: Highly Recommended: Faculty Fun May 11, 2023

This week on Highly Recommended I’m sharing a rather unusual strategy to help you create connection among your faculty.

Unless you've already found that magic teacher down the hall who turns into your best friend, teaching can feel pretty lonely, even though you’re surrounded by so many people all the time. Finding community among the adults at your school isn’t easy, especially with everyone juggling a ton of professional commitments with busy home lives.

In this short Thursday podcast, discover a simple - and maybe surprising - strategy for finding community with your peers down the hall. It all started when my fiance and I invited everyone who worked at our school over to play cards and eat popcorn. You might be surprised by what happened next.

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184: How to Celebrate AAPI Heritage Month with this Interactive Display May 09, 2023

Celebrate AAPI month in your ELA classroom with a bright display I made for you, featuring bios and QR code links to the work of ten AAPI creators.

In this episode, discover easy ways to use the display for classroom activities in this busy month, as well as learning more about some of the authors and creators featured, like:

Ken Liu
Amy Tan
Malala Yousafzai
George Takei
Gene Luen Yang

SEE THE DISPLAY (and get your free copy of the display)

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183: Highly Recommended: Time-Saving Templates May 04, 2023

This week on Highly Recommended I’m sharing one of my favorite strategies for saving time AND adding quality to daily work tasks. Doesn’t seem possible, right?

Have you heard of decision fatigue? We make thousands of decisions every day, and it gets harder to make good ones as they stack up. That’s one good reason for having a set wardrobe you like - Steve Jobs-style - or always making tacos on Tuesdays.

It’s also a great reason to use templates in your work. They save time and they cut the number of decisions you have to make in a busy school day. Plus, when you start the daily tasks you usually have to churn out in a hurry with a well-crafted template, you actually create higher quality work.

In today’s episode, we’re talking about how to use templates for tasks like:

Vocab Quizzes

Handout design

Emails

Rubrics

And much more…

As you make ANYTHING, think of how you can use it again with a simple tweak.

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182: Want to Support Student Well Being? I Know! (Here's Help) May 02, 2023

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.

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181: Highly Recommended: John Spencer's Video Writing Prompts Apr 27, 2023

This week on Highly Recommended I’m sharing one of my favorite sources for writing prompts, Dr. John Spencer’s video writing prompts channel.

Personally, I love his short, impactful videos for educators as well as for students. I like how they get to the point in three or four minutes, and how they incorporate sketchnotes - one of my favorite things - to help us as viewers to visualize the most important ideas John shares.

The video prompts are organized into four categories, making it super easy to find the kind of writing you want your students to do. You can choose from creative thinking prompts, story prompts, persuasive prompts, and informational text prompts.

To give you an idea of what’s there, here are a few example titles:

“You are a Real-Estate Agent for Magical Homes”
“Should Schools Ban Junk Food”
“What are 5 Things you Want your Teacher to Know”
“Create a Map of Your Life”

You could easily make these prompts into a regular class activity this month or build them into one of your writing units. I also think any one of them could become the basis of a much larger project than a quick write.

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180: The One about Eastern Europe Apr 25, 2023

Thinking about a trip overseas to Europe someday? Or in the mood for a little armchair travel?

OR, maybe you're thinking about teaching abroad, and you're curious about the travel part of living in a new place...

I've been getting some fun requests for tips about travel to this region of Europe where I live now, and they make me so happy! I love sharing about the beautiful places we've been lucky to visit since moving to Bratislava, and since I've been listening to travel podcasts for the last fifteen years, I just can't resist the chance to try it for myself, just this once.

So today we're deviating a bit from our usual focus on creative teaching. Because sometimes travel helps recharge creative teacher batteries!

Plus, if you love travel, you can build it into your curriculum with a virtual travel research project, so really, this episode can count as curriculum research... right?

Eastern Europe might seem - from a distance - to be somehow stuck in a gray post-Communist cloud, but boy-oh-boy, the part that I'm in sure isn't!

So come with me today on a little tour of my family's favorite spots in this part of the world. And I hope someday they become some of your favorites too.

Areas we'll explore:

Prague (an amazing mix of old world and whimsical modernity)

Budapest (my top recommendation for Christmas-y travel)

Northwest Slovenia (my husband's dream destination)

and

Croatia (where I would love to live someday)

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179: Highly Recommended: SBB's Baths vs. Showers Apr 20, 2023

This week on Highly Recommended I’m sharing a hilarious podcast episode you can use from Smash Boom Best titled “Baths vs. Showers.”

I discovered Smash Boom Best this year while I was on the hunt for great class podcasts. It’s a debate show, in which two guests come on and argue for their side of an argument topic suggested by kids. I’ve listened to shows on Dogs vs. Cats, Trick-or-Treating vs. Birthday Parties, Kung Fu vs. Tap Dancing, and Books vs. Movies. They’re pretty much all hilarious.

A student calls in as judge, and awards points in each round of argument, and you and your students can do the same.

The first round is really well produced, with the debater using music, sound effects, and stories to complement their research and facts. It’s called the “Statement of Greatness.” The next round is something funny, like they have to imagine explaining their topic to aliens or making a movie trailer for their topic. The last main round is a sneak attack, where the contestants have to come up with some kind of specific pitch on the spot, like showing how great their topic is through words that rhyme with it.

I’m sure your mind is already spinning with ways you could use this show to help kids practice argument and have fun debates.

There are so many good episodes, but, as the student judge put it, the “fear-mongering” in the shower statement of greatness was incredibly effective (and sooooo funny). Listen in to find out why my family had serious trouble deciding who would win, and why your students will probably get a big kick out of this show.

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178: Struggling to Make it to the End of the Year? Try this. Apr 18, 2023

If you're currently seated dead center on the struggle bus, or your seniors are waving senioritis flags in your ELA classes, you're not alone. As summer beckons and the buildup of busy from the year weighs on you (and your students), the last six weeks can be a tricky time.

I know you want to acknowledge that the end of the year is close, you want to do something a bit lighter and extra engaging, but you don't want to wag any flags of your own. Plus, you don't necessarily have the energy to invent a wheel and start riding it like an educational unicycle.

Know what I mean?

Today on the podcast, we're talking about unit and project ideas for the end of the year. Whether you need something to light up engagement for your students (and for you) for a week or for six, you'll find plenty of ideas. Plus, we'll get into why relationship building is still a key player in the buildup to the end.

Basically there are going to be two key points - keep focusing on those relationships that can help sustain you and your students to the end, and teach something that you really enjoy, and that kids enjoy learning about! I've heard from so many teachers this week who feel their kids are checked out, their seniors are already in summer mode, and they themselves are exhausted.

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177: Highly Recommended: Starfish Apr 13, 2023

Welcome to this week’s episode of the Highly Recommended Series. Every Thursday we take a quick look at something I think you’ll love. What will that something be? It might be a compelling book for your students, a power-packed activity to try ASAP, my favorite new episode of a podcast I think your class will love, a free resource you might have missed, or even a recipe for your next Monday night or a city here in Eastern Europe I want to share with you! This will be a fun, free-wheeling series that you can tune into with just a few minutes to spare.

This week we dive into a beautiful novel-in-verse, Starfish, by Lisa Phipps. This is a great one for the choice reading shelf in your ELA classroom or for middle grade novel-in-verse book clubs.

Check out Starfish at Bookshop.org.

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176: Reasons to Feel Hopeful about AI at School Apr 04, 2023

Looking for the "right" approach to AI in your English classroom? Find out how the New England Innovation Academy is working WITH students to design their approach, and how you can too.

Ben Farrell - our guest today- brings a wealth of experience working with students into our conversation. He’s been a dean, a head of school, an upper school director, and more, and in his current position at the New England Innovation Academy, he has the job of helping guide a program modeled on human centered design and thoughtful innovation. I’m excited for you to join us today to talk about how students feel about artificial intelligence, how we can work with them to design our approach to it, and why we can feel hopeful that artificial intelligence has the potential to bring more voices to the table in our world, not less.

