The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA

443: 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 wr

442: 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

441: 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.

440: 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 c

439: 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 gen

438: 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 categori

437: 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 kid

436: 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

435: Start the Year with these AI Conversation Stations

If you joined us for Camp Creative last week, you know we spent one of our days focused on AI. I shared a variety of activities to help students consider, discuss, and wr

434: What I'll be Doing on the First Day of School

My first first day of school, as you probably know, did not go well. Unless you count laying on the floor of my office crying at the end of the day "going well." It was t

433: The Uncrackable Justification for Choice Reading

So here's the thing. I know I talk a lot about reading. It's pretty important to me. But all week I've been trying to prepare a different podcast, one NOT about the uncra

432: ELA Classroom Design: What to Put on your Walls this Fall

I'm not going to lie, the prospect of getting to set up a classroom space after years of dreaming about that very task is one of the reasons I'm headed back into the clas

431: Highly Recommended: This Vehicle for AI in ELA Conversations

So I've been working on the materials for Camp Creative: Your Back-to-School Kickoff Kit, this year's iteration of the free summer PD I run every year. (By the way, you c

430: What you Need to Know about Design Thinking for ELA

Design thinking is a framework for creating things. And creating things, as Semour Papert argued in his theory of constructionism, is the kind of "hard fun" that engages

429: Don't Miss this Essential Lesson on Multimodality

Recently I was invited to give a poetry workshop on a reflection day at a local school. They wanted the writing element of the day to help students understand themselves

428: Start a Classroom Library With Me

So maybe you already know I'll be teaching a section of ninth grade next year to help a local school fill a hole. Want to know what I was doing at 11 pm the night after I

427: Try this Colorful Maker Tool: Digital Idea Blocks

Walk into an expensive "Innovation Lab" or High Tech Cutting Edge University Makerspace, and you'll probably see a laser cutter, a 3D printer or two, all kinds of expensi

426: I Read 17 PD Books this Year so You Don't Have to

I often see conversations online at this time of year about PD books worth reading over the summer. Maybe your PLC is looking for a good read, or you want to take somethi

425: 5 Engaging Ways to Review in the Final Days

The countdowns are on all over the place, and that means in many classrooms, it's time to review. So let's dive into a lightning round of review ideas to help you come up

424: Ready. Set. Engage with Dystopia!

Years ago, Teri Lesegne wrote a book called Reading Ladders, about meeting readers where they are and then guiding them to new heights. It's a lovely image. I've got my o