The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA

Betsy Potash: ELA
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The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA

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. 3D AGO

    An Essay-less Argument Lesson Tapping Humor & Visuals

    Students need to be able to make a great argument to find success at school, and in many professions. They need to come up with an idea, find evidence, analyze their evidence, and tie it all together with a well-written bow. Thus, for many decades, students have written essays. We've taught them to write thesis statements, organizing sentences, transitions, topic sentences, and conclusions. We've taught them how to punctuate their quotations and how to analyze them. We've typed up fixes for common errors, guided peer editing workshops, created revision stations, and so much more to help them write better essays. Then they go home. And so often they just don't see the relevance of their essays to their lives. They see argument all around them - in the children's books they read their little siblings, the political ads on Youtube, Instagram carousels on big issues, polarized podcasts playing in the background of their lives, infographics hither and yon, Tik-Tok videos trying to convince them to dump their gummy bears in Sprite and stick it in the freezer, and in a million other places. So what if, mixed in with our essays, we pushed students to NOTICE how argument surrounds them. To learn from new ways ideas are shared and supported, outside the traditional essay sphere. Today’s request for this summer's “Plan My Lesson” series comes from a teacher looking for ways to practice argument that don't revolve around an essay. This is a fun one for me, because I've designed SO many projects like this. But it's also challenging, because I've designed so many projects around this! I'd like to give you about 50 ways to practice argument without an essay, and I probably could. We could get into designing literary food trucks and arguing for each detail as a reflection of the book, hexagonal thinking for argument, designing infographics, recording podcasts, holding mock trials, creating visual research carousels to argue for an issue, real-world quick prompts with real-world audiences, argument one-pagers... honestly, there are so many ways to go. But we've covered a lot of this on the pod already, and we have just ONE class period to plan here. So instead of diving back into one of these topics, let's explore a new one - using children's books to search out fresh craft moves when it comes to argument. Today we'll explore one lesson in which students see how an author can combine visuals, humor, argument, and counterargument to make a clear, persuasive case on an issue. Sure, to children. But the same rules could apply for any argument! After exploring some fabulous mentor texts, students will try it out for themselves, focusing on the hesitations of their audience (or in other words, counterargument). 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!

    22 min

  2. JUL 9

    Re-engaging Rusty Readers: A Stamina Building Lesson

    There's a lot of conversation happening lately around student reading stamina. Rose Horowitch's Atlantic article, "The Elite College Students who Can't Read Books," helped stir the pot. I'm sure you've seen evidence of the same issues she brings up - that students are struggling to stay focused through books, and often come to you having read a lot of excerpts and short pieces rather than full novels. Test-prep, phone culture, COVID - there are all kinds of reasons, but the bottom line for you as a teacher is, what can you do about it? Today's request for our new "Plan My Lesson" series comes from a teacher looking for ways to help her students build their reading stamina. She's wondering how she can help her students work toward longer reads and more of 'em. Perhaps you're wondering the same? This is a big question, and we're just planning one lesson. But let's zoom in on a snapshot of a class that could help students move toward longer, more-engaged reading sessions. We'll start, like The Odyssey, in medias res. Related Links: Episode 196: How Caitlin's Verse Novel Book Clubs Engaged Seniors 'Til the End: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2023/06/how-caitlins-verse-novel-book-clubs-engaged-seniors-til-the-end.html How to Host a Book Tasting: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2019/03/how-to-host-book-tasting-free-resource.html  Episode 204: Students Need Diverse Texts and Choice, with Dr. Claudia Rodriguez-Mojica and Dr. Allison Briceño: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2023/07/students-need-diverse-texts-and-choice-heres-help.html  The Dos and Don'ts of Donors Choose: 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!

    26 min

  3. JUN 25

    A Lesson for "The Paper Menagerie"(and the Cultural Revolution)