Visit the NEIA Website to explore

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175: Actionable ABAR Steps in ELA, with Liz Kleinrock Mar 21, 2023

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

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174: A New ELA Go-To? 15 Ways to use La Literatura de Cordel Mar 07, 2023

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.

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173: Enjoy Teaching Rhetorical Analysis (with these Strategies) Feb 21, 2023

Want to teach rhetorical analysis in a way that's creative, engaging, AND gets the job done? Mix and match these fun ELA strategies to suit your needs.

This week on the podcast, let’s talk about why rhetorical analysis is actually a blast. Sure, it sounds complicated to students at first. Ethos, pathos, and logos? Rhetorical situations? Logical fallacies? Rhetorical techniques? Phew!

But soon enough all these bits and pieces combine into a really interesting way to see how the songs, conversations, commercials, and speeches in our lives are persuading us to change how we view the world.

In today’s episode, we’re talking about creative, engaging ways to get students in your ELA classroom thinking about these different elements and how they relate to each other.

Find the show notes, complete with visuals and links, right here.

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172: Celebrating Black Authors, Artists, & Activists in ELA Feb 07, 2023

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.

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171: 6 Wonderful Ways you can use Graphic Novels Jan 25, 2023

Try using graphic novels in your ELA classroom to create powerful reading ladders, launch literature circles, help make the classics accessible, and more!

Today on the podcast, you’ll find six perspectives on why graphic novels are a GREAT addition to your ELA program, and how you might use them in different creative ways. Each of our five creative guests brings something wholly unique to the table, and I’m so pleased they all took the time to come on and share their experience and innovation.

Tune in to this podcast episode for six helpful perspectives on how the graphic novel can ignite engagement in ELA.

Find the show notes (with all the links and visuals) here.

Connect with our Guests!

Follow along with Pernille on Instagram here.

Follow along with Ashley on Instagram here.

Follow along with Melissa on Instagram here.

Follow along with Brynn on Instagram here.

Follow along with Jessica and Caitlin on Instagram here.

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170: How to Host a Graphic Novel Book Tasting Jan 11, 2023

Want to introduce your ELA students to the creative joys of graphic novels? Find out how to run a quick and productive book tasting to help introduce them to the genre.

Maybe you’ve got some new titles for your choice reading library, a graphic novel or two lined up for First Chapter Friday, or even a graphic novel on the horizon as a whole-class read, and you wish your students were more aware of and excited about the graphic novel genre.

Ooooh boy, have I got an easy win for you. Head for the library and bring your brightest Trader Joe’s shopping bag along, because it’s time for a graphic novel book tasting!

Today on the podcast, find out how to easily host a graphic novel book tasting and why it’s a great option for your students.

Get book recommendations, a digital bookshelf template, the book tasting takeaways sheet, and more in the show notes at nowsparkcreativity.com.

Connect on Instagram!

Join the community in my free Facebook group, Creative High School English.

169: Turning Classics into Graphic Novels, with Gareth Hinds Dec 28, 2022

Gareth Hinds has created appealing graphic novel versions of many great classics of English literature, like The Odyssey, The Iliad, Beowulf, and Shakespeare's plays. In this episode, find out how to use them in class to help deepen engagement.

Gareth Hinds is an English Teacher’s superhero. He takes the most challenging works of classic literature for our students, spends years studying them deeply, and creates graphic adaptations students get excited about reading.

I mean, come on! How great is that? With highly regarded adaptations of The Odyssey, The Iliad, Poe’s stories, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, Beowulf, and more, Gareth Hinds is quickly moving through the canon to create colorful, accessible, dare-I-say FUN versions of classics students often struggle with.

Today on the podcast, we’re talking about the visual language of graphic adaptation, how Gareth researches and creates his works, and his top tips for classroom teachers using his adaptations. Honestly, I wish every school in America had copies of his works, and I’m so thrilled he could take the time to talk to us. This is a great episode, and I’m so glad you’re here for it! Let’s dive in.

From Gareth’s Website:

“Gareth Hinds is the creator of critically-acclaimed graphic novels based on literary classics, including Beowulf (which Publisher’s Weekly called a ‘mixed-media gem’), King Lear (which Booklist named one of the top 10 graphic novels for teens), The Merchant of Venice (which Kirkus called ‘the standard that all others will strive to meet’ for Shakespeare adaptation), The Odyssey (which garnered four starred reviews and a spot on ten ‘best of 2010’ lists), Romeo and Juliet (which Kirkus called ‘spellbindin’), and Macbeth (which the New York Times called ‘stellar’ and ‘a remarkably faithful rendering’).

Gareth is a recipient of the Boston Public Library’s ‘Literary Lights for Children’ award. His books can be found in bookstores and English classrooms across the country, and his illustrations have appeared in such diverse venues as the Society of Illustrators, the New York Historical Society, and over a dozen published video games.”

Discover Gareth’s Website.

Explore his Teaching Guides.

Follow Gareth on Instagram.

Connect with Betsy:

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168: Why I'm not Worried about the New AI Tools Dec 14, 2022

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.

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167: Fight Erasure. Feature Contemporary Indigenous Voices in Class. Nov 29, 2022

Featuring contemporary Indigenous voices in your ELA classroom - on your walls, in your research and writing projects, and on your shelves - can make a big difference in fighting erasure. Help your students of all backgrounds learn about Indigenous leaders, artists, and activists.

In today's episode, I'm sharing concrete options to help. Discover the best free posters, leaders to feature in your research projects, strong contemporary titles, an easily accessible poem by our Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, and more.

You can find the show notes at nowsparkcreativity.com in the podcast section. While you're there, take a peek at all the free curriculum resources!

Text ideas:

We are Water Protectors is a beautifully-illustrated children’s book to display and use in class (check out episode 148, The Power of Children’s Books for Older Kids, with Pernille Ripp, if you need some ideas for how to use picture books).

Healer of the Water Monster would be great in middle grade identity book clubs / lit circles or as a choice reading option. I’d suggest The Birchbark House as a whole class read.

#NotYourPrincess is a multi-genre anthology of many Native American women sharing photography, art, poetry, songs, and stories about their experiences. I’d recommend every high school teacher have this book available for choice reading, but also to pull short pieces from throughout the year while crafting units around various themes and essential questions.

A Snake Falls to Earth is a powerful book blending fantasy, storytelling, and environmentalism with a young Indigenous protagonist. It would make a great feature for First Chapter Friday and in high school book clubs / lit circles.

Ceremony is my rec for senior electives or A.P. classes. This is a stunning, powerful, lyrical book dealing in heavy subjects best suited for older kids.

Helpful Links:

The Indigenous Resistance section (choose it under categories) of Amplifier Art’s Free Downloads section features the Thriving Peoples Thriving Places campaign, with dozens of posters you can print for your classroom.

From the Project 562 “About” page: “Created by Matika Wilbur, Project 562 is a multi-year national photography project dedicated to photographing over 562 federally recognized Tribes, urban Native communities, Tribes fighting for federal recognition and Indigenous role models in what is currently-known-as the United States, resulting in an unprecedented repository of imagery and oral histories that accurately portrays contemporary Native Americans. This creative, consciousness-shifting work will be widely distributed through national curricula, artistic publications, exhibitions, and online portals.”

Artist Jaime Black created The REDress Project to bring greater awareness to the many missing and murdered Indigenous women who do not get the national news spotlight other groups do.

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166: How to Add an Audiobook Listening Station to your ELA Classroom Nov 16, 2022

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.

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165: Classroom Management Strategies you can Actually Enjoy Nov 02, 2022

Want to improve your classroom dynamics? Start with relationships, and watch how they can positively impact your daily life as a teacher in so many ways. In this episode, learn fun and easy strategies like post-it compliments and the googly eye connection from our guest CJ Reynolds, from Real Rap with Reynolds. Then watch - as your relationships deepen, your pedagogy will strengthen too.

