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. 6D AGO

    How to do a Multimodal Flash Verse Project

    Let's talk about an incredibly adaptable project in which students experiment with creative ideas across modes. It's easy to plug into a variety of units and times of year, and ready to tap at a moment's notice. It remixes easily for Valentine's Day on the horizon, but it could also work well at Halloween, or as part of a creative writing unit, or when you're reading any verse novel or graphic novel. This project starts with fiction, moves into verse, and lands in a multimodal combination of verse and imagery. I call it a multimodal flash verse project, informed along the way by the brilliant mode collaborations of Jason Reynolds. Let's dig into it. Links Mentioned: Jason Reynolds' Interview with the Kennedy Center: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuXNsJvNaFs  Book Trailer for Ain't Burned all the Bright: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjqvOyAh36Y  Reynolds on his collab with Novgorodoff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ErpAXd7Swg  There was a Party for Langston Read-Aloud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4MYO4WmR9s  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!

    11 min

  2. JAN 14

    For Better Student Revision, Play the Matching Game

    The more time you spend writing, the more you know that revision is everything. Let me cite writing superhero John Green on this one, who discusses his drafting processin the FAQs on his website: "...I'm a big believer in revision: I almost always delete most of my first drafts (often as much as 90%). But there are many mini-drafts along the way, so it's hard to talk about the process quantitatively. I do try to save the file with a different name each time I've made some dramatic changes I fear I might later regret, so that's some measure, maybe, of how many drafts there are. The final copy of Katherines on my hard drive is called aok284; the final copy of TFiOS is called okay192." If I'm understanding John correctly, that means he wrote 284 drafts with dramatic changes for just one of his novels. Let's let that sink in for a moment. Let's be sure to mention that to students sometime soon. I tried to demonstrate some of this to my students back when I was at the Bread Loaf School of English in the summers (find out more about that fabulous program here in episode 223), and teaching in the school year. I photocopied every phase of one of my major papers, from random thoughts on paper to sort-of-organized thoughts to outline to research notes to draft to draft to draft to final paper. The booklet I passed out to students literally looked like a book. I wanted them to understand that writing isn't a matter of freewheeling a draft and then cleaning it up. Recently, I spent twenty or so hours over winter vacation (soooo much travel time) reading up on the most current best practices in writing instruction. It was a good time. There's nothing quite like reading classroom stories about integrating sensory detail at 3 a.m. over the Atlantic while the plane around you sleeps. (Yep, stop laughing. You always knew this about me. Pedagogy is my jam). A lot of it felt familiar, but there were also things that sparked new connections for me, and a few surprises, too. So today, let's tackle a huge topic together: student revision. We'll dive into the challenge and some solid solution options, and I'll hand over a curriculum booster pack to help you put it all into action. The visual walkthrough of this episode: Make a copy of the curriculum that goes with this episode: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TIxaV1lgaAJMZipDt6hgoPC6-Tz7wAi2P4KF2uSd_pE/copy Sources:  Green, John. "FAQs." John Green Books: https://www.johngreenbooks.com/where-i-get-my-ideas-inspiration-and-general-writing-stuff. Accessed January 2026. Hillocks Jr., George. Narrative Writing: Learning a New Model for Teaching. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2006. "How to Teach Authentic Writing in the Age of AI." Edutopia: The School of Practice Podcast. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-teach-authentic-writing-in-the-age-of-ai/id1840474338?i=1000736252749. Accessed January 2026. "Improve Students' Evidence Analysis: Meet Mr. Skeptical." The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2025/05/improve-students-evidence-analysis-meet-mr-skeptical.html. Accessed January 2026. MacArthur, Charles. "Evaluation and Revision" (Chapter 12). Best Practices in Writing Instruction. Ed. by Steve Graham, Charles MacArthur, and Michael Hebert. New York: Guilford Press, 2017. Wilson, Joshua. "Assessing Writing" (Chapter 14). Best Practices in Writing Instruction. Ed. by Steve Graham, Charles MacArthur, and Michael Hebert. New York: Guilford Press, 2017. 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!

