The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA Betsy Potash: ELA

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 they were being asked to do - radically change their curriculum to an online or hybrid one with little or no training or preparation. 
At this time, I took a course with a guy named James Wedmore about how to be more effective in sharing my ideas online. But it was really one tiny part of that huge course that changed everything. It was the idea that anything can be completed if you break it down to its smallest parts and then schedule them into your calendar. I decided to try the process with opening a teacher membership, which is now The Ligthhouse. I wrote down all the tasks, starting from the tiniest - choose a name. And I scheduled them. Day one, choose the name. And so on. Little by little by little, all the tasks got done. I was able to start and complete the biggest work project of my life while homeschooling both kids and still doing everything at work that I was doing before, when both kids actually attended school. 
So that’s a long story, I know. But for me, it shows the power of the chunk and schedule. What is that you do not have time for? That you dream of? Whether it’s getting your masters degree, planning an incredible unit on Jason Reynolds’ Long Way Down, applying to present at a national conference, running a 10K, or something else, break it down into its tiniest moving pieces. Then write them down in your planner. Make them the first thing you do on those days instead of the last. I honestly think you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish once that dream project becomes a series of tiny, manageable tasks. 
Because I was able to accomplish a task I found incredibly intimidating during a time in my life when I was unexpectedly busier than I had ever been, I am putting a lot of gusto behind this when I say... I highly recommend you try the chunk-and-schedule method the next time there’s something you want to do that you just can’t seem to find the time for that you want. 
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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 to help make your book club unit a success, you’re going to find some really helpful ideas in this conversation. 
Helpful Links: 
Ready to jump into book clubs, but need a bit more information? Be sure to grab Martina’s Book Club blueprint.

You can find Martina on Instagram where she shares more about book clubs, independent reading and writing. 

You can also visit her website here.
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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 night. And I am very often trying to argue something. I argue that slam poetry will help you engage students with poetry. Or that it’s important to build art and design into ELA classes because communication is increasingly through multimedia. Or that student podcasting is not as hard as it seems. 
But do I use the 5 paragraph essay structure that I learned back in high school? Do I use formal language and avoid contractions and keep slang out of it and always always always use 3rd person? 
Interesting question.
I often do use elements of the 5 paragraph essay. Hooks matter. Introducing what a piece is going to be about from the get go so people know what to expect. Supporting ideas with anecdotes, statistics, or relevant visuals to help bring home a point that makes the argument. Wrapping it all up, at least to some extent, with a concluding bow. 
But I almost never go with formal language or 3rd person, and the extensive online writing class I took long ago basically told me I had better use contractions or suffer the consequences of sounding stilted and distant. Slang, pop culture references, and a good GIF help me make my point. Even emojis have been recommended to me by professionals in the online community as important additions to certain types of writing.
So this week, I want to suggest that you talk with kids about how argument shows up in their world - maybe even ask them to go on a scavenger hunt for argument. 
What TikTokers are out there making an argument?
What are Youtubers trying to sell, and how do they make their case?
What Instagram accounts make an interesting enough point about, well, anything, that your students stick around to read it? 
These are arguments being made as surely as students are often asked to make arguments about The Great Gatsby, and the two are more related than it might seem on the surface. 
Think about ways you can build argument into other types of assignments, in addition to the argumentative essay.
But export the language.
Teach kids the power of a hook on a research-based Instagram carousel.
Show them how they need to use real evidence to back up the main points in an infographic, and how they still need a full sources cited. 
Let them try writing emails to the school board about something they’re passionate about, and don’t stipulate the number of paragraphs so much as the clarity of the ideas and the evidence to support them. 
I think of the 5 paragraph essay as a super-scaffolded practice round for the writing waiting for kids in the world.
Is it dead? Nope.
Is it the end-all-be-all of argument? Definitely not.
Can we frame it that way for our kids, kind of like batting practice for a professional athlete?
Yep. And this week, I want to highly recommend that we do. 
 
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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 experience, they're INTO it. They're THERE for it. And they love debating about it.

So today on the podcast, I want to talk about performance poetry, and how to use it in your classroom. By the end of this episode, you'll walk away with my favorite clips, lesson ideas, and classroom event possibilities.

See the Full Show Notes at Spark Creativity
The Black Friday Catalogue 
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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 that connects the elements that you want with a location on a template, so kids don’t feel overwhelmed as they begin to experiment. 

You can try your first one-pager with a novel, a Ted talk, a poem, a short story, a play, a song, a podcast... You get the idea! 
One of the great things about one-pagers is that they open the door to this form of dual expression, where kids are communicating their ideas through both words and visuals. Take a second to talk to them about how prevalent this is in the world. Ask them to consider political campaigns, social media, Youtube, online news. Get them started thinking about how often they see only words or only pictures, and how often it’s actually a combination that expresses ideas most effectively and memorably. 
As students realize that their simple first step of a one-pager is actually guiding them into a new genre of expression, one that parallels many forms of real world communication, they may open up to more type of creative projects in class. You may find them more excited about research carousels, infographics, book trailers, and more real-world projects that bring visuals onto the scene to complement their writing. You may find that fewer students scoff that art is a waste of their time. 
If you haven’t tried a one-pager yet, this week I want to highly recommend that you dive in! I’ll link my free templates for any novel in the show notes. And if you have, give a little thought to how you can use them as a gateway in students’ minds. It’s a powerful shift in how we see the world, and one that can benefit your creative classroom. 
Free One-Pager Templates Here
Black Friday Menu for Next Week Starting Monday (Each Button Goes Live on its Day of the Week)
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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 pressure off yourself.

Links Mentioned in the Show:
Preview the fun Black Friday week deals (including The Lighthouse $1 trial) here. 
Free Native American Heritage Month Display: You can grab it here.
You can make your copy of the guided gratitude journal and thank you notes here.
Get the poetry tiles here. 

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!