Today’s guest, CJ Reynolds, has spent seventeen years teaching high school literature and the history of hip hop in West Philadelphia (just a few blocks from the neighborhood The Fresh Prince left for Bel Air). Six years ago, he started a Youtube channel with his son, and when his son got sick of it, he and his wife started creating the videos he wished he had as a new teacher. Now, he’s working on that full time, helping others find and keep their footing in the world of teaching with compassion and creativity.

For CJ Reynolds, everything really comes down to building relationships with kids. Those relationships help you teach, show you what references to make, guide you in understanding what kids might be dealing with outside of school. All of this informs your practice as a teacher.

So today, let’s explore some of CJ’s top pieces of advice for building strong relationships with your students. Most of them are fun, many of them are unexpected, and all of them come from many years of practice.

Connect with CJ Reynolds

When you go check out CJ’s Youtube channel, consider starting with this video: “Reaching Every Student.”

You can also find much more of his work on his website, Real Rap with Reynolds, pick up his book, or tune into his live Sunday sessions on Youtube or Facebook (the replays come out on his podcast right here).

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164: 5 Public Speaking Projects for Secondary ELA Oct 18, 2022

Looking to engage your secondary ELA students in creative public speaking projects? Try podcasting, debate, mock trials, mini speeches, or genius hour talks!

Who hasn’t felt a few cold chills at the prospect of public speaking? Teaching year in and year out definitely helps though. As you stand up in front of groups of kids over and over, it starts to feel normal.

Not for our students though. Public speaking is so intimidating for them. But we know from our own experience that practice helps, so today I want to share some ideas for building public speaking into your curriculum in creative ways, so it can be something you and your students really look forward to.

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163: Case Study: A Meaningful 21st Century Research Project Oct 05, 2022

Find out how veteran teacher Jane Wisdom successfully incorporated a social media twist on the traditional research project, with great results from her students.

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162: Active Teaching: 10 Out-of-their-Seats Activities Sep 21, 2022

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

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 classroom.

161: The Ultimate Guide to First Chapter Friday Sep 06, 2022

First Chapter Fridays let you introduce students to a wide range of diverse compelling authors even if you can only spare a few minutes a week.

In this episode, discover book choice inspiration, display options, author video options, sketchnotes templates for students, and more. Plus, get some ideas for how to save your voice!

I've been singing the First Chapter Friday song for years, but here's a complete take on how to do it right, with tons of resources and visuals waiting for you in the podcasts section over at nowsparkcreativity.com.

160: The College Essay: What Students (and Teachers) Need to Know Aug 23, 2022

Need help teaching the college essay to your students?

Learn about what makes a strong college essay from four experienced college admissions officers and high school college counselors from around the United States. Play this episode for your students too!

Find the show notes and grab the free companion curriculum at: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/podcast

159: 3 Creative Ways to Teach Varied Sentence Structure Aug 11, 2022

Want to teach sentence structure in a creative way that really helps? Try these three fun twists on the traditional worksheet.

Check out the visuals at nowsparkcreativity.com. Just click the "podcasts" tab at the top of the page!

158: How to Create a Successful International Classroom Partnership Jul 27, 2022

Want to try an international classroom collaboration? Learn the tips and tricks from Andrea Greer, who runs a five country collaboration from Japan.

Check out the show notes and find a collab partner through the link inside at nowsparkcreativity.com.

157: Designing Back-to-School for Belonging, with Dr. Susie Wise Jul 13, 2022

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.

156: How to Teach Living Poets, with Mel Smith Jun 28, 2022

Want to build more contemporary poetry into your ELA classroom? Find out how with #teachlivingpoets founder Mel Alter Smith. Discover poetry collections, activities, and full units ready to use in class through her work at teachlivingpoets.com.

155: 21 Creative ELA Lessons you can use Immediately Jun 13, 2022

Goodbye chapter comprehension questions, hello creative lesson ideas!

In today's episode, discover 21 creative lessons, activities, and units you can use in any ELA class. These are the most popular tried-and-true options I've discovered over the last decade!

Try blackout poetry, silent discussions, hexagonal thinking, literary food trucks, book tastings, digital poetry tiles, and so many more!

154: Colorful Vocabulary Activities: Story Tiles, Wordy Decor & More May 31, 2022

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.

153: 6 Powerful Mentor Texts for Secondary ELA May 17, 2022

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.

152: 5 Class Podcast Projects for ELA May 03, 2022

Want to get started with class podcast projects? Good for you! Get inspired with this creative list of options for your high school English students.

Don't forget to sign up for Camp Creative: The Student Podcasting Roadmap coming June 13-15. Visit the show notes at nowsparkcreativity.com.

151: Here's the Teacher Tech that Actually Helps, with Jennifer Gonzalez Apr 20, 2022

Looking for the teacher technology that will really make an impact in your classroom, not just replace processes you use with newer, more complicated ones? In this fun conversation with Jennifer Gonzalez, we talk about the tools and ideas inside her Teacher's Guide to Tech and how they can help in your ELA Classroom.

150: A Quiet Revolution in Reading and Writing, with Penny Kittle Apr 05, 2022

Discover the power of choice reading, modern mentor texts, and writer's notebooks in this actionable podcast workshop with Penny Kittle.

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.

149: Two Inspiring Children's Book Projects, with Pernille Ripp Mar 22, 2022

Want to try having students write nonfiction children's books? How about perform plays based on their favorite children's books?

Learn all about these two wonderful children's book projects and more in this interview with Pernille Ripp.

Let's connect!

Facebook Group: Creative High School English

Instagram: @nowsparkcreativity

148: The Power of Children's Books for Older Kids, with Pernille Ripp Mar 08, 2022

Picture books have so much to offer readers of all ages. In this interview with literacy dynamo Pernille Ripp (part one of two), find out how to use children's books to introduce big ideas, demonstrate writer's craft, and start important conversations.

147: 6 Fresh Ideas for your Writing Program Feb 22, 2022

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!

146: Authentic Audiences aren't Hard to Find Feb 09, 2022

Want to ignite student engagement by bringing their work to real audiences? It's not as hard as it seems! In this episode, explore ten quick case studies and let them inspire new possibilities for connection with audiences in your classroom.

145: Teaching Annotation just got Fun Jan 26, 2022

Want to teach annotation skills in a way that's memorable and creative, instead of boring and easily forgotten? Check out this episode for four creative ways to help your students develop their own unique annotation styles. Want support along the way? Join 20,000 more creative teachers collaborating inside my Facebook group, Creative High School English. More of an Instagram person? Let's connect! I'm @nowsparkcreativity. Find the show notes and tons of free classroom resources at http://nowsparkcreativity.com.

144: 3 Flexible ELA Units for an Omicron Winter Jan 12, 2022

Going remote in your ELA classes this winter, or think you might? Try planning one of these flexible, engaging units, so you're ready for anything.

We'll be exploring digital poetry, making tiny podcasts (don't worry, I'll explain what I mean), and adapting the genius hour format for this moment. By the end of the show, you should have lots of engaging, creative ways to guide your students through this omicron winter.

Find the free resources in the show notes at www.nowsparkcreativity.com.

143: What We Can Do about Teacher Demoralization, with Doris Santoro Dec 29, 2021

The problem facing teachers today will not be solved by self-care. Let's talk about the real issue - demoralization - and strategies that can make an impact to help teachers stay in the profession and enjoy their work again.

My guest for this episode is Professor Doris Santoro, of Bowdoin College, author of the book, Demoralization: Why Teachers Leave the Profession they Love and How they can Stay.

142: Choice Reading: Building a Reading Culture Dec 14, 2021

Building a reading culture in your classroom is a project that never ends, but luckily it's so much FUN. There are many ways to keep books in the spotlight, and in today's podcast episode, I'm going to share ten of them to help you find a few that feel right to you.

