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...
Mar 12, 2024•10 min•Ep 269•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Str...
Mar 07, 2024•3 min•Ep 268•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ar...
Mar 05, 2024•36 min•Ep 267•Transcript available on Metacast Let’s talk about some of the best summer PD options out there for English teachers. First things first, I’ve got to tell you about my personal favorite summer ELA 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...
Feb 29, 2024•6 min•Ep 266•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Feb 27, 2024•18 min•Ep 265•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Feb 22, 2024•4 min•Ep 264•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Feb 20, 2024•18 min•Ep 263•Transcript available on Metacast 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 learni...
Feb 16, 2024•2 min•Ep 262•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Feb 13, 2024•14 min•Ep 261•Transcript available on Metacast 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 acti...
Feb 08, 2024•3 min•Ep 260•Transcript available on Metacast 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, a...
Feb 06, 2024•14 min•Ep 259•Transcript available on Metacast 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 m...
Feb 01, 2024•4 min•Ep 258•Transcript available on Metacast 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 y...
Jan 30, 2024•11 min•Ep 257•Transcript available on Metacast 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 fo...
Jan 25, 2024•4 min•Ep 256•Transcript available on Metacast 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 i...
Jan 23, 2024•15 min•Ep 255•Transcript available on Metacast 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. Stu...
Jan 18, 2024•3 min•Ep 254•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Jan 16, 2024•23 min•Ep 253•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ha...
Jan 09, 2024•12 min•Ep 252•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Jan 05, 2024•8 min•Ep 251•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Jan 02, 2024•31 min•Ep 250•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Productivi...
Dec 21, 2023•4 min•Ep 249•Transcript available on Metacast 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'r...
Dec 19, 2023•7 min•Ep 248•Transcript available on Metacast 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,...
Dec 14, 2023•3 min•Ep 247•Transcript available on Metacast 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 he...
Dec 12, 2023•9 min•Ep 246•Transcript available on Metacast 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 integrate...
Dec 07, 2023•4 min•Ep 245•Transcript available on Metacast 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 lipo...
Dec 05, 2023•16 min•Ep 244•Transcript available on Metacast 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 wer...
Nov 30, 2023•6 min•Ep 243•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Nov 28, 2023•22 min•Ep 242•Transcript available on Metacast This week I want to talk about argument, and why it sometimes seems so esoteric to kids when they learn about it in class, 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 felt like a pretty important question for our community of English teachers, and soon got me thinking about my experience as someone who basically writes all day long. I write podcasts, blog posts, Instagram c...
Nov 23, 2023•5 min•Ep 241•Transcript available on Metacast 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 I...
Nov 21, 2023•20 min•Ep 240•Transcript available on Metacast 
