The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA

Lately, I’ve been working on gamification. Not the kind where you get points and add custom outfits to your hamster avatar when you advance through a lesson - though don’t get me wrong, that seems cool - more the kind where learning takes place through an actual game structure. We’re big fans of games at my house - Catan, Parcheesi, Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, Wordle, Uno, Apple to Apples - and so I’ve had a lot of fun brainstorming ideas. But today I was zeroing in on brackets. You know, tournament brackets. Like at March Madness time, or at weekend pickleball tournaments. I’ve seen lots of folks try March Madness brackets with poetry, which I love, but I was brainstorming out at the edges of that idea today. What else could we bracket?  So here’s my last quick idea for you as we all swirl into the break tornado and leave work behind for a while. What if we held a bracket for writer’s craft moves?  Imagine it. Sensory details vs. Personification. Symbolism vs. simile. Appositives vs. strikingly short sentences. The semicolon vs. the dash. Which is more useful?  Which paves the way to a great line and why? Where have students seen the move in action and was it truly powerful? How can they use it in their writing and just how handy is it? When you’re doing the faceoff, you could have students partner up and search for examples to share, or write examples to read aloud as part of the discussion of the merits of each side.  Can you imagine debating which deserves to move forward, symbolism or simile, and then voting for one to advance in the tournament WITHOUT generating a pretty strong understanding of what it is and how to use it? And can you imagine how fun it would be to see students get fired up over the dash being better than the semicolon? Or are the parentheses crushing the ellipses?  Yeah, I just had to tell you about this idea. Even though I know  you don’t have time to use it just at the moment, it was too exciting for me to hold off until next year. I can’t wait to hear about your writer’s craft tournament in 2025. You can reach me, as always, at betsy@nowsparkcreativity.com with your fabulous stories.   Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Grab the free Better Discussions toolkit Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram.  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! 

If the work week is starting to feel like a blurry hand sanitizer-scented haze at the moment, you're right on schedule. The crush of holiday to-dos (fun and not-so) alongside the slow but insistent slip of student attention spans, plus the inevitable wave of illnesses you're trying to avoid makes these last few days a challenge. So today I'm hoping I can help by giving you all the moving pieces for an easy and awesome last day. Grab the Free Winter Book Tasting Kit Here: https://spark-creativity.kit.com/cc185a4a77 Make your Copy of the Snowy Day Poetry Tiles Here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1as6Q7PADsKIoYKOHlHUH7iZHseL342xts7E3UYk3Wjg/copy Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Launch your choice reading program with all my favorite tools and recs, and grab the free toolkit. Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram.  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!

This week I’m thinking about those moments when the system collapses. Your toddler wakes up at 3 am and stays awake until 7. Your careful planning for a poetry slam explodes when you feel a sore throat lurking the day before and you get one of those icky awful chills on your way out to the parking lot. Your partner has to work overtime when you were counting on him to do dinner and bedtime while you graded 100 papers and prepped the next day. Today’s one of those days for me, with my partner on an international work trip with his students as what everyone is guessing is norovirus has hit our community and my household. Just before my daughter’s winter concert, my elaborately planned community cookie exchange, and my son’s golden birthday. As we say in Minnesota, uff-da.  So without further ado, I want to share three free resources I’ve created for you that you can use at times like this, when all else fails. Don’t worry, I’ll drop links to grab them all in the show notes.  First of all, my old faithful, now in use in over 10,000 classrooms. The one-pager templates. You can bust these out and modify them to suit pretty much whatever you’re reading. The specific directions guide students in how to represent the text through imagery, quotations, and analysis on the template, taking away that fear of the blank page. A little creative constraint paves the way for students to share their top takeaways and make connections beyond the page, giving even your art-wariest students a chance to succeed with this colorful, creative, reading reflection.  Next, there’s the Book Face challenge. This fun activity will promote your reading culture, and all you need are books. Have you seen the #bookface flood on Instagram in recent years? The idea is simple. You find a book with a picture of a face on it, then find a way to recreate the scenery featured on the cover and take a picture of the cover with the face in the book shown over your (or your partner’s face) so it seems like the book is actually part of the photo. It’s so hard to describe, but so cool to see! I created a bunch of examples and a quick guide so your students can easily try it. If you’re having a ridiculously stressful week, a day setting up fun #bookface photos with your students and then showcasing them in a big display can help. At least a little.  Finally, there’s blackout poetry. If you haven’t tried this yet, take this as your sign. Download the free guide, put some old books in a corner of your classroom, and keep this activity handy for the next time all else fails. For blackout poetry, students choose words on an exciting page to arrange into a poem, then doodle around the words and black out everything but the doodle and the chosen words. OK, that’s a bit of an oversimplification but that’s why I made you the GUIDE. This project has a history of turning out amazing, and you can make it go with anything. You invite students to create a blackout poem that connects with a theme from your reading, an essential question from your unit, or just let them float free with their topics. OK, my friend. Time to go deal with the fact that there’s a lot to deal with. I know you know, and I hope one of these activities can help the next time you’re doing the same. Remember, I’m going to link to all these free downloads in the show notes, and I’m ALSO going to link to a fun recent collab I did with 9 other creative curriculum designers to showcase emergency sub plans. If you grab these three and a bunch of those too, you’ll have a dozen or so options ready the next time all else fails.    Links Mentioned: Pick up the free one-pager templates: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/ready-for-one-pager-success  Grab the free Bookface Activity: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/bookface Get the free Blackout poetry guide: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Blackout-Poetry-Activity-l-black-out-poetry-l-blackout-poetry-passages-4165682 Go further with 10 more emergency sub plans: https://buildingbooklove.com/ela-emergency-sub-plans-for-middle-school-and-high-school-english/    Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Snag three free weeks of community-building attendance question slides Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram.  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!   