Looking for the signup page for Camp Creative? Find it here: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/ignite

141: Setting up your ELA Classroom Library Nov 30, 2021

Find out how to create a classroom library you (and your students) will love. Learn how to source the books, organize your system, and make use of enticing visuals that make your reading space appealing to students.

Sign up for Camp Creative: Ignite your Choice Reading Program (a totally free five-day mini-course) here: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/ignite

140: Every Student can Sketchnote, with Sylvia Duckworth Nov 15, 2021

Want to teach your students to apply critical thinking to their notetaking? Sketchnoting creates more engagement and retention, but not every kid comes to it naturally. In this interview with Sylvia Duckworth, find out how to teach all kids how to sketchnote, not just the ones who self-identify as artists.

139: We Moved to Bratislava, Here's what it's Like Nov 03, 2021

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.

138: Hexagonal Thinking with Brave New Teaching (Bonus Episode) Oct 26, 2021

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.

137: Creative Activities to Pair with Any Novel Oct 19, 2021

Looking for flexible, creative activities to go with your next whole class novel unit? Find them here! In today's episode, I'm welcoming four surprise guests to share their favorite flexible go-tos for any novel unit.

Learn more in the show notes at: nowsparkcreativity.com

Let's connect on Instagram! @nowsparkcreativity

136: Creative Real-World Research Projects in ELA Oct 05, 2021

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.

135: When Students Design Escape Rooms Sep 21, 2021

Today we're diving into all the details (and the free curriculum set) to get you started with student-designed escape rooms. You'll find out when to use the project, why to use the project, and how to use the project. And oh yes, there's definitely a rubric inside the curriculum set, don't worry, you'll also be able to grade the project!

Find the show notes on my website here.

Connect on Instagram here.

134: Creative Escape Rooms without the Fuss Sep 07, 2021

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.

133: Body Biographies & Digital Escape Rooms with Danielle Knight Aug 24, 2021

Get ideas for how to use body biographies, digital escape rooms, and digital sketchnotes in your ELA classroom in this interview with Danielle Knight of Study All Knight.

132: A Case Study in Successful Student Podcasting Aug 10, 2021

In this episode, learn how Beth Duncan, a creative high school teacher from North Carolina, got her students podcasting. Discover the steps she went through to make the project successful and get ready to start podcasting with your own students.

131: Help for Integrating SEL, with Dr. Lorea Martinez Perez Jul 20, 2021

It's more important than ever to integrate strong SEL practices in the classroom following the pandemic. Find out how in this interview with Dr. Lorea Martinez Perez, SEL-expert.

130: Build Connection with your Classroom Design Jul 06, 2021

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.

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129: Try Hexagonal One-Pagers Jun 23, 2021

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

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128: Take your Hexagonal Thinking Activities Deeper Jun 07, 2021

Want to try hexagonal thinking but aren't sure how to get students to make interesting connections? Use the strategies in this episode to encourage depth and creativity in your students' thinking.

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127: How to Create a Hexagonal Thinking Deck May 25, 2021

Ready to get started with hexagonal thinking in your classroom? Find out exactly what to put on your hexagonal thinking decks in today's episode. I think you're going to love this creative discussion strategy!

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126: 5 Ways to Use your Writing Makerspace May 10, 2021

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.

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125: How to Start a Writing Makerspace Apr 27, 2021

Heard whispers about the writing makerspace and wondering if it could help your writers? Find out how it works and how to easily get started in this episode.

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124: 6 Free Canva Tools for Teachers Apr 13, 2021

Want to use Canva tools in your classroom? Good, because they're amazing! In this episode, learn about some of the best - like the handout creator, bookmark designer and flashcard maker - and how to use them. Once you start, expect to be using Canva on the daily!

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123: Creative Blended Learning (Now and in the Future), with Dr. Catlin Tucker Mar 30, 2021

In this interview with Dr. Catlin Tucker, blended learning specialist, learn about the station rotation model, effective playlist creation for independent learning, project-based-learning in the time of pandemic, and more.

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122: The Ultimate Guide to Genius Hour In ELA Mar 16, 2021

Ready to dive into genius hour with your students? Genius hour is an amazing way to develop their creativity AND ELA skillset. In this episode, learn how to rally student enthusiasm, structure projects, and come up with creative final products that make good use of ELA skills.

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121: When Lit Circles WORK, with Krista Barbour Mar 03, 2021

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!

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120: Collegiate High School's Digital Literary Food Truck Festival Feb 16, 2021

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.

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119: 5 Creative Ways to Use QR Codes in ELA Feb 02, 2021

Want to try mixing interactive QR codes into your lesson plans, classroom design, and school hallways? In this show, find out how to simply create QR codes and use them in five creative ways in your ELA program.

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118: Big Ideas for Better Writing Instruction, with EB Academics Jan 19, 2021

Feel adrift when it comes to teaching writing in your ELA classes?

You’ll find great tips in today's episode to help, like spiraling your writing instruction to improve its effectiveness, using mystery activities to help students get excited about writing argument, and using stations with specific tasks for better peer editing.

Get ready to dive into this big topic with special guest, Caitlin, from EB Academics.

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117: 10 Ways to Encourage a Reading Culture in your (Online) Classroom Jan 12, 2021

Wishing you could promote choice reading more effectively with students online?

It IS possible to create a rich reading culture with your kids now.

Check out these ten ideas for bringing choice books into the daily swing of things in your blended or remote classroom.

Teaching in person? You can still use these ideas! :)

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116: Connect with your Students as a New Year Begins Jan 01, 2021

Happy New Year! In this episode, discover six ideas for re-connecting with your students when you get back to school, no matter what your scenario.

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115: 5 Creative Digital Poetry Activities Dec 21, 2020

Teaching a poetry unit? Need engaging poetry unit ideas you can roll out easily in Google Classroom?

Today we're talking about digital poetry tiles, digital book spine poetry, online blackout poetry, spoken word, and digital "I am from" poem galleries. You'll love these easy wins!

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114: Easily Reduce your Digital Paper Pile Dec 15, 2020

Is your digital paper pile keeping you up at night? Google Classroom work may not fill your workbag, but it sure can weigh on your mind.

Check out this episode for three easy ways to cut down your online grading time.

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113: Breakout Rooms, Community Building, and Grading Policies for Online Teaching Dec 08, 2020

In this episode, get ideas for better breakout rooms, building community in the remote classroom, teaching writing online, and much more with my guest Christina, from The Daring English Teacher.

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112: An ELA Teacher's Gift Guide Dec 01, 2020

In search of fun, creative gifts this holiday season? Discover sixteen ideas in this first annual Creative English Teacher's Gift Guide episode. From teacher tees and wine labels to the best places to shop for books while supporting independent bookstores, this gift guide has great options to make shopping for your colleagues and friends (and maybe yourself) easy for you.

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111: Creative Uses for Jamboard, with Matt Miller Nov 24, 2020

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!

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110: Take Your Writing Workshop Digital (It's Easy), with Amanda Werner Nov 17, 2020

Wanting to experiment with online writing wokrshop? Let Amanda teach you how!

Writing workshop translates easily and simply to the online classroom.

Find out how to use recorded mini-lessons, easy check-in strategies, and lots of student choice to help students thrive in your online workshops.

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109: How to Make Digital "Magnetic" Poetry Activities Nov 10, 2020

In this episode, learn how to make a digital poetry tile set around any theme in three easy steps.

Try this creative poetry writing activity on Google Slides if your students need a little break or as part of a poetry unit.

You can sign up for your free gratitude digital magnetic poetry kit at nowsparkcreativity.com in the show notes.

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108: Try a Virtual Travel Research Project Nov 03, 2020

Build research into a fun virtual travel project. Who doesn't want to get away from it all sometimes in the middle of the year- this fun ELA project uses key ELA skills of research, curation, and multi-modal creation with a topic kids can get excited about.

Students will research a far-off destination they're interested in, curate and create the pieces of an online showcase to share the place with others, and then create QR-code based posters to put up around your school or community.

Passers-by can scan the codes to experience virtual travel, courtesy of your students!

