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). ...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

This week I want to talk about argument, and why it seems so esoteric to kids when they learn about it at school, 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 really got me thinking about my experience as someone who basically writes all day long. I write podcasts, blog posts, Instagram carousels, social media captions, interview outlines, and emails from morning til...

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...

This week I want to talk about how one-pagers can be a powerful gateway to creative options in your classroom.  Let’s start with the one-pager basics. A one-pager allows students to express their takeaways from, well, just about anything, on a single paper through a combination of words and images. A one-pager can includes quotations, analysis, key terms, imagery, special fonts, symbolic colors, and more. You probably already know that my #1 tip for one-pagers is to give students a template...

The week before Thanksgiving it's easy to feel a little scattered! For teachers AND students. It can be nice to take a break from your main unit and focus on some activities that still promote ELA skills but give kids something freshly engaging to focus on. Since I imagine your attention is a bit divided at the moment between lesson planning, menu planning, and maybe even packing lists, I'd like to give you three day's worth of activities that you can plug and play next week to take the...

This week I want to share advice I only wish someone had given me long ago - don’t grade everything your students create in class.  It’s easy to feel pressure to put a grade on everything students make. They often come in expecting to see a letter on top of every single piece of paper they create for you.  But ew. It’s impossible to keep up, and it doesn’t necessarily benefit them for you to try.  Instead, think about how you can grade what really shows what they’ve learned, and build in...

We've all been there. You walk into a class, unveil your lesson plan with all the joy and care of a museum curator lifting the veil on a new Van Gogh, and your students just... don't care. They've got their own problems. Their own stresses. They decided in 4th grade they didn't like reading. In 5th grade that they "weren't creative." In 7th grade that they needed to give serious attention to social media if they wanted to stay cool. And now they're sitting in your class,...