    34 min

  3. JAN 7

    Build a Better Choice Board Project for any ELA Unit

    We know we want kids to have choice. As much choice as possible in creating the education that is meaningful and helpful for them. That choice can come through choice over content, medium, expression of ideas, types of discussion, seating in the classroom, what to work on when, when to take a break...there are so many possibilities! If you make it a professional challenge to start seeing the possibilities for choice, you'll find them everywhere! As I've been working on choice as a theme for The Lighthouse this month, I knew that I wanted to create a final choice board project adaptable for any text that would provide a range of options for students. But I also knew I wanted to avoid the pitfalls of some of the choice projects I designed for my own classroom, when I ended up having to create seven different rubrics and rewire myself for a huge range of requirements on my different project options as I graded them. While I was glad to give my students those choices, it was frustrating how long it took to complete my comments. So I took some of my favorite types of projects, what I've learned about creating linked hyperdocs, and my strong desire for an easy grading situation and mashed it all up into an adaptable final project with nine choices, including one that allows students to create their own way to make meaning from what they've studied (so really, a million choices). I'm going to walk you through the process today, so you can do the same next time you'd like to create a project full of options, gifting your students agency as they synthesize what they've learned and create something new. Let's dive in. 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! Sources Considered: Beghetto, Ronald. "Does Assessment Kill Student Creativity?" The Educational Forum, 2005. Beghetto, Ronald. Killing Ideas Softly: The Promise & Peril of Creativity in the Classroom. Information Age Publishing, 2017. Accessed Online through the Ebesco Database. Chavez, Felicia. The Anti-Racist Writer's Workshop. Haymarket Books, 2021. Gabriel, Elise. "Six Ways to Help Kids Grow their Creativity." Greater Good Magazine Online: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/six_ways_to_help_kids_grow_their_creativity. Accessed 28 October 2025. Gonzalez, Jennifer. "Meet the Single Point Rubric." Cult of Pedagogy Online: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/single-point-rubric/. Accessed May 2025. Pringle, Zorana Ivcevic. The Creativity Choice. Public Affairs: 2025. Wiggins, Grant. "Creative." https://grantwiggins.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/creative.pdf. Accessed 28 October 2025.

    15 min

  4. 12/17/2025

    Try this Choice Twist on Review

    I bet you know your favorite way to learn something. Maybe it's by listening to a podcast, skimming a couple of articles on the topic, reading a book, going to a live lecture, taking a Masterclass, talking to a knowledgable friend, playing your way through an App like Duolingo, attending a conference... The point is, we're all pretty different when it comes to our FAVORITE way to take in information. The way that really helps it sink in. For me, it's often about visuals and color, dating all the way back to my high school years when I created my own visual notes summaries of the semester for each class before finals. I enjoyed reading through all my notes and condensing them into a couple of brightly colored pages. Once I had done that, I barely had to study those highlight reels, because the process of making them had done most of the studying for me. Honestly, I looked forward to exam week because I could take my exams and look at my notes for the next day more quickly than I could get through the work of a normal week of school. I had more free time when we had tests, and I enjoyed my review process. Today on the pod, as many folks may be headed into a unit or term review, just as student focus is already taking a left out of school city toward vacation land, let's talk about an easy way to give students agency over their review, ANY review. 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!