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107: Virtual Discussion Problems? Try this Oct 28, 2020

Online discussions not flowing as they should? It's tough leading a virtual discussion in your ELA classes, especially with mics muted and videos off.

Try digital discussion warm-ups to help.

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106: Doing a Podcast Project? Let me be your Guest Speaker Oct 13, 2020

Podcasting is an ideal ELA project for students right now.

If you're diving in, let me be your guest speaker! In this unusual episode, I'm answering student questions about what it's like to be a podcaster. My hope is that you will share this show with your students in the midst of an upcoming podcast unit.

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105: How to Creatively use T.V. Clips in ELA Sep 29, 2020

Want to use T.V. clips as one of your options to inspire rigorous, creative activities in your ELA classes?

Listen in to these wonderful clip/project pairings from Danielle at Nouvelle ELA.

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104: Create a Hyperdoc in 6 Easy Steps Sep 15, 2020

Hyperdocs are an easy answer to how to keep all students on track during blended learning.

In this episode, learn how to create a hyperdoc for your unit in six easy steps.

All you need is a Google Slide and a little creativity, and you're ready to rock and roll!

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103: Off Screen Activities for Remote Learning in ELA Sep 01, 2020

Trying to give your distance learners some screen breaks?

Here are some ideas to help ELA students do productive work away from the glow. In the rush to embrace all the (wonderful!) new technology, let's not forget that real books, pens, and paper can still be creative tools to help kids grow while protecting their eyes and brains from too much screen time.

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102: Taking your Literary Food Truck Festival Digital Aug 20, 2020

Take your Literary Food Truck Festival online with the easy steps and free curriculum in this post and podcast from Spark Creativity.

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101: How to Run Virtual Literature Circles Aug 19, 2020

Do you love literature circles but worry they can't translate to a blended or virtual classroom? In this episode, find out how to bring them online.

This is the second in this week's Back-to-School Blended series.

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100: How to Run a Virtual First Chapter Friday Aug 18, 2020

Want to get started with a First Chapter Friday program, but not sure how to do it with blended learning? Don't worry, this episode will show you how!

Happy 100th episode! This is the first in a three-episode series called "Back-to-School Blended" coming out this week. Today it's virtual first chapter Friday, tomorrow it's virtual literature circles, and Thursday we'll dive into virtual literary food truck festivals.

You can find the show notes here: http://www.nowsparkcreativity.com/2020/08/how-to-run-virtual-first-chapter-friday.html

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099: How to Get your Students listening to Podcasts, with Ashley Bible Aug 04, 2020

Podcasts are an easy, accessible, (FREE) and hands-free text option for students during blended learning.

In this episode of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, find out how to build a podcast unit, great podcast episode options for your ELA students, platforms to discuss podcasts together online, and more.

We're talking with Ashley Bible from Building Book Love.

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098: 5 Flexible ELA Unit Ideas Jul 23, 2020

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.

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097: A Flexible Plan for Blended Learning Jul 21, 2020

As you plan for blended learning and shifting scenarios this fall, a flexible approach will allow you to be prepared without being attached to any certain schedule.

Let me show you how to do it!

In this episode, we're looking at four creative principles for flexibly planning your blended learning and then taking a look at how to apply these ideas to a range of possible scenarios. Get ready to finally feel confident about your planning!

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096: Summer Priorities in the Face of Fall Uncertainties, with Angela Watson Jul 07, 2020

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.

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095: Remote Teaching: Grading, Discussion, and Building Community with Marie Morris and Amanda Cardenas Jun 23, 2020

Trying to plan for remote teaching this fall in your high school ELA classes? In this podcast, we're diving into best practices for grading, discussion, building community, first units and more for distance learning this fall. Join me as we chat with guests Marie Morris and Amanda Cardenas.

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094: Project Lit, Sketchnotes, and Classroom Design with Laquisha Hall Jun 09, 2020

If you’re interested in incorporating Project Lit titles, sketchnotes, the publication of student writing and effective classroom design into your work as an English teacher, you’re going to love this episode with Baltimore City Teacher of the Year, Laquisha Hall.

Laquisha shares so many wonderful stories to inspire you.

Wait till you hear how she managed to find funding for four copies of all twenty-five Project Lit titles, how she publishes student work anthologies online and guides her students in selling them, and how she designed a classroom space where her students feel they’ve stepped out of the system.

And that’s not all!

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093: A Plan for your First Fall Unit in ELA May 27, 2020

In this podcast episode, discover a plan for an opening ELA unit that will help you build community in your class and allow you to get to know your students, even if you can't actually meet them in person.

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092: Distance Learning: A Creative End to the Year May 12, 2020

It's been a difficult spring term to say the least. But chances are, you still want to find a way to end things on a positive, creative, meaningful note. This episode can help.

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091: Project-Based-Learning in the City, with Laura Deisley of Lab Atlanta Apr 29, 2020

Lab Atlanta is an innovative program connecting students with the resources and richness of Atlanta, and empowering them to make an impact through project-based learning.

Find out more in this podcast episode with its founder, Laura Deisley, and start thinking about how you could incorporate aspects of its model into your own ELA teaching.

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090: Bringing Transformation to your School, with Trace Pickering of Iowa Big Apr 14, 2020

After a flood ravaged his hometown of Cedar Rapids, IA, Trace Pickering helped lead a transformation in education through his innovative program, Iowa Big.

Listen to this interview with Trace for inspiration on how to create deeper learning experiences for students through real-world opportunities.

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089: Adventures at Home Apr 01, 2020

Grab a smoothie and let's talk about life under quarantine. In this episode, I'm sharing five tips and resources that have stuck with me from a lot of online conversations these last few weeks, and then sharing a picture of life at our house. I hope it's helpful to you.

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088: Help for Teaching through Coronavirus Closings Mar 17, 2020

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.

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087: Easy Ways to use Hexagonal Thinking in ELA Mar 10, 2020

Hexagonal thinking is a powerful way to help students make connections between characters, themes, ideas, other literary works, and current events.

But how to get started?

This episode will walk you through everything you need to design an easy, successful hexagonal thinking activity for your ELA classes.

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086: Take Action for Deeper Learning, with Sarah Fine Feb 25, 2020

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.

085: 5 ELA Tech Tools to Try Feb 11, 2020

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.

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084: These are a Few of my Favorite (English Teacher) Things Jan 29, 2020

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.

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083: Engage your Snapchatters with Booksnaps, featuring Tara Martin Jan 10, 2020

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.

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082: Innovative Elective (or Unit) Ideas for ELA Dec 22, 2019

In search of creative elective ideas? Join my brainstorming session and hear my five favorite ideas for electives right now, then adapt them for your own elective proposal (or innovative new unit).

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081: Empowering Students with Project-Based Learning Dec 10, 2019

Project-based learning is messy and sometimes, intimidating.

But it's also AWESOME.

In this episode of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, find out how two teachers are empowering their students by learning to understand their gifts, building real relationships with them, and jumping into creative community projects that make a difference.

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080: Let's Teach Students how to Collaborate Nov 25, 2019

It's not easy to get students to navigate collaborative work well. There's usually someone who does all the work, someone who stays silent, someone who feels bitter about everything.

(Do you still remember it bitterly from your student days? I do. Ugh.)

Here's the thing - by the time they get to us, our students have rarely been taught HOW to collaborate.

In this episode, discover five ways you can take the guesswork out of group work, and head to the show notes to find a free download that will make it sooooo much easier.

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079: Less Testing. More Innovating. Nov 12, 2019

If you're interested in saying goodbye to testing and embracing progressive education, you'll want to learn more about Ted Dintersmith's trip across all fifty states in search of creativity and innovation, and about his new project, "The Innovation Playlist."

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078: The Quick Guide to First Chapter Fridays Nov 05, 2019

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!

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077: Integrating the Arts & ELA Oct 30, 2019

Want to get students out of their seats and on their feet? Arts integration is a powerful tool for engaging students creatively with print texts.

