The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA

I bet you know your favorite way to learn something. Maybe it's by listening to a podcast, skimming a couple of articles on the topic, reading a book, going to a live lecture, taking a Masterclass, talking to a knowledgable friend, playing your way through an App like Duolingo, attending a conference... The point is, we're all pretty different when it comes to our FAVORITE way to take in informati...

Dickens' A Christmas Carol stands out strongly from his other works, but not because it's so different, really, in what it hopes to accomplish. Critiquing society, drawing attention to the world outside the doors of the wealthy in Victorian England, hoping to create social change... this was Dickens. But it's in A Christmas Carol that he condenses this message and provides joy in equal measure wit...

According to research by Stanford Professor Bob Sutton , innovative businesses need to generate about 4,000 ideas to come up with two or three really good ones.  Think about that. 4,000 ideas. What does that mean for our students? In their busy whirlwind days, they're likely to opt for their first or second idea on any given assignment. A thesis pops into their head? They'll probably hit the groun...

It's easy to think of hexagonal thinking as a big event, a full-class activity that you set up and run for a whole period. But once your students know how to use this tool, it could come in handy in lots of other ways. Especially if you keep some blank hexagons on hand in your classroom. In today's short episode, I want to share five ten-minute hexagonal thinking activities you could use in your E...

You know how some spaces just make you feel excited to DO something? Whether it's a Cricut getting your wheels spinning with what-ifs, beautiful shelves of paint inviting you to decorate holiday pottery, or a giant stack of cookbooks suddenly causing you to wonder if it's time to fill the cookie jar, well-organized resources in a creative space can help bring out your creative side. Today, let's t...

The other day I found myself walking through a parking garage stairwell in Iowa City, and I realized they were using the same scent design as the local mall in Bratislava where we used to live. Half-shocked, half-amused, I climbed the cement stairs as I remembered riding the escalator through the same subtle scent cloud two years ago. The memory was visceral. Though we don't always think about it,...

Imagine you and I were about to make a dinner together. Now, I bring a love of baking to our project, and a decently strong roast chicken game. But I don't want to dominate the conversation too much. "Let's make roast chicken and vegetables," I say, "and cookies." Your face falls a little. "Oh, but you can choose which vegetables we roast, and what kind of cookies - I have M & Ms AND chocolate chi...

My first classroom was a little blue trailer on the edge of the soccer field. Every morning, I got my shoes clogged with mud hiking across the field, but I loved my corner of campus, and I felt pretty free to design it to work best for my students. And it turned out that what really worked best was constant change. Our desks were attached to our chairs, so to move one was to move both. And move th...

The first time I had much use for poetry came in college, freshmen year. My professor assigned each of us to memorize a poem and recite it in class. Horrified, I chose ee cummings' " anyone lived in a pretty how town " and began the process of reading it a million times between tennis practices and snowball fights. Over and over and over I read it, trying to memorize how the words and lines zipped...

I've got more and more respect, these days, for the humble webquest. Slash hyperdoc. Slash game board. Slash immersive digital multimedia experience. Slash clickable infographic. Slash playlist. Slash choice board. When it comes to sharing information and contemporary texts with your students, there is SO MUCH available online right now. Students can see actors practicing behind the scenes at the...

Recently I had to learn APA citation. Oof. It was a heavy lift, after a few decades with MLA. It gave me a refreshed sense of how overwhelming students likely find MLA. I found myself thinking, why can't I just link my sources in parentheses? Why can't I just reference the authors who informed my thinking inside my sentences? Why on earth does it matter if I use a comma or a semicolon, put the pag...

If you teach American literature, chances are you're touching on the theme of the American Dream somehow, through book clubs, a poetry unit, a look at Gatsby, or an essential question that binds together a variety of genres and perspectives. So when I received this request for our Plan my Lesson series, "How about a fun way to introduce the American Dream unit for juniors, about 36 of them," I was...