    12 min

  5. 12/10/2025

    5 Creative Activities for A Christmas Carol

    Dickens' A Christmas Carol stands out strongly from his other works, but not because it's so different, really, in what it hopes to accomplish. Critiquing society, drawing attention to the world outside the doors of the wealthy in Victorian England, hoping to create social change... this was Dickens. But it's in A Christmas Carol that he condenses this message and provides joy in equal measure with distress. I've read a lot of Dickens, though I never did quite manage to finish Bleak House even after carrying it around for months, but it's A Christmas Carol that most stays with me, and that most feels like a doable add to a high school curriculum filled with many voices. At the same time, we can't talk about A Christmas Carol without considering how it centers Christmas. If you're going to teach this book, consider how you can also acknowledge the many other holidays that happen in this season - Diwali, Hanukkah, Eid, Lunar New Year, and more. I recently redid all the imagery in my winter holiday maker project (snag it free here) because I realized that although I had tried to keep Christmas from dominating, it was still too red and green. Take a look at the simple changes I was able to make (below) to create a more inclusive project, featuring imagery from many holiday traditions. And if you'd like to explore more inclusive holiday activities, you can find a bunch in this round up blog post.  But to come back to Dickens, I think it's important to use the vehicle as a book to discuss Dickens' desire to use his art to create change, his context in Victorian England, and the transformation of his character, Scrooge, rather than seeing it as mainly a fun holiday activity, because of course, many students do not celebrate Christmas and so reading a Christmas story won't necessarily feel like a fun holiday activity to them. IKYK. OK, with all this said, let's dive in to five creative activities you can use with this text, whether you choose to read the play, watch the movie, or some combination. 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!

    17 min

  6. 12/03/2025

    The Missing Piece in Most ELA Projects

    According to research by Stanford Professor Bob Sutton, innovative businesses need to generate about 4,000 ideas to come up with two or three really good ones.  Think about that. 4,000 ideas. What does that mean for our students? In their busy whirlwind days, they're likely to opt for their first or second idea on any given assignment. A thesis pops into their head? They'll probably hit the ground running with it so they can get their paper done. They think of a project concept for genius hour? Boom. They jump on board. In an era of busy busy and test prep, brainstorming often gets shortchanged. But what if that means students are spending hours, days, even weeks on ideas that don't deserve their time? Ideas they would have quickly surpassed with a few more minutes of thinking, and a quick feedback session with a partner? Today on the pod, let's talk about how can we build a better brainstorming engine into our projects, paper processes, and units. We're going to take a peek at two quick case studies today - one in a classroom full of students just getting started on a podcast project, and another from my experience working on a concept for PD. Want to go Deeper? Check out this guide to Brainstorming from the Stanford d.School: https://hci.stanford.edu/courses/cs247/2011/readings/dschool-brainstorming.pdf  Watch the Masters of Creativity Series from Stanford: https://www.youtube.com/@stanfordsmastersofcreativi9905/playlists  Sources: Potash, Betsy. "Research-Based Practices to Ignite Creativity, with Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle." The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, Episode 393. Pringle, Zorana Ivcevic. The Creativity Choice. Public Affairs, 2025. Utley, Jeremy and Kathryn Segovia. "Masters of Creativity: Updating the Creative Operating System (Design Thinking)." Stanford d.School Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggza7df7N7Y&t=2233s. Accessed October 17, 2025. 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!

    17 min

  7. 11/19/2025

    5 Hexagonal Thinking Minis (Try One Tomorrow!)

    It's easy to think of hexagonal thinking as a big event, a full-class activity that you set up and run for a whole period. But once your students know how to use this tool, it could come in handy in lots of other ways. Especially if you keep some blank hexagons on hand in your classroom. In today's short episode, I want to share five ten-minute hexagonal thinking activities you could use in your ELA classroom any old time, but my hope is that after hearing these ten, you'll realize there are hundreds more waiting. This is a tool you can reach for time and again, to help students warm-up for discussion, look at things in a new way, or organize their thinking, their research, or their ideas in the midst of all types of units. For today's examples, I'm going to use Trevor Noah's memoir, Born a Crime, as an example text. Facing History & Ourselves has his chapter,"Chameleon," available online here, if you're intrigued and want to learn more. 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!