In this episode, learn from Eileen Landay, co-founder of The Arts Literacy Project and professor emeritus at Brown, about how to use different arts integration strategies to enrich your community and your ELA curriculum.

Watch out for La Literatura de Cordel, one of my favorite strategies Eileen shares for ELA (and really, any discipline!).

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076: Host a "This I Believe" Radio Show Oct 16, 2019

This I Believe began as a radio essay series and became nationally beloved. For good reason! Listening to people talk about the small things they really care about is inspiring.

In this episode, find out how to easily do a "This I Believe" personal writing unit in class, culminating in a live performance event that builds community and gives your students authentic purpose.

When I tried this with my I.B. students in Bulgaria, it was a smash hit for us. Some of the kids even had their essays published on the This I Believe website, which you better believe felt great for them!

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075: 10 Review Activities that aren't Boring Sep 24, 2019

Review can easily get boring. Why not review with the same kind of dynamic, creative activities that make up your daily lessons? (I know, I know, I'm preaching to the choir).

In this episode, get ten ideas for engaging ways to revisit material without lecturing!

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074: Infographic Projects for the Win Sep 12, 2019

Infographics make an ideal project for your high school ELA classroom. Students combine personal interest and authentic audience in this research-based design thinking project, honing their writing, editing, and artistic skills all at once in a highly real-world relevant way.

In this episode, learn how to introduce and complete a design thinking infographics project of your own. It's much easier than it sounds!

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073: Help for Harkness Discussions Aug 29, 2019

Heard of Harkness discussions but don't know how to get started? Wondering how they're different from Socratic seminars?

Get answers to all the commonly asked questions in this comprehensive guide to using Harkness successfully in your classroom.

Harkness is certainly in my top three favorite classroom tools, so I hope this episode will inspire you to give it a try!

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072: Connecting your English Classroom to the World Aug 14, 2019

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.

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071: How to talk about Equity and Inclusion, with Liz Kleinrock Jul 30, 2019

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.

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070: Help for Student Apathy, with Dave Stuart Jr. Jul 17, 2019

Want to help your apathetic students become more motivated? Dave Stuart Jr. knows how you feel.

In this podcast episode, learn the five key beliefs that help students with their motivation, and discover two specific ways to help banish apathy and inspire your students to be more motivated.

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069: 40 Ways to Reduce your Grading Time Jul 02, 2019

Grading doesn't have to be the thing that haunts you as a teacher.

There are a ton of strategies out there to help you reduce your grading time and maximize its effectiveness, once you decide to take a stand for yourself.

Choosing to use some of them will free up your time to enjoy creating the unique lesson plans you and your students love and to have more balance between home and school.

In this episode, discover forty great options and choose the ones that are right for you.

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068: Confronting Teacher Exhaustion, with Angela Watson Jun 19, 2019

Ready for an end to the teacher tired? The teacher guilt? The teacher busy?

In this episode, I'm chatting with Angela Watson about her work helping teachers become more productive and purposeful in their choices. We're talking about her new book, Fewer Things, Better, and her course, The 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club.

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067: Look Forward to Teaching Vocabulary Jun 04, 2019

Wish teaching vocabulary in ELA could be more creative and fulfilling? You're not alone. The old "study at home for the quiz" routine can get pretty boring.

Try these ten strategies to make studying vocabulary more engaging and the words memorable. It doesn't have to be just something to check off your to-do list every week!

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066: We Need More Diverse Books May 21, 2019

We need diverse books in our ELA classrooms.

In this podcast episode and blog post, discover title ideas from a stellar high school librarian - Alexandra Patterson - for diversifying your booklists in American Lit, British Lit, World Lit, and Independent Reading.

It matters so much for our students to see their own stories reflected on the page!

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065: Final Exams that feel Meaningful May 08, 2019

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 final exam. In this episode, you'll discover five great options, including one of my favorites, the graduation speech.

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064: A Beginner's Guide to Writing Workshop Apr 24, 2019

In this episode, discover how to structure a successful writing workshop, what a workshop mini lesson is, and how to trouble shoot common issues that come up.

Our guest today is Amanda Werner, experienced workshop teacher and host of The Workshop Teacher Podcast.

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063: Using Stations Creatively in ELA Apr 10, 2019

Want to try out stations in your ELA classroom? Good for you! They're a great way to get students actively engaging (and fight the after-lunch tired factor).

Find out how to set stations up for success in your next unit and get inspiration for crafting your own as we walk through eight examples.

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062: When Students Choose their Own Assessments, with David Rickert Mar 27, 2019

In this episode of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, we're focusing in on student-choice assessment in ELA with special guest David Rickert.

By the end of the episode, you'll know:

how to get students started in creating their own assessments
how to structure your class unit
how to grade this epic project
tips and tricks to make it all go smoothly

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061: Using Podcasts as Texts in ELA Mar 11, 2019

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.

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060: Students won't read? Don't care? One Year to Change That Feb 28, 2019

You can't read every book out loud to them forever.

Use blogs, podcasts, Ted Talks, spoken word poetry, independent reading and more to create a curriculum that will truly make a difference in their lives.

In today's episode, discover one year's worth of strategies to help you defeat apathy and make connections with your students, paving the way for them to develop their love of language so they can be successful students.

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059: Maybe Teaching doesn't have to be so Lonely Feb 17, 2019

Though you're constantly surrounded by people, teaching can be lonely.

This episode is all about finding ways to build positive personal and professional relationships with other teachers at your school and in your area.

It's definitely possible!

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058: How to Match Student Readers with Books they'll Love Jan 30, 2019

Your ELA students may struggle to find the books that will light them up. That's where you come in!

Your choice reading program will be most successful when you can help student readers find the books they'll truly love. It's a fun job, and it will help you build relationships as well as ignite a love of reading for your students.

Check out this episode for nine simple strategies to make it easy for you to help guide your students to boks they'll truly enjoy.

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057: Creative Tech Tools for ELA Teachers, with Jennifer Gonzalez Jan 15, 2019

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.

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056: Get Funding with Donors Choose (Dos and Don'ts) Jan 03, 2019

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.

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055: Hyperdocs, Authentic Audience, and Screencastify with Kristy Louden Dec 18, 2018

So many stellar ELA strategies on tap for today!

We're talking about how to use hyperdocs to teach writing more effectively, giving kids a truly authentic audience for speech projects, and how to use Screencastify to save so much time.

This one's action-packed!

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054: Winter Holiday Activities for ELA Dec 04, 2018

Sick of trying to compete with holiday madness in December? Stop trying!

Bring the holidays in and enjoy teaching all your usual ELA skills in a new context. My favorite option? Gingerbread house short stories! Listen in for the details.

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053: How to Plan a Unit in 30 Minutes Nov 20, 2018

Need help planning your ELA units? I hear you.

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

Starting with the big picture makes it soooo much easier.

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052: The Easy Guide to Blackout Poetry Nov 07, 2018

If your students would rather eat a ghost chili than dive into poetry workshop, blackout poetry is your new best friend!

In this episode, I'll teach you the simple steps you can use to guide them in creating stunning blackout poems. You can dive straight in and do them tomorrow!

This is one of the easiest and most effective poetry workshops for ELA across many grade levels. Without the blank page to scare them, writer's block drifts away for most students as they get busy with their Sharpies.

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051: Mock Trials and E-mail Etiquette with The Daring English Teacher Oct 24, 2018

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.

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050: The Power of Imperfect Action Oct 10, 2018

If you've ever felt like you just didn't have time to learn enough about something new you want to try in your classroom before rolling it out, this episode is for you.

It's time to take action, even if it isn't perfect.

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049: Get Creative with Google Classroom, with Matt Miller Sep 26, 2018

In this episode of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, learn how to leverage Google Classroom to create more creative, more organized lessons, and to make your feedback process faster and more effective.

Matt Miller brings a wealth of expertise and experience to this conversation, so get ready to dive deep with how Google Classroom can help ELA teachers with their workflow and lesson planning.