    Ken Liu's short story, "The Paper Menagerie," is an easy and powerful add to your curriculum. Not only does it explore family relationships, The American Dream, and identity (themes you can easily connect to other texts as you build units), it introduces - briefly, painfully, powerfully - China's Cultural Revolution. I'll admit I've never studied the history of communism in China with much depth until recently. In college, I took a Socialist-Realist literature course that kicked off a life-long interest in how people are influenced by propaganda for me. Later, I lived in Bulgaria after the fall of communism there and my interest only increased as I taught 1984 to students whose families had lived through Communism. I visited Memento Park in Budapest, home to dozens of Communist sculptures and a terrifying video exhibit about the way the government watched its citizens. I visited the Museum of Communism in Prague, which walks visitors through daily life under communism as well as showing its frightening extremes. I moved to Slovakia, where I listened to my son's best friend's father tell me how wonderful aspects of life under Communism had been years before in the very neighborhood where our family was living. Yet despite my interest in learning about Communism and propaganda, it was Ken Liu who first made me pay attention to The Cultural Revolution. When his main character reads a letter from his mother about her life in China before she escaped to The United States as a bride in a catalogue, it woke me up dramatically. None of the other books I'd ever read throughout so many years of studying and then teaching English had ever really explored this huge event in world history. I thought of the story immediately when a teacher wrote in with her request for our new "Plan My Lesson" series, asking for a bridge to help her students prepare to read Red Scarf Girl, A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution. Since then I've dipped into Red Scarf Girl (until I got so sad I had to take a break) and done a deep dive into The New York Times' exploration of The Cultural Revolution, including three particularly striking stories: one in which a small local museum remembering victims of the Cultural Revolution was wrapped in propaganda posters, one featuring memories of folks who were students in China during the Cultural Revolution (like the narrator of Red Scarf Girl), and one about current president of China's Xi Jinping's experience as a middle schooler during the Cultural Revolution. But knowing many classrooms wouldn't have access to The New York Times, I continued into resources on the BBC and Crash Course, the Asian Society and Getty Images, which I eventually built into today's curriculum. Today, I'm going to walk you through a lesson on "The Paper Menagerie" that you can use on its own, or as a transition toward Red Scarf Girl. Our goal is to help students build some understanding of The Cultural Revolution at the same time that they explore related literature. To be honest, I really fell down the rabbit hole on this one, and could easily now spend a month building curriculum around how we know what is true, how propaganda wields influence, the cultural revolution, Ken Liu's short story, and Red Scarf Girl. And because the history surrounding these stories is so painful, and the repercussions so very real in our world, it's hard not to feel a tremendous responsibility for students to explore these questions and texts. But at the moment, we're talking about one short lesson period - probably about 38 minutes of available time. So let's focus on that, starting now. Grab your copy of the agenda and webquest curriculum: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HSG6g7-a1U_j5y1ceh7jMGA_Q3pJFn-hatKW2aRYolY/copy  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!

    22 min

  4. JUN 18

    Bleeds, Ghosts, & Flash Verse: A Lesson for Long Way Down

    It’s a rare curriculum book that inspires NO negative comments. Ever. To hear, month after month, year after year, that a certain book turns kids into readers, ignites interest and discussion in class, hooks unengaged students like nothing else has.  Long Way Down is one such book. It’s a fast read, a novel-in-verse, by the former U.S. Ambassador for Youth Literature, Jason Reynolds. In my opinion it’s perfect for 9th and 10th graders, but really, there’s a lot there for students of any age. It tells the tale of Will Holloman, a teenager trapped in a cycle of violence by “The Rules” of his neighborhood - No Crying, No Snitching, Get Revenge. He’s watched every man in his life fall to gun violence because of the rules, and now that his brother has been killed, the rules are set to snare him. Until he steps onto a very unexpected elevator ride. In today’s episode of “Plan My Lesson,” we’ll be planning a class period focused on the dialogue between Long Way Down, the novel-in-verse, and Long Way Down, the graphic novel. This week's request comes from an educator teaching a new graphic narratives course - which, by the way, sounds amazing. She’d like help crafting a lesson that guides students in comparing the two texts side-by-side, so that’s what we’re going to do! Whether you teach a version of Long Way Down,  a different text that’s been translated into a graphic novel, any other graphic novel, or even none of the above, I think you’ll find new ideas for your lesson planning today. After we walk through the lesson itself, we’ll be talking about helpful takeaways from designing THIS lesson that you can apply to designing ANY lesson, so be sure to stay tuned to the end. Grab the free Long Way Down lesson plan curriculum set here: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/1Eq309 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!

