The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA

Betsy Potash: ELA
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Want to love walking into your ELA classroom each day? Excited about innovative strategies like PBL, escape rooms, hexagonal thinking, sketchnotes, one-pagers, student podcasting, genius hour, and more? Want a thriving choice reading program and a shelf full of compelling diverse texts? You're in the right place! Here you'll find interviews with top authors from the ELA field, workshops with strategies you can use in class immediately, and quick tips to ignite your English teacher creativity. Love teaching poetry? Explore blackout poems, book spine poems, I am from poems, performance poetry, lessons for contemporary poets, and more. Excited to get started with hexagonal thinking? Find out how to build your first deck of hexagons, guide your students through their first discussion, and even expand into hexagonal one-pagers. Into visual learning? Me too! Learn about sketchnotes, one-pagers, and the writing makerspace. Want to get your students podcasting? Get the top technology recs you need to make it happen, and find out what tips a podcaster would give to students starting out. Wish your students would fall for choice reading? Explore top titles and how to fund them, learn to make your library more appealing, and find out how to be a top P.R. agent for books in your classroom. In it for the interviews? Fabulous! Find out about project-based-learning, innovative school design, what really helps kids learn deeply, design thinking, how to choose diverse texts, when to scaffold sketchnotes lessons, building your first writing makerspace, cultivating writer's notebooks, getting started with genius hour, and so much more, from our wonderful guests. Here at The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, discover you're not alone as a creative English teacher. You're part of a vast community welcoming students to their next escape room, rolling out contemporary poetry and reading aloud on First Chapter Fridays, engaging kids with social media projects and real-world ELA units. As your host (hi, I'm Betsy), I'm here to help you ENJOY your days at school and feel inspired by all the creative ways to teach both contemporary works and the classics your school may be pushing. I taught ELA at the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade levels both in the United States and overseas for almost a decade, and I didn't always get support for my creativity. Now I'm here to make sure YOU get the creative support you deserve, and it brings me so much joy. Welcome to The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, a podcast for English teachers in search of creative teaching strategies!

  1. 4d ago

    What I've Learned about Teaching Reading Strategies

    As a fairly constant reader for the last few decades, I sometimes forget how challenging reading can be. But then I get into, for example, a dense thirty page research write-up about the study of how different factors affect relationships between kindergarten teachers and kindergarten moms in Finland, and I remember. Reading can be so hard. So how can you make it easier for your students, as they dive into the books you share? Well, one option is to share explicit strategies they can plug into along the way. Penny Kittle does such a beautiful job of demonstrating the way she does this in her book, Book Love, and in the reading conference videos she and Kelly Gallagher share alongside their book, 180 Days. Another go-to source on this for me is Shea Kerkhoff, whose recent book, Adolescent Literacy: Integrating the Sciences of Reading and Writing in Grades 4-12, is full of strategies teachers can pull out to help students who struggle with comprehension. But how and when do you tap these strategies, especially considering some kids will really need them and others will find their mere mention a waste of time? Today on the pod, we'll talk about six reading strategies that can help students understand what they're reading, plus how to introduce them, ways to spiral back, and options for keeping them in mind for individual kids. Note, we won't be talking about what you, as a teacher, can do to make comprehension easier (like building background knowledge in advance, or providing key vocabulary up front). Nope, today is about the strategies kids can implement on their own, and how to make it easier for them to tap those strategies. 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! Sources: Kerkhoff, Shea. (2026). Adolescent Literacy: Integrating the Sciences of Reading and Writing in Grades 4-12. Bloomsbury Academic. Kittle, Penny. (2013). Book Love. Heineman. Online Supplementary Videos Associated with Kittle, Penny & Kelly Gallagher. (2018). 180 Days: Two Teachers and the Quest to Empower and Engage Adolescents. Heineman. Leong, Kristin. (Host). (2025, October 28). The Extraordinary Impact of Drawing to Learn. [Audio Podcast Episode]. In Edutopia's School of Practice Podcast. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-extraordinary-impact-of-drawing-to-learn/id1840474338?i=1000733852674

  2. Sep 23

    How One Teacher Leveraged Hexagonal Thinking for Messy Magic

    It's easy to think of hexagonal thinking as a one-and-done. But it's not. It's a strategy you can tailor to a thousand different situations. Andi Jackson, veteran teacher, creative thinker, and hexagonal thinking launcher-extraordinaire, is here today to spotlight the possibilities. She's taken hexagonal thinking, originally developed by Anthony Hodgson in the business world, and remixed it in three different creative ways to help guide her students through complex thinking toward original writing. She's about to share her stories and tips with us, and I'm positive you'll come away from today's episode with fresh ideas for your own use of this fun discussion strategy. 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!