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048: Reading Program Accountability that doesn't Ruin Everything Sep 19, 2018

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.

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047: The Power of the Writing Makerspace, with Angela Stockman Sep 06, 2018

Guiding students in using maker elements to build their arguments and ideas leads to greater complexity in their thinking and writing. Plus, it helps overcome writer's block!

Their are sooo many ways to incorporate the writing makerspace in your writing curriculum, and Angela Stockman is here to help you get started! Get ready for more engagement and enthusiasm for writing in your ELA classes.

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046: Sketchnotes are Awesome, with Mike Rohde Aug 23, 2018

Heard the buzz about sketchnote? Wondering how to incorporate this powerful strategy in your ELA classroom?

Fabulous! Sketchnotes can help your students use their critical thinking as they listen to lecture, tune into podcasts, watch Ted Talks, and read or listen to books. They'll be more likely to remember the information they sketchnote, and the process is more fun than rote note-taking.

In this episode, find out what sketchnotes are and why they matter to your ELA classroom as I interview Mike Rohde, the creator of sketchnotes.

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045: Classroom Memes and Interactive Notebooks Aug 16, 2018

Do your students love memes? Want to learn more about the popular strategy, interactive notebooks? Wish you understood YA just a bit better?

In this episode, I'm chatting with Tracee Orman about some of her favorite classroom strategies, and we'll be hitting on all of these fun ELA topics!

Discover how to use memes to help your students connect to literature, when and why to use interactive notebooks, and the true power of YA fiction.

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044: 25 Creative Assessments for Any Novel (Whoa) Aug 09, 2018

Looking for more creative assessment options at the end of your novel units? Good for you!

Goodbye multiple choice tests, hello engaging final projects!

Discover twenty-five new ideas in this episode, plus the secret sauce to keep them meaningful in terms of analysis.

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043: Tips for New Teachers, with Kristy Avis Jul 25, 2018

Are you in your first year or two? There's sooooo much happening! I remember it well, working until 11 pm and then getting up at 6 to do it again.

Phew. It does get easier! But there are also some things you can do now to help make your first year smoother.

In this episode Kristy Avis, the blogger behind 2 Peas and a Dog, shares specific ideas to help new ELA teachers make their first year more positive, effective, and fulfilling.

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042: My FAVORITE Theater Project (for any play) Jul 12, 2018

When I took Shakespeare in college, my legendary professor Martha Andresen had us perform A Midsummer Night's Dream on campus. We split into groups, worked on our scenes all term long, and then performed them in order in various locations around campus.

It was one of the most memorable projects I ever participated in, and you better believe I put it right into practice as a teacher!

In this episode, I'll walk you through a few easy steps to split any play into key scenes and then have students perform them in a special showcase on the final day of your unit. You're going to love this great theater project!

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041: Teacher Mindset & Happiness with Angela Watson Jun 26, 2018

If you're feeling overwhelmed in your teaching life, and you'd like guidance with how to adjust your mindset, routines and goals to feel happier in the profession, this interview with Angela Watson will help you find your way.

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040: Building a Creative Classroom Space Jun 14, 2018

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!

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039: Overwhelmed? Try this simple strategy. May 31, 2018

I didn't hear about "The Ideal Week" until at least a decade after I started teaching, but it's such a simple and helpful tool to help you cut overwhelm as an ELA teacher.

It's the difference between a thirty item to-do list hanging over your head all the time, and specific days and times when you know you'll complete certain tasks (work ones AND fun ones!).

In this episode, I'll share how this simple strategy can help you prioritize what's most important to you and schedule your week so you don't always feel pulled in a dozen directions.

Because who wants that?!

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038: 10 Ways to Fill a Hole in your ELA Curriculum May 17, 2018

Got a day between testing and your new unit? A week between the end of term and a break? A month before the end of school and no new books left?

No problem!

In this episode, discover ten great options for that hole in your ELA curriculum, whether it's large or small.

This is also a helpful episode if you're writing a new course, restructuring a course, or looking to add a unit into a course you've already got.

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037: Cut Year-End Teacher Stress May 02, 2018

As the end of the year comes at school, there's so much to do! And yet, engagement and persistence start to drift as the cares of the year pile up and summer beckons.

What's a creative ELA teacher to do?

In this episode, discover five simple strategies for ending the year with less stress and more creativity.

Plus, I'll share some small tweaks you can make so you head for summer feeling less exhausted and more fulfilled. Which is always a good thing!

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036: Host a Successful Class Play Apr 19, 2018

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.

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35: Crush it with Book Clubs Apr 05, 2018

Book clubs are such a great way to give students choice and include a wider variety of books in your curriculum! Try novels-in-verse clubs, graphic novel clubs, memoirs, coming-of-age stories, or whatever theme suits you.

But how do you get started? And what will kids do in class during your book clubs unit? And is there a difference between book clubs an lit circles besides the name?

Join me as I talk to special guest Melissa Kruse of The Reading and Writing Haven all about book clubs. Get the information you need to get started with a successful book club program immediately.

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034: 4 Ways to Integrate STEM into ELA Mar 29, 2018

STEM, STEAM, or is it STABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPEAM?

STEM gets a lot of attention, but we all know the ELA skills play a huge role for scientists, engineers, and technology leaders.

In this episode, discover how to create interdisciplinary bridges between STEM and ELA through creative novel projects, nonfiction articles that will peak student interest, the ELA makerspace, and social media campaign projects for change.

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033: The Quick Guide to Genius Hour Mar 15, 2018

In this episode, I'll give you the roadmap for using genius hour in ELA.

Find out how it fits the standards, how to structure it, how to grade it, and where you can find an amazing free resource set to get you started.

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032: Shakespeare Activities for Any Play Mar 02, 2018

Teaching Shakespeare? So often we're trying to help our students understand the language and context of the era, and make a real connection to the Bard. So whether you're teaching Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, Hamlet, or one of his others, there are certain solid go-tos you can weave in to help your students get excited about reading a Shakespeare play.

In this episode, find six creative new ideas for writing and performance activities that will work for ANY Shakespeare play.

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031: Using Murder Mysteries, Ted Talks, and SNL Clips in Class Feb 22, 2018

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.

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030: The Simplest Method for One Pager Success Feb 16, 2018

One-pagers combine visuals with text to make ideas come alive in students’ minds and memories.

But it’s easy for students to struggle with one-pagers if they're not naturally inclined toward art and have not previously been encouraged to represent their ideas this way. They may feel they're being graded unfairly on their artistic abilities. Some students will hear directions to create a graphic representation of a reading and dive right in. Others will moan and mutter things about “ridiculous art projects.” But if students can get over their hang-ups, they really learn a lot from processing what they’ve read in visual form with a one-pager.

This episode is all about how to make this powerful activity successful, whether or not the majority of your students love art.

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029: A Beginner's Guide to Teaching Abroad Feb 13, 2018

When I took a job in Sofia, Bulgaria, I honestly wondered if I would be able to see out my contract. I was so new to the world of living abroad, and I had only just learned where Bulgaria was on a map of the world.

By the time we left Bulgaria, my husband and I had learned so much about teaching in a new place, and we'd traveled to over 20 countries along the way! Now, a decade later, we live in Bratislava with our two children.

If you've ever considered teaching abroad, I hope you'll listen in to this episode so I can share what I've learned along the way with you.

Let's talk about how to get a job, what challenges you'll face, and what strategies will help you succeed.