    24 min

  5. JUN 11

    An Action-Packed Born a Crime Lesson Especially for Gen Alpha (Bet That)

    Trevor Noah's Born a Crime is trending, and for good reason. I'm seeing the evidence everywhere. This spring, as I ran our curriculum book choice tournament across the high school levels and hundreds of teachers weighed in, I watched it soar to the finals in BOTH the 9th/10th category and the 11th/12th category. Then, as summer began and I opened up this new podcast series, "Plan My Lesson" (which starts today, right now), I immediately received three separate requests for Born a Crime lessons. Naturally, with this book soaring in popularity but new to the scene, there isn't that much out there being shared yet. One teacher was searching for ways to get students connecting the text to the 5 key themes of the I.B. curriculum (identities, experiences, human ingenuity, social organization, and sharing the planet). Another teacher was planning to use it as an anchor for a memoir class, and still another wanted to help students identity rhetorical devices inside while also developing their question-asking skills and connecting key moments in the text with argument claims. Is it possible to fulfill all these needs with one lesson? I think so. What we want is an in-depth lesson on a section of Trevor Noah's Born a Crime, with a focus on connecting its big ideas to big ideas in our world today and in students' own lives, exploring text passages carefully along the way for writer's craft moves and theme development. And of course, we want it to be engaging. And fit neatly in one class period. So today, in the first of our summer "Plan My Lesson" series of podcasts, let's dive into planning an engaging, goal-fulfilling lesson for Trevor Noah's Born a Crime. Whether or not you're teaching this book, you'll find lots of ideas for lesson planning here. After we walk through the lesson itself, we'll be talking about helpful takeaways from designing THIS lesson that you can apply to designing ANY lesson, so be sure to stay tuned to the end. I'll also be telling you how to grab all the curriculum for this lesson totally free. So let's dive in! Grab all the materials for today's lesson free here: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/bornacrimelesson  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!

    30 min

  6. JUN 4

    What if We're thinking Too Small When it Comes to Short Stories? (And Sometimes, Not Small Enough)

    I never met a short story I liked back in high school. If I was going to read, I wanted to READ. I wanted to get caught up in the plot, get to know the characters, inhabit the action, spend some time in another world. I certainly didn't want to finish half an hour after I began. No matter how lovely the language or innovative the miniature plot. My eyes just drifted over short story sections at bookstores and libraries like they weren't there, and I honestly can't remember the name of a single story I read in high school that has stayed with me. I know, I know, I should start my podcast with a more chipper intro. But here's the thing - I've got a new take on the world of short stories. Yes, I could talk to you about the stunning language of Hemingway short stories I discovered in grad school. (Here's looking at you, "Hills like White Elephants"). Or I could share Ursula LeGuin's unique Giver-in-miniature, Those Who Walk Away from Omelas (though you might have a little trouble keeping everyone serious during the paragraph about orgies). I could even dig into Poe, that intriguingly murky figure, with his loveably creepy Raven, and how well he lends himself to escape rooms. But I've shared about popular classic short stories before. And reviewed popular contemporary collections for teens too. Even given you a walkthrough of designing an escape room for Poe. Today, my aim is a bit different. As Camp Creative: Your Shiny New Short Story Toolbox, my summer Pd session gets closer (you can join us free here), I've been thinking a lot about different takes on the short story. Flash stories, audio stories, verse stories, graphic stories, multigenre stories. What if we added THESE to our short story toolbox? 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 min

  7. MAY 28

    The Easiest Last Day in ELA (Community Favorite)

    Last year, at this time, I was preparing to move from Bratislava to California when I released the episode we’re revisiting today, all about the easiest way to approach the last day in ELA. And it turned out to be the most popular episode I’ve ever released, with more than 25,000 teachers tuning in. So it seems only fitting that as the end of the year approaches once again, and my life is ONCE AGAIN in boxes, preparing for our move on Thursday for a very new and exciting job for my husband in the Midwest, I would share this episode one more time. I hope it will make your last day of school a fun, creative, LOW-STRESS day that gives you a chance to say goodbye to your kiddos in a way that feels meaningful and relaxed.  Lighthouse members, you'll find the last day stations in your seasonal section under "Spring."  For folks in search of my version of these stations on TPT, here they are: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Last-Day-of-School-Stations-for-ELA-13423108 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!

    8 min

  8. MAY 21

    6 ELA Review Activities for a Strong Finish

    A few engaging review activities for ELA come in handy around this time of year, as the calendar takes over and students pop off to random awards ceremonies, spirit events, and slideshows. Sometimes you see them for one day in a row, sometimes two, but getting in a groove is definitely a challenge! So, in case you're in search of creative review activities that will get students looking back over all that they've learned before a final project or exam, or just before heading off into the summer horizon, here are six. I'm going to base them on a fun review choice board I made for The Lighthouse seasonal section. So, Lighthouse members, be sure to snag it if you like the sound of all this! And if you're not in The Lighthouse yet, it will be opening up in June for new folks, so be sure you're on my email list so you don't miss the invitation. 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!

    14 min
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About

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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