Ever struggle to get students to stop talking? Keep their phones put away? Stay focused during the lesson? Stop whispering during an assembly? Engage with the classwork? Classroom management can sometimes feel like death by a thousand distractions. Today’s guest can help. Claire English is an experienced Australian secondary English teacher and senior leader, specializing in supporting students with complex social, emotional and mental health needs. Over her career, she has worked across the United Kingdom and Australia, dedicated to transforming volatile, challenging, and chaotic learning environments into places of safety, support, and learning. She’s got a new book out – It’s Never Just About the Behavior – which I happily rate at five stars and strongly recommend (check out her #1 best-seller in secondary education here). When you join our conversation today, you’re going to hear about big picture shifts you can easily make to help your classroom run more smoothly and productively, as well as quick small shifts you can try immediately for a better tomorrow. LINKS MENTIONED: These show notes contain affiliate links. When you purchase something through my affiliate link, you support my work here at no additional cost to you.  Grab the Task Card Template: https://www.the-unteachables.com/taskcardfreebie  Tune into Claire's Podcast: https://www.the-unteachables.com/podcast Explore her (wildy popular) bite-sized tips on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.unteachables/ Check out the Behavior Club Membership for live training, mentoring sessions, and access to the Low Level Behavior Bootcamp: https://www.the-unteachables.com/a/2148008553/5BiUqegp  Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Snag three free weeks of community-building attendance question slides Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. 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! 

In today’s short episode of “Highly Recommended”, I’m here to tell you it’s time to try a poetry video project! Harness students’ excitement over the creator economy and the survival of TikTok and get them interpreting poetry through a medium that only keeps getting MORE relevant to communication today.  First things first, let’s talk mentor texts. There are some VERY cool poetry videos online that take their interpretation in wildly different directions. I suggest taking a look at Amanda Gorman’s “Earthrise,” Ada Limón’s “A Poem for Europa,” and Rudy Francisco’s “Complainers,” which I’ll link for you in the show notes. As students watch, have them sketchnote ideas for CRAFT moves. What do they notice about the combination of talking head shots vs. B-Roll? Is their background music? How did the producer make cuts and transitions? How does the video bring out the meaning of the poem? How about the audio? Once students have started to warm up to this idea of interpreting poems through video, it’s time for them to choose a poem of their own to interpret. Now you could easily make this a project to help them dig deep into a famous poem of their choice, OR you could let them record and create around an original piece of their own, depending on your goals. They should print up a script of their poem which they can annotate with ideas for visuals and how they will want to read the poem aloud. Parallel to their written script, they’ll want to do some storyboarding, sketching out the order of their film clip videos. Now there are two free platforms I’d recommend for this project. Vocaroo, which we’ve discussed many times, is perfect for recording the audio easily and snagging the MP3 file. Then they can upload it to Canva, which will allow them to combine photos, videos, and audio of their own with photos, videos, and audio available on Canva. This is the most technical part of the project, so I’ve made you a little tutorial video for how to put together a video in Canva (which I’ll link in the show notes). While there will be a learning curve on learning to put together a video, it’s a learning curve well worth trekking. This would be a great starter project leading toward video options on future choice boards, documentary projects, PSA projects, and other types of video projects in your class or department arc.  Inside Canva, your students will be able to sequence text slides, video clips, and photos to create a visual sequence that represents their interpretation of the poem, and overlay it with their audio recording of their script. They can even add music at a low level behind their voice in different sections if they wish.  If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to get your feet wet with video, let this be your sign that YOU CAN DO IT! It’s OK to launch a project without total confidence in the tech. Your students may just know a lot about this and be able to help each other and you, and there are not many tech problems out there that a quick tutorial search on YouTube won’t fix. I’ve seen some wonderful student work from the poetry video project, and so can you!  Links Mentioned: "Earthrise," by Amanda Gorman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwOvBv8RLmo "Complainers," by Rudy Francisco: https://youtu.be/nrh1JlP8R2E?si=8BvEmi0mIr8NCAEJ  "A Poem for Europa," by Ada Limón: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgWbeDNPD6o How to Create a Video in Canva: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/videopage/createavideo  Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Launch your choice reading program with all my favorite tools and recs, and grab the free toolkit. Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. 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!

