The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA

It's no fun announcing an argument paper and being met by groans. If your English 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? Tod...

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 coveri...

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...

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 suspen...

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...

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 t...

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 to...

On this week's mini-episode, let's talk about how to build an audio assignment in early in the year without feeling intimidated. Maybe you joined me for Camp Creative last summer and you've got alllll the student podcasting background, or maybe you're new to the topic and feeling a bit wary. Either way, this episode is for you! Let's walk through how to add a short audio assignment to your fall li...

We moved this month, and it wasn't one of your quick moves. We did one of those once, from one cabin to the one next door, carrying our furniture and baskets of stuff across a soon well-worn path through the woods. But no, this one was an international move across four flights and nine time zones, with some of our stuff going by shipping container across the Atlantic, some by moving truck across t...

On this week's mini-episode, I want to talk about learning names, and my easy trick for mastery. It took me many years, but finally, after a year in which I had a Kalina, Karina, Ekaterina, and Katrina, I figured out a plan that really worked.   I hate not knowing students' names. It stresses me out, big time. Maybe you're the same? The worst is when I think I know someone's name and then it's act...

Jason Reynolds' website headline reads "Here's What I Do: Not Write Boring books." How great is that? As with everything he does, he seems to be speaking directly to the young people he's always trying to reach. There's a reason The Library of Congress chose him as the national ambassador for young adult literature. Last year I created an Instagram series all about Jason's incredible work, and dif...

On this week's mini-episode, I'm sharing the coolest discussion warm-up I've ever learned, which I picked up at the Exeter Humanities Institute one week after my first year of teaching and the same week that I met my husband. You're going to love it!  As you know if you listen to the podcast much, my favorite discussion method is called Harkness, and it was first invented and pioneered at Phillips...

The first time I really understood what flow meant I was barefoot in salty sand, building a beach sculpture in Mexico alone in the sunshine. Two hours seemed to disappear in moments as I gathered water-smoothed scraps of painted tile and bright shells and arranged them into swirls and towers underneath the cliffs. Take a second here and ask yourself - when do you feel that amazing feeling, where y...

On this week's mini-episode, I want to give my answer to a question I see all the time in our  Facebook community, Creative High School English, and it's this: What's the best way to spend a teacher budget? So let's dive into five great options. .  Classroom Poster Printing Over the years I've seen a lot of wonderful classroom poster creation from fellow educators and artists across the world. And...

Today I'd like to share one of my favorite episodes from the Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast archives. In this special episode, I invited five creative guests to give their take on impactful classroom design. This back-to-school season felt like the perfect time to share it again. I'll be back with a full episode on Thursday, but at the moment I'm in the throes of a 6,000 mile move with my two ki...

On this week's mini-episode, I just have a very quick idea for you and it's this. As back-to-school hits, it's easy to immediately become isolated in your classroom. You've got a million to-dos for your space and your students. But the school year is going to feel better if you feel connected to the teacher across the hall, the teacher next door, and the teacher upstairs. Know what I mean? So this...

Back-to-School season is the perfect time to set up your reading program for success throughout the year. Heading into the school year with a well-organized library, a plan for routines like First Chapter Friday and Book Trailer Tuesday, a kickoff book tasting, an appealing book display, and a regular time to read will help so much in inspiring your students to read for joy throughout the year, an...

On this week's mini-episode, I want to answer a question from our community about lesson planning. Here it is: "How do you plan? I'm struggling to put together a series of lessons that culminate into a bigger assignment. For example, if I want my students to end up writing a persuasive essay, what would I plan to prepare them to write it? Do you go with a theme? Make it part of a novel study? I'm...

Maybe you've heard the story of how I almost quit teaching on my first first day of school. Despite the fact that I had spent three months preparing moment-by-moment lessons for fall. Despite the fact that I was wearing my super cool white embroidered top from Bass and carrying my first ever leather shoulder bag. Despite the fact that I had asked all my friendly, talented and kind new colleagues w...

On this week's mini-episode, I want to share my top strategy for taking the pressure off you while delivering a great experience for parents on back-to-school night, stations.    Back-to-school night, like the first day of school, can be a stressful time. You're trying to get a lot of information across quickly, and it can feel like the only way to get that accomplished is by talking fast and furi...

If I told you the ELA elective we're about to dive into has an "awkward party" unit, would you believe me? Well, it does, and I can't wait for you to learn about it and start planning an awkward party lesson of your own. Today on the show, we're continuing our creative electives series with veteran teacher Lisa Blake, who's been teaching for 33 years in Northern California. She's built a life skil...

On this week's mini-episode, I want to answer a question from our community about reading in class. Here it is " Hi all. Next year my middle school will be implementing a 45-minute every-other-day reading block for all students. All teachers (ELA or not) will be required to cover the class. I am wondering…what you do with it…" In today's episode, I'm going to weigh in on how I would use a gift lik...

What would you do if you had nine weeks to help ELA students imagine the real-world use of ELA skills? Inside the unique elective wheel program at Lisa Jones' school, students explore each discipline for nine weeks before moving onto the next. To show them literacy in action, Lisa has crafted an elective with three real-world projects to help them imagine how they might use their ability to commun...

This week let's talk about careers. I don't know if you can relate, but I graduated from high school with a general awareness of maybe six careers - law, medicine, teaching, ministry, science, and business. Let's talk about how we can show our English students a broader view of what's out there - and build in some ELA skills to the process.  A fun way to start any ELA careers unit is with a career...

Today on the show, we'll find out what happened when an administrator attended a student's genius hour project presentation about a new elective she wanted to see proposed Teaching African American Literature. Spoiler alert, magic. We're continuing our elective series today, and I'm delighted to tell you we're hearing from passionate veteran teacher Bethany Yuninger. She'll be sharing her African...