  3. Sep 16

    4 Ways to Help Early Finishers Thrive in ELA

    We've all had the experience of planning a detailed activity meant to take thirty or forty minutes, and then watching a student close their book or notebook after five. It's confusing. It feels obvious that they couldn't have done a good job, and yet it's often not the best use of teacher time to litigate this individually with each early finisher. And yet, preparing a plan for what to do is tricky, because there's not a one-size-fits-all approach to students finishing early, because it looks different in different situations.   Sometimes students finish early because they rushed, but sometimes it's because they're just fast and working on a different timeline than the class. Sometimes students finish two minutes early, sometimes forty-five. Sometimes students finish early just once in a unit, sometimes it's the same kids every day.  So how do we meet the varied needs of all these early finishers? Today on the pod, let's talk about setting up a range of options you can choose from based on the maaaaany different situations that come up. 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!

  4. Sep 9

    ELA Classroom Design: Come Tour with Me

    I've been the first one to school a lot lately, and I'm spending a lot of quiet moments in my classroom, thinking about what's working well, what I can tweak, and how I can best use the spaces I've set up. Rounding the bend into week three feels very different than the summer what-if energy, so I'm in a position now to tell you what's working, what's a work-in-progress, and what I still need to work out. I wish I could swing by and see your classroom too - wouldn't it be fun if there was some way we could run a vast YouTube channel with just 90 second videos of classrooms all over the world? Of course, then we'd never get anything else done in August but writing a giant list of inspiration. Or maybe that's just me. I love thinking about classroom spaces, and I've done a lot of research on this, so here we go. Let me share what I'm trying, so you can see if you want to try it too. 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!

  5. Sep 2

    How to Play Genre Trashketball (A Lesson + A Game)

    "What's this?" I was crouched alongside a student on the first day of school as she filled out her reading profile. She pointed her pink highlighter at the section of genres, unsure how to proceed. I wanted to know if she liked scifi or romance, dystopia or suspense or YA. She wanted to know what they were, and she wasn't the only one to ask. So I pushed back my plans for the next class a bit, and made time for a lesson on genre instead. And it was such a blast, I want to share it with you today, in case your students are asking the same questions as mine. Today I'll walk you through a speedy way to introduce the idea of genres across artistic disciplines, a fun option for brain-dumping the background knowledge kids may or may not realize they've already got when it comes to genre, and then a game you can play to bring it all together that's not just great retrieval practice, but also helps bond your new community of kids as they get to know each other. Make a Copy of the Slides for this Lesson: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1UMIrcBKJhxxuzjE1i-AkUdQV6y4H5YQO1BvO5pkFyuM/copy 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 Get my popular free hexagonal thinking digital toolkit 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!

  6. Aug 26

    Experiments in Ungrading: What does it look like to Decenter Grades?

    There are so many ways to grade students. You can avoid zeros, use a standards-based approach, allow iteration, tweak your late policy, experiment with different categories and percentages. What works best? That's hard to say. But today's guest, Dr. Brittany Dillman, wanted to try something different. She's an expert in educational psychology and educational technology, and directs several online masters programs at Michigan State University. She decided, with her colleagues, to step away from traditional grading and its many remixes altogether, and pursue an alternative known as "ungrading."  As a student myself in several educational technology courses there, I noticed the ways this approach felt different, and I liked it. So today I'm delighted to welcome Brittany to talk about ungrading - what it is, how it can help students, and how you can try it out in small ways to reap its benefits and learn from your experiments even if you're not prepared to chuck your digital gradebook. 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!