So you want to give the nod to the season, but you also want to make sure all your students feel included. Good for you! I've been privileged to see the holidays I celebrate centered in The United States for much of my life, but I've also had a lot of opportunities to see what it's like beyond this glow. I've lived in four other countries where some of the holidays I am used to are not very important at all. At one of my schools, I had the role of international-student coordinator. As part of that role I got a chance to work with kids from around the world to share their cultures through different types of holiday celebrations, like a Day of the Dead dinner and a Lunar New Year party. I married into a family with a different religious background than mine, and I've seen how it can feel difficult when other traditions take the limelight at this time of year.  It means a lot to have your traditions acknowledged at any age. But I'll be the first to say it's not uncomplicated territory in the classroom. I know I've messed up, learned, and evolved. I keep trying. I very much believe that when we can expand our cultural viewpoints, we all benefit. Of course, perhaps your school or community won't allow you to discuss or celebrate any type of holiday at school. I can understand the circumstances that might lead there. If that's the case, you might want to choose one of the other hundreds of episodes to listen to today. But if you've always loved - like me - to give a nod to big days on the calendar throughout the year, I've got ideas to share today - ways to enjoy fun wintery activities in the next few weeks that make space for kids to celebrate whatever special days they want to, whether it's Kwanzaa, Hannukah, Christmas, Lunar New Year, Snow Days, or one of the many other holidays flowing out of our rich worldwide blend of cultures. Links Mentioned: Liz Kleinrock's book, Come and Join Us: https://www.amazon.com/Come-Join-Us-Holidays-Celebrated/dp/0063144476 Holiday Makerspace Project (Free download): https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Winter-Holiday-Maker-Space-Writing-Project-3505860  How to make Digital Poetry Tiles: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2020/11/109-how-to-make-digital-magnetic-poetry.html  Holiday Lipogram Project (Free Download): https://spark-creativity.kit.com/c9338cdf76 Winter Book Tasting (Free Download): https://spark-creativity.kit.com/cc185a4a77  Poetry Foundation Winter Poems Collection: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/144637/winter-poems         

Welcome to day five of gratitude week here at Spark Creativity. Today, on our final day, we’re looking back at an interview with my friend Angela Stockman about how to get started with her innovative writing makerspace concept. She is a force of creativity, hope, care, and innovation in the education world, and I’m grateful to know her and to share her work with you.  Check out the original show notes: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2018/09/the-power-of-writing-makerspace-with.html    Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Grab the free Better Discussions toolkit Snag three free weeks of community-building attendance question slides Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. 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! 

Welcome to day four of gratitude week here at Spark Creativity. Today we’re looking back at an interview with Dave Stuart Jr. about how to help fight apathy in the classroom. I’m grateful for Dave’s hopeful voice in the world of education, and glad to share his ideas with you today. Check out the original show notes: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2019/07/070-help-for-student-apathy-with-dave_16.html  Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Grab the free Better Discussions toolkit Snag three free weeks of community-building attendance question slides Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. 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! 

