The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA

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 fi...

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...

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...

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 cl...

So you've heard the buzz about podcasts, and you're intrigued. You want to play an episode in your English classes, 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 English teacher...

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 no...

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, wh...

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 Trail...

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...

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 w...

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...

This week I want to share two quick ways to make back-to-school night in your English classroom something you can enjoy this year.  In today's episode we're talking about how to take the pressure off back-to-school night with stations, and how to use QR codes to quickly and easily share anything that needs to happen online, whether that's signing up for an app, sharing a class website, or giving i...

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...

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 w...

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 f...

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...

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 wonde...

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 ans...

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...

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...

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 to...

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 the...

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 fee...

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 n...

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...