    18 min

  8. 11/12/2025

    Make Your Space a Partner with Flexible Resources

    You know how some spaces just make you feel excited to DO something? Whether it's a Cricut getting your wheels spinning with what-ifs, beautiful shelves of paint inviting you to decorate holiday pottery, or a giant stack of cookbooks suddenly causing you to wonder if it's time to fill the cookie jar, well-organized resources in a creative space can help bring out your creative side. Today, let's talk about how to choose and organize flexible resources for your ELA classroom, anytime you've got the budget and bandwidth. (Check out this post on how to use Donors Choose, if your budget is continuously falling short of your needs). Ooh, one more thing before we start. Throughout this podcast, I'm showcasing graphics and displays from the #evolvingEDdesign Toolkit, a vast free resource I made for you. You can grab it here. 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!  Links: The (Vast) Ed Design (Free) Toolkit: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/evolvingEDdesign  The Do's and Don'ts of Donors Choose: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2019/01/the-dos-and-donts-of-donors-choose-for.html  The Power of the Writing Makerspace: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2018/09/the-power-of-writing-makerspace-with.html  The Ed Deck: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/The-Ed-Deck-Lesson-Plan-Inspiration-ELA-Activities-and-Projects-Editable-5106443  Sources Considered, Consulted, and Cited for this Series & for the Toolkit: Abdaal, Ali. Feel Good Productivity. Celadon Books, 2023. "Aesthetics and Academic Spaces." Teachers College, Columbia University Youtube Channel: Curriculum Encounters Podcast, Episode 4. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuFs4Fyk-v0Bwtuy1eQJ3JkRTeL4Sjyz4 Accessed Oct. 21, 2025.  Chavez, Felicia. The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop. Haymarket Books, 2021. Dintersmith, Ted. Documentary: Most Likely to Succeed. 2015.  Dintersmith, Ted. What Schools Could Be. Princeton University Press, 2018.  Doorley, Scott & Witthoft, Doorley. make space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration. John Wiley and Sons, 2012. "Exploring Google's Headquarters in San Francisco." Digiprith Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxGqbmFf9Qc. Accessed October 13, 2015.  "High Tech High Virtual Tour." High Tech High Unboxed Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87xU9smFrj0 . Accessed October 15, 2025. "Inside YouTube's Biggest Office In America | Google's YouTube Headquarters Office Tour." The Roaming Jola Youtube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P26fDfFBx8I . Accessed October 14, 2025. Novak, Katie. Universal Design for Learning in English Language Arts. Cast Inc., 2023. Potash, Betsy. "Research-Based Practices to Ignite Creativity, with Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle." The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, Episode 393. Pringle,  Zorana Ivcevic. The Creativity Choice. Public Affairs, 2025. Ritchart, Ron and David Perkins. "Making Thinking Visible." Educational Leadership, February 2008, p.p. 57-61. https://pz.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/makingthinkingvisibleEL.pdf. Accessed October 13, 2025. Richardson, Carmen and Punya Mishra. "Scale: Support of Creativity in a Learning Environment," 2017. Accessed through Drive with permission. Richardson, Carmen and Punya Mishra. "Learning environments that support student creativity: Developing the SCALE." Thinking Skills and Creativity, Volume 27, March 2018, p.p. 45-54. Accessed online at https://doi-org.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/10.1016/j.tsc.2017.11.004, October 13, 2025. "Sensory Inquiry and Social Spaces." Teachers College, Columbia University Youtube Channel: Curriculum Encounters Podcast, Episode 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtD_-k5QmOQ&list=PLuFs4Fyk-v0Bwtuy1eQJ3JkRTeL4Sjyz4&index=2  Accessed Oct. 23, 2025.  Stockman, Angela. Make Writing: 5 Strategies that turn Writer's Workshop into a Maker Space. Hack Learning Series, 2015.   Terada, Yuki. "Do Fidgets help Students Focus?" Edutopia Online: https://www.edutopia.org/article/do-fidgets-help-students-focus/. Accessed 4 November 2025. Utley, Jeremy. "Masters of Creativity (Education Edition) #1: Input Obsession (Design Thinking)." Stanford d.School Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LosDd3Q0yQw . Accessed October 15, 2025. Utley, Jeremy and Kathryn Segovia. "Masters of Creativity: Updating the Creative Operating System (Design Thinking)." Stanford d.School Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggza7df7N7Y&t=2233s. Accessed October 17, 2025. "What is Curriculum and Where Might we Find It?" Teachers College, Columbia University Youtube Channel: Curriculum Encounters Podcast, Episode 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh_UhGATVwM&list=PLuFs4Fyk-v0Bwtuy1eQJ3JkRTeL4Sjyz4&index=1 Accessed Oct. 23, 2025.

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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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