Welcome to day three of gratitude week here at Spark Creativity. Today we’re looking back at an interview with Dr. Claudia Rodriguez-Mojica and Dr. Allison Briceño about just how important it is to provide students with diverse books and choice in their reading experience. I’m grateful that they took the time to talk with us, and to be able to spotlight their work here again.  See the original show notes: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2023/07/students-need-diverse-texts-and-choice-heres-help.html  Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Grab the free Better Discussions toolkit Snag three free weeks of community-building attendance question slides Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. 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! 

Welcome to day two of gratitude week here at Spark Creativity. Today we're revisiting a popular interview with Dr. Sarah Fine, whose insightful work around deeper learning I am so grateful to be able to share with you. She crisscrossed the nation in search of the places and programs where students were truly engaged in deeper learning, and she shares what she found in this conversation.  See the Original Show Notes: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2020/02/086-take-action-for-deeper-learning.html    Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Grab the free Better Discussions toolkit Snag three free weeks of community-building attendance question slides Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. 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! 

This week I’m thinking about how grateful I am for this incredible community - all the creative educators around the world who have tuned into an episode, shared an idea with a colleague, joined me in conversation as a guest, written a review, or sent in a question. Thank you!  Today we’re going to kick off a special five day series revisiting top interviews from the last decade of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. We’ll hear from Penny Kittle, Dr. Sarah Fine, Dr. Claudia Rodriguez-Mojica and Dr. Allison Briceño, Dave Stuart Jr., and Angela Stockman. We’ll explore the power of choice reading, discuss what creates situations of deeper learning, dive into strategies to combat student apathy, and find out how to get started with the writing makerspace. We’re starting with a look back at my interview with Penny Kittle for a show originally titled “A Quiet Revolution in Reading and Writing.” Find the Original Show Notes Here: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2022/04/150-a-quiet-revolution-in-reading-and-writing-with-penny-kittle.html    Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Grab the free Better Discussions toolkit Snag three free weeks of community-building attendance question slides Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. 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!   

In today’s short episode of “Highly Recommended”, I want to recommend an article I read at Edutopia this week, because it’s chock-full of the research you need to support conversations at your school about grading less. Changing the culture of grading in our ELA classrooms won’t just benefit teachers, it benefits students too. So today I want to share two highlights from the article, “Why Teachers Should Grade Less Frequently,” by Stephen Merrill and Youki Terada, and then give you the link in the show notes so you can go read it and send it to everyone in your department. Seriously. Terada and Merrill share the research around nine reasons that grading less benefits both educators and educatees (students). This is not a both-sides-of-the-story type of article. It is VERY clear about its argument. Less grading for the right reasons is the way to go. Hopefully, if you’ve been around here for long, that sounds like a familiar story. One of my favorite points in the article is #3, “Grading Obligations reduce teacher creativity and innovation.”   According to the research, most teachers are splitting their time between grading and lesson planning, devoting about the same amount of time to each. As a result, and I imagine you’ve experienced this at some point or another, many folks are unable to give the necessary time to the reflection and discovery that would let them unlock their most creative classroom ideas.  Another key idea comes in #6: “Grading reduces opportunities for student practice.” According to the research, repeated practice counts for a lot when it comes to improving writing, and prioritizing feedback over reps isn’t the answer. If teachers feel they must grade everything students do, students won’t have as many opportunities to build the pathways that lead to better writing. The big components of this article are ones our teaching community has been talking about for a long time. But what I love about this article is how it boils the ideas down into a three minute read with clear evidence and research links to back up what teachers have learned through experience. That means you can point to the evidence online as well as the evidence in your classroom when you take these ideas to your colleagues, and explain your methods to parents who think papers are meant to be coated in red ink before they’re returned. Remember, I’m dropping this link in the show notes right now, so be sure to click over and read this great article from Stephen Merrill and Youki Terada! READ THE ARTICLE: https://www.edutopia.org/article/why-teachers-should-grade-less-frequently  Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Get my popular free hexagonal thinking digital toolkit Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. 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! 