  7. Aug 19

    16 Graphic Novels for your Classroom Library

    Recently I listened to Daniel Wilingham's book, Why Don't Kids Like School?, about how we can use what we know about how the mind works to make school work better for kids. And I found myself nodding along in chapter two as he talked about reading: "Do whatever you can to get kids to read, but it's not enough. People sometimes ask whether graphic novels count, or whether audiobooks do. The answer is an emphatic yes." I couldn't agree with Wilingham more. Sure, I've heard the argument that students need "rigor" at school. The canon. The classics. But I would certainly side with Penny Kittle and repeat the mic-drop line from her book, Book Love: "A book isn't rigorous if students aren't reading it." Sure, we can give kids only Dickens, Austen, and Hawthorne. That's an option. We can say only print-reading is "real" reading. But what will we gain, and what will we lose? It seems pretty obvious to me that while a few more kids might read classics if they're the only option, what will mostly happen is that we'll lose the majority of kids who might have started to love reading in our classrooms, given different starting points. So today I want to share the graphic novels I'll be showcasing in my classroom library this year. I'm really happy with this collection for my high school students, and I hope you'll find some new options for your library as I share mine. Of course, as always, you know your community best. Dig into the research and see the infographic and sources here: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2026/07/the-uncrackable-justification-for-choice-reading.html  Watch Gene Luen Yang's Ted Talk, "Comics Belong in the Classroom" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjvTIP7pV20  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!

  8. Aug 12

    Highly Recommended: This Free Vocabulary Tool

    You know how I love to share a great find, and this week I've got a real winner for your vocabulary program. On this episode of "Highly Recommended," I'll tell you about a new tool I just found and why it's so high impact for helping kids learn new words. Let's dive in. Word Dissector App Link: https://word-dissector.irrc-tools.org/  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!  Sources: Cambridge Dictionary Online. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/ Kerkhoff, Shea. (2026). Adolescent Literacy: Integrating the Sciences of Reading and Writing in Grades 4-12. Bloomsbury Academic. Merriam Webster Online. https://www.merriam-webster.com "Word Dissector." (2026). Iowa Reading Research Center Morpheme Lab. https://word-dissector.irrc-tools.org/ Your Dictionary. https://education.yourdictionary.com/education/for-students-and-parents/greek-and-latin-word-roots.html

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Want to love walking into your ELA classroom each day? Excited about innovative strategies like PBL, escape rooms, hexagonal thinking, sketchnotes, one-pagers, student podcasting, genius hour, and more? Want a thriving choice reading program and a shelf full of compelling diverse texts? You're in the right place! Here you'll find interviews with top authors from the ELA field, workshops with strategies you can use in class immediately, and quick tips to ignite your English teacher creativity. Love teaching poetry? Explore blackout poems, book spine poems, I am from poems, performance poetry, lessons for contemporary poets, and more. Excited to get started with hexagonal thinking? Find out how to build your first deck of hexagons, guide your students through their first discussion, and even expand into hexagonal one-pagers. Into visual learning? Me too! Learn about sketchnotes, one-pagers, and the writing makerspace. Want to get your students podcasting? Get the top technology recs you need to make it happen, and find out what tips a podcaster would give to students starting out. Wish your students would fall for choice reading? Explore top titles and how to fund them, learn to make your library more appealing, and find out how to be a top P.R. agent for books in your classroom. In it for the interviews? Fabulous! Find out about project-based-learning, innovative school design, what really helps kids learn deeply, design thinking, how to choose diverse texts, when to scaffold sketchnotes lessons, building your first writing makerspace, cultivating writer's notebooks, getting started with genius hour, and so much more, from our wonderful guests. Here at The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, discover you're not alone as a creative English teacher. You're part of a vast community welcoming students to their next escape room, rolling out contemporary poetry and reading aloud on First Chapter Fridays, engaging kids with social media projects and real-world ELA units. As your host (hi, I'm Betsy), I'm here to help you ENJOY your days at school and feel inspired by all the creative ways to teach both contemporary works and the classics your school may be pushing. I taught ELA at the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade levels both in the United States and overseas for almost a decade, and I didn't always get support for my creativity. Now I'm here to make sure YOU get the creative support you deserve, and it brings me so much joy. Welcome to The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, a podcast for English teachers in search of creative teaching strategies!

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