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028: Empower your Students, with John Spencer Jan 18, 2018

Do you ever feel like you’re pursuing engagement, not empowerment, in your classroom? Do you ever feel like you’re doing more work than your students? John Spencer used to too. But now he’s all about empowering students to pursue their passions and helping teachers make that happen. Whether he’s sharing “10 Creative Risks to Take with your Students this Year” via podcast, or adding video writing prompts and maker challenges to his youtube channel, you’re going to be amazed by what he puts out into the teaching stratosphere. Once a middle school teacher who carefully wove creative practices into his packed schedule wherever he could, John Spencer now teaches teachers. In his own words, “I want to see teachers unleash the creative potential in all their students so that kids can be makers, designers, artists, and engineers.” In his book, Empower, he talks about a mindset shift in the creative teaching world from engaging our students to empowering them to learn and do what they truly care about. I think you’ll recognize your own teaching journey in what he described. The incredible amount of work required to differentiate projects and outline details so that students would produce just what you hoped. The exhaustion of your teacher song and dance to be constantly introducing something new, something amazing, something your students can’t help but love doing under your careful supervision.

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027: Turn your Class into a Discussion Panel with Audience Tweeters Jan 11, 2018

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.

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026: My Teacher Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Jan 05, 2018

In this episode, I take a look back over many of the big and small mistakes I've made as a teacher, and give you a roadmap for how to avoid them.

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025: The Best of ELA this Year Dec 22, 2017

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.

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024: A Beginner's Guide to Student Blogging Dec 15, 2017

In this episode, I'll share five fabulous ways to empower your student writers in ELA through blogging.

OK, a quick update. When I first created this podcast, Blogger was an easy and awesome option for a free student blog. But now they’ve closed their doors to kids under 18. Many teachers are turning to Edublogs, though Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress also offer free versions.

Whatever you choose, make sure it is is allowed by your school, and get parent permission if needed. OK, I’m about to share SO MANY fabulous ways you can empower your students to channel their voice and creativity into blogging. But first, one quick word of warning and one quick word of comfort.

The Warning: Don’t let your students put any personal or school information on their blogs! Nothing beyond first names. This is an important security measure for you to stress with them.

The Comfort: Students can handle the tech. Remind them they can always Google or Youtube questions like “how to embed sound clips in Squarespace,” ” how to speed up an iMovie video,” etc. I first assigned students to create podcasts eight years before I learned to record one myself, and it was fine. Really. Let students go farther than you with technology if they want to. When they ask if they can add the new things they find and discover they can make to their blogs, just say yes!

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023: Why you Need Discussion Warm-Ups Dec 05, 2017

Discover my TOP STRATEGY for success with any discussion.

Helping students to prepare with a fun, easy warm-up activity eliminates the awkward silence and empowers students to contribute easily.

Get ready for increased engagement and less awkward silence when you try discussion warm-ups with your ELA students.

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022: 10 Top Books for your Classroom Library Nov 28, 2017

Today on the podcast, Brynn Allison of The Literary Maven shares her top ten current book recommendations to hook reluctant readers.

For example...

FORGED BY FIRE (TRILOGY), BY SHARON M. DRAPER

If you're going to add only one of these books to your reading library, this just might be it. It's Brynn's top recommendation. With its amazing first chapter that was originally written to stand alone as a short story, you can hook readers instantly. Read it aloud and put it on your shelf, then watch how quickly your struggling readers (and all the rest of your students) line up for it.

Great for: Everyone!

ON THE COME UP, BY HANNAH WEYER

In this novel, a young woman gets pregnant. This is the story of how she deals with it. Though she makes mistakes, she also makes good choices. She's strong and driven, a real and honest protagonist that makes a good role model for students who may be facing difficult realities and struggling with their own choices. You can read Brynn's full review here.

Great for: Young women who could use a strong and realistic role model. This also makes a great next read for students who have fallen for The Hate U Give.

LIFE AS WE KNEW IT (SERIES), BY SUSAN BETH PFEFFER

If the moon got out of whack, what might happen? This post-apocalyptic series follows life on earth in a fairly realistic scenario, following along as characters deal with the way the world is changing. You can read Brynn's full review here.

Great for: Keeping students reading, since they can move on to the next in the series after the first book.

THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO (SERIES), BY PATRICK NESS

Also set in the ever-popular post-apocalyptic world, this novel follows the story of Todd, who grows up in a town with only men. Then one day he finds a girl, Viola, and together they start a revolution. You can read Brynn's full review here.

Great for: Another solid series, giving students a lot to love once they get hooked on the first book.

CINDER (THE LUNAR CHRONICLES SERIES), BY MARISSA MEYER

This intriguing twist on a popular fairy tale is full of surprises. Who would have expected to find futuristic features like androids and life on the moon in a retelling of Cinderella? You can read Brynn's full review here.

Great for: These books are long and big. And there are a lot of them. Share a bit in class and then see who is ready for months of joyful reading.

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021: The Best Websites for ELA Teachers Nov 17, 2017

There are so many great places to find inspiration for ELA online!

In this episode, I'm sharing my favorite sites for free creative lesson plans and ideas for English teachers online.

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020: Authentic Audiences for Student Work Nov 06, 2017

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.

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019: Active Learning outside the Classroom Walls Oct 20, 2017

Let's talk about taking a break from your classroom space and getting out into other school spaces.

Spend a day trying one of these mini-field trips and see if you and your students don't both feel better.

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018: A Simple Trick to Cut Grading Time Oct 05, 2017

In this episode, I'll share the system that allows me to skip repetitive comment writing by using a list of common errors with my students.

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017: Get Started with ELA Escape Rooms Sep 20, 2017

Curious about escape rooms? For good reason!

Escape rooms are an engaging teaching strategy rapidly growing in momentum across the country.

Emily Aierstok, my first ever podcast guest, will share her experiences teaching with escape rooms in her New York classroom. The show notes this week are EXTENSIVE so be sure to head to nowsparkcreativity.com to find them.

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016: ELA Maker Spaces Sep 08, 2017

In this episode I'll be sharing two ways you can try out ELA maker spaces in your classroom this year. They are creative, doable and inexpensive, and I think you're going to love them!

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015: Building Professional Community as a Teacher Aug 27, 2017

Ever feel lonely at work, even though you're surrounded by people all the time? You're not alone on that.

This episode is all about finding ways to build a support structure for yourself as a creative teacher.

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014: Creative Secondary Decor Aug 23, 2017

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.

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013: The First Day of School doesn't have to be Boring Aug 16, 2017

Engage your students from the opening moment with these creative first day activities.

No need to read that syllabus out loud!

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012: 3 Simple Systems for a Creative Classroom Aug 10, 2017

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.

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011: Classroom Mini-Flips Jul 28, 2017

In this episode, I'll share five ways to dip your toes in the classroom flipping ocean. There's no need to abandon your entire curriculum to experiment with this intriguing new trend.

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010: Creative Assessment Options Jul 13, 2017

In this episode, I'll share why I believe in creative forms of assessment and share more than a dozen examples you can start using tomorrow in your ELA classroom.

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009: Show your Administration your Strengths Jun 29, 2017

Sometimes you have to be proactive to help your boss understand what a great job you're doing. But don't worry, it can actually be a lot of fun.

In this show, discover seven strategies for showing your administration your creative strengths as a teacher.

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008: Harkness Discussions (are awesome) Jun 16, 2017

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.

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007: Why You Should Try Poetry Slam Jun 07, 2017

Are your students stressed out by poetry? Mine were too, until I started teaching them about performance poetry and holding class poetry slams.

In this episode, find out how to launch your own class poetry slam. Then get ready for fun.

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006: 10 Ideas for your Professional Development (Besides Conferences) Jun 03, 2017

In this episode, discover ten ideas for creative professional development besides attending a conference. There are so many ways to learn something new (including this podcast).

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005: How to Get Started with a Classroom Collaboration May 28, 2017

Want to try collaborating with another teacher? Maybe another teacher in another country?

Get ideas for how to find a partner and start a project in this episode.

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004: Theater and Performance Activities for ELA May 18, 2017

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.

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003: Start your Choice Reading Program May 17, 2017

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.

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002: Easy Strategies for Differentiation May 17, 2017

In this episode, discover three easy ways to use differentiation to let students play to their strengths in your ELA classroom.

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001: My Favorite Strategy for Every Single Unit May 17, 2017

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.

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