If you’re a teacher in a Title I School, you need to know about First Book Marketplace. I’ve heard about it in passing so many times, and this week I decided to dive in and figure out how it works. And boy, does it work. Today I just want to walk you through how this site works so that you can start taking advantage of its many resources as soon as possible. Now, if you’re NOT a teacher in a Title I School, and you’re also trying to find resources to support your wish to bring incredible books to your students, I’m going to refer you back to episode 56, The Dos and Don’ts of Donors Choose, where I’ll walk you through the best way to get funding on that site. OK, for now, let’s dig into First Book Marketplace and how you can get started with it right away. Are you a Title I Teacher? Register for First Book Marketplace: https://www.fbmarketplace.org/register/  Not a Title I Teacher? Check out the "Do's and Don'ts of Donors Choose" post here: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2019/01/the-dos-and-donts-of-donors-choose-for.html    Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Launch your choice reading program with all my favorite tools and recs, and grab the free toolkit. Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.   Come hang out on Instagram.    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!   

This week, I want to talk about Sunday nights. If you’re struggling to figure out how you can be a good partner, parent, person, and teacher, and it all seems to come to a head on Sunday nights, I want to offer three ideas. I’m not saying I can solve the teacher work-life balance issue that plagues our profession in one short episode, but I hope one of these ideas will help you feel more free to follow your instincts towards less stress and pressure on yourself, and maybe, just maybe, happier Sunday nights.  #1 Don’t Grade it All I put this one first for a reason. It’s huge. Let’s say your students are doing a ten minute writing prompt each day to practice a specific skill. Maybe you’ve got 30 students, times five days a week, times five classes. That’s 750 writing samples you’re trying to grade every week. Even if you just put a smiley face on top to show that you put your eyeballs on their work, it’s still going to take you hours. Instead, try having them choose the sample at the end of the week that they feel best represents their ability with the new skill, polish it, and turn it in the next week. Now your eyeballs just have to scan 150 writing samples.  Students need way more practice writing than they need detailed feedback. Is detailed feedback amazing? Yes. Is feeling like you have to give it constantly likely to ruin your Sunday nights, your holiday breaks, and eventually, your ability to stay in teaching? Probably.  Not only do I think you should heavily reduce your grading via selective feedback, stickers, stamps, and peer feedback, I think you should start a conversation in your department to help everyone consider these options.  #2 Stop Playing Email Whack-a-Mole Do you open your email every time you have a second and try to get rid of all your new messages? I did too, for sooo long. And it messed with my mood, left me with no time for more major projects, and made me feel like I was always behind.  If it’s possible for you to block off time to check your email once in the morning and once at the end of school, I’d like to plant a flag in your inbox and say hip hip hooray! It’s not your job to give all your attention to others’ priorities every single time you have a second.  Take five minutes between periods to get a breath and set up your next activity in a relaxed manner instead of worrying about a parent’s frustrating message. Spend lunch watching Kristen Bell and Adam Brody while you eat or hanging out with a friend for ten minutes over sandwiches instead of running through emails.  Email never stops, but you’re allowed to. And in case it wasn’t clear, I’m definitely suggesting you don’t have to check it at night and on the weekends too.  #3 Get Help in Key Places There’s help for an awful lot in the world these days. Is laundry a specter that makes you feel terrible all week because you don’t have time to get to it? You can probably hire someone to come in and do it for you - maybe even your teenager who needs extra money.  Is cooking a nightmare for you when you get home after a busy day? Approximately one hundred meal service kit companies would like to help, and so would the ready made section at Trader Joe’s.  Do you hate writing lessons after your kids go to bed? I spend all my time writing curriculum to help with that, and so do a lot of other people. Give yourself permission to join a curriculum membership like The Lighthouse or pick up units that you love and that fit your style from TPT.  OK, my friend. I could definitely keep going, but I wanted to keep this short with three genuinely doable ideas. If you can cut your grading load dramatically, stop playing email whack-a-mole, and choose one stressful area to get significant help, I believe Sunday nights WILL get a little easier.    Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Get my popular free hexagonal thinking digital toolkit Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram.  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!     

Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O'Neill get plenty of spotlight on the ELA curriculum stage. And sure, it's well-deserved! But they aren't the only incredible American playwrights to pick up a pen in the last century. If you're looking for some contemporary plays to share with your students, and you're struggling to find ones that fit your vision AND fit the maturity level of your kiddos, I've got a quick idea for you today. So here it is. You've got your stack of A Streetcar Named Desire or Death of a Salesman ready for your students, as always, AND you have a series of Pulitzer-Prize winning contemporary playwright snapshots to share. It's the classic "yes AND" combination that comes straight from the improv playbook. Each snapshot will let students learn about an award-winning contemporary playwright by exploring their background, learning about the play which won them a Pulitzer, and then watching a little bit of that play. You'll get to showcase a diverse range of writers and topics, and you can avoid moments in the plays which might be too intense or mature for the age of your students. My deep dive down the Youtube rabbit hole leads me to believe that most award-winning plays feature at least SOME scenes that are rated PG. It's a little like First Chapter Fridays, except for plays. You're introducing your students to a much wider world than the single lens on theater that whatever your assigned play can provide (wonderful though it may be!), by showcasing complementary work regularly. At the same time, you can work through a whole class read with rich literary merit (that your school has already purchased and approved.) So how can you get started quickly and easily? That's what today's episode is all about. I'll walk you through how I created some of these snapshots - which I'll share with you - and then you'll be ready to create more of your own if you want to go further. Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Grab the Contemporary Playwrights Snapshots: https://spark-creativity.kit.com/0c32caad5f  Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram.  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!      

This week I want to share a fabulous resource I recently discovered, a website full of short video models for acting games you can use in class. The first time I taught a play in class, I sure wished I had more theater background to help my students act out the scenes. Luckily, I was able to connect with a creative theater professional to come and visit my classes for a few days. Soon she had them playing acting games, creating scene sculptures, and generally having a great time while relaxing into the idea of playing new roles.  After that week I always incorporated acting games into my theater units, and they never failed as a community-builder and theater-bolsterer. I bought two books to complement what I learned from my theater guest: Acting Games, by Viola Spolin, and Games for Actors and Non-Actors, by Augusto Boal.  Which brings me to my recent discovery, a website showcasing many of Viola Spolin’s acting games through video demonstrations. With a few minutes on this website, you can easily gather games to use in class and learn how to use them. Let me suggest a short routine similar to what I’ve used, and then I’ll link the activities in the show notes so you can head straight over to the website for the details.  OK, so before I ever asked students to act Prospero or Willy Loman, we’d spend five or ten minutes at the start of class with games that would help them loosen up and trust each other a little more.  I suggest you start by making space in the center of the room by pushing desks and tables to the side. Then invite students to start walking around, trying to keep a bubble of space around them so they fill the room without ever touching each other. Start slow, then invite them to speed up a little, and a little more, then slow back down, then go into slow motion. Then, perhaps start a game of slow motion tag (linked) or start playing with an invisible ball (linked). After a couple of minutes, you might play a game of lemonade (linked) or invite partners to try mirroring each other (linked).  As your students become more comfortable, you can move into more complex games, or you can just stick with this simple routine to break down everyone’s “I’m too cool to pretend to be doing anything I’m not actually doing” facades.  Remember, while acting comes naturally to a few students, many teenagers are just really nervous about embarrassing themselves around their peers. Acting games help everyone get more relaxed before diving into Shakespeare or O’Neill, and this lovely website will help YOU get more relaxed before diving into acting games!  Links:  The Mirror: https://spolingamesonline.org/mirror-follow-the-follower/  Lemonade: https://spolingamesonline.org/lemonade-new-york/  Play Ball: https://spolingamesonline.org/play-ball/  Slow Motion Tag: https://spolingamesonline.org/slow-motion-tag/  Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Snag three free weeks of community-building attendance question slides Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram.  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!   

My son and I love a few certain characters from the books we've read aloud over the years. Gum-Baby, from Tristan Strong, Boots, from Gregor the Overlander, Maniac Magee. For my daughter, it's Junie B. Jones and Ramona from their named series collections. For me, it was always Anne (of Green Gables) I returned to growing up, and Jo from Little Women. Oh, and of course, Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. Incredible characters are everywhere we turn in literature, and they make such an impact on us. We see through their eyes, experience their transformations, build empathy through their experiences. Maybe that's why when I think about characterization, I tend to think about activities that showcase characters visually. That come at them from many angles. That require students to consider their evolution, their growth, their nature vs. their nurture. Because sure, by all means, let's talk about what it means to be flat or round, static or dynamic. But then let's go much further. Today on the podcast, I'm sharing six creative characterization projects I've come up with over the years, in hopes that one (or two, or three) will fill a hole for you. I love them all for different reasons, and I hope you will too. Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram.  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!   

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.    Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Grab the free Better Discussions toolkit Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram.  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!   

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. Go Further:  Grab the free Better Discussions toolkit Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram.  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!   

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.    Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Grab the free Better Discussions toolkit Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram.  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!