I worked at the cutest little bookstore coffee shop last week. In that small space, the collection had to be heavily curated, with just one or two books by popular authors and launching points for popular series books for kids. But the shop still held one full bookshelf for staff recommendations, covers out. Each employee had their shelf: "Sarah recommends....," "Tia recommends...., "William recom...

We know employers want creative thinkers. We know creative thinking is necessary to solve the problems we see everywhere in our world. We know we want our students to learn to be more creative.  But what does that mean exactly? Where does the science of creativity meet the cultural definition we all build for ourselves just by swimming in the 21st century stream? My guest today is Dr. Zorana Ivcev...

When it comes to teaching grammar, the research is clear. Drill and kill is not what we're looking for. You don't want to march through a series of grammar lessons unrelated to your students' writing and reading. Here's what NCTE's " Resolution on Grammar Exercises to Teach Speaking and Writing " has to say about it: "This resolution was prompted by the continuing use of repetitive grammar drills...

Think of your favorite book.  Now think of your favorite food.  Now match those two together - your favorite book and your favorite food - into some kind of experience. Maybe you've slipped into the world of the book and you're eating your favorite food with your favorite characters. Are you smiling yet? Today's "Plan my Lesson" episode is all about launching your first literary food truck festiva...

Have you been hooked by the idea of book clubs lately? Wondering how you can integrate book clubs with essential questions, supplementary short stories and podcasts, and everything else you're up to? Then today's episode is for you. Today's "Plan my Lesson" request comes from a creative teacher trying to blend a lot of wonderful things into her new plan for the year. Here's what she writes: "Hi, B...

Today's request for "Plan My Lesson" is from a teacher searching for a first week project that helps students get to know each other AND introduces a few key skills along the way. Perhaps you can relate? Here's what she writes: "It's time to switch up the first project I do in English 10… For the last few years I've had the kiddos research their first name, practicing basic research skills, as wel...

If there's one thing I want for your first day of school, it's for the pressure to be off you. You've got enough to worry about without needing to pull off a 45 minute lecture that magically holds students' attention before they even know you five times in a row. That's why for this lesson, requested for our summer "Plan my Lesson" series, our goal will be to hit all the day-one must-dos while als...

A summer reading lesson is a nice chance to start off the year with a creative tone, while creating some of the norms you want to establish. For today's "Plan my Lesson" series episode, I'm answering requests from two different teachers in search of a back-to-school lesson on summer reading. One teacher's class will have read Scythe , another's The Hunger Games . Both are interested in reviewing t...

Students need to be able to make a great argument to find success at school, and in many professions. They need to come up with an idea, find evidence, analyze their evidence, and tie it all together with a well-written bow. Thus, for many decades, students have written essays. We've taught them to write thesis statements, organizing sentences, transitions, topic sentences, and conclusions. We've...

There's a lot of conversation happening lately around student reading stamina. Rose Horowitch's Atlantic article, "The Elite College Students who Can't Read Books," helped stir the pot. I'm sure you've seen evidence of the same issues she brings up - that students are struggling to stay focused through books, and often come to you having read a lot of excerpts and short pieces rather than full nov...

Ken Liu's short story, "The Paper Menagerie," is an easy and powerful add to your curriculum. Not only does it explore family relationships, The American Dream, and identity (themes you can easily connect to other texts as you build units), it introduces - briefly, painfully, powerfully - China's Cultural Revolution. I'll admit I've never studied the history of communism in China with much depth u...

It's a rare curriculum book that inspires NO negative comments. Ever. To hear, month after month, year after year, that a certain book turns kids into readers, ignites interest and discussion in class, hooks unengaged students like nothing else has.  Long Way Down is one such book. It's a fast read, a novel-in-verse, by the former U.S. Ambassador for Youth Literature, Jason Reynolds. In my opinion...

Trevor Noah's Born a Crime is trending, and for good reason. I'm seeing the evidence everywhere. This spring, as I ran our curriculum book choice tournament across the high school levels and hundreds of teachers weighed in, I watched it soar to the finals in BOTH the 9th/10th category and the 11th/12th category. Then, as summer began and I opened up this new podcast series, "Plan My Lesson" (which...