This week, I want to share the daily planning routine that is working better for me this year than anything I’ve ever done.  Figuring out how to approach time when it seems that there is never enough can make a big difference in how you feel about your day, and that’s why I think a simple thing like a planner routine that feels really helpful is worth sharing. I’ve recently been digging into productivity for The Lighthouse, and I listened to Ali Abdaal’s wonderful book Feel Good Productivity and took James Clear’s masterclass on building habits. They both helped me understand why my planner routine works well for me, and why I think it can work well for you too. At the start of this year, I knew I wanted to incorporate a few new things into my week, but I didn’t want them to feel overwhelming. I wanted to drink more water after years of ignoring it, try to create a gratitude practice that felt simple and doable, and really focus my energy on work projects that I care about. Little by little, I figured out how to help myself with all of these things with my 5 minute planner routine at the start of each day. The first thing I do when I see the column with my new day is to draw six little water glasses down toward the bottom, and fill in the first one since I’m newly motivated to drink a glass of water the moment I come downstairs to the kitchen. This also reminds me to fill my water bottle and put it by my desk. If I’m going to take a walk or do kettlebells for 20 minutes that day, I put that next to the water with a little checkbox to remind me. Above that I draw three colorful hearts and write in three things I’m grateful for that have happened lately. Though I don’t write a lot, I try to think carefully and specifically about what was so meaningful about these things so I really put my focus there.  Then I go up to the area where I write my plans for the day and I pick out ONE really important thing I want to get done and I write that first. That is what my focused work time is going to go to, the very first thing I’ll work on with my freshest uninterrupted energy. It’s the thing I absolutely want to make serious progress on by the end of the day. It is never, ever answering emails.  After that I write in other priorities, trying to keep email down a few rungs of the list, because I don’t want email to drive my work energy for the day. I like to check it once and clear it out as much as possible, and then move on. Honestly, I almost never check off all of the other priorities from a single day, but I work my way down and get through what I can when I have focused work time.  Finally, I add all my meetings, family commitments, and errands into time slots throughout the day. I try to brain dump whatever might worry me in the back of my mind, so I know everything is there for me to do throughout the day and there’s nothing else to keep track of. After five minutes, I’m done and I have my day lined up in a way that feels clear and good to me. I’ve assigned different tasks to different parts of the day, prioritized what is really  important to me, and set myself up for success with new habits that matter to me.  Whatever your priorities are, taking five minutes at the start of the day to intentionally block your time, choose a key task to work on, and build in new habits you’re trying to focus on in - as James Clear suggests - an easy and obvious way -  can help make them happen! That’s why today I want to highly recommend you consider a plan for your planner in 2024, and maybe even swipe mine.  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!   

Today on the podcast, we're sitting down with Abby Gross from Write on with Miss G, who has become known for her thriving reading program and the wonderful tools she has developed to support other teachers with their own reading programs. After spending the first part of her career teaching high school English, Abby unexpectedly fell in love with teaching middle school ELA. With her switch to the middle came a new goal of creating a community of readers and helping all of her students find books they enjoy. For the last four years, she has built a classroom library and independent reading program from the ground up, watching her readers flourish with choice, time, The co-author of a guidebook for teachers, Keeping the Wonder, and a picture book for young readers, The Magic of Wonder, Abby is committed to fostering joy in learning and literacy. In addition to being an advocate for independent reading, Abby is a big believer in the power of curiosity and student-centered learning. support, and good books. I enjoyed our conversation so much - this is truly a value-packed episode. I think you'll love Abby's practical, doable (and fun) advice for building more reading and book PR into your weekly routine. Get ready for quickly actionable tips on building strong Book Trailer and First Chapter programs, creating book posters and brochures, selecting and organizing your classroom library, and rolling out fun hybrid book tastings on the regular. Connect with Abby When she's not teaching, you can find Abby creating resources, blogging on writeonwithmissg.com, hanging out on Instagram, presenting workshops for Keeping the Wonder, and reading. Check out her blog posts on Why You Should Try a Book Tasting, 10 Ways to Use Book Recommendation Posters, and Book Trailer Tuesday: How to Hook Students on Books in 3 Minutes to go even deeper on this subject. And be SURE to grab her FREE Book Trailer Tuesday Links for the Entire Year.   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!   

This week I want to talk about your work space and why it matters that you love it. Do you remember having a locker in middle school? Remember taping pictures all over the door, adding one of those rectangular magnetic mirrors, maybe a little pink plastic basket with gum and lifesavers?   Setting up my locker was so important to me those days, and I really haven’t changed much.   When it comes to my workspace, I want to love it. And recently, as I listened to Ali Abdaal’s book, “Feel Good Productivity,” I got some insight into why that’s so important. There’s a key section in the book that talks about how much more productive you are when you are feeling happy. Abdaal suggests coming back to a question when you’re struggling to accomplish a task - “What would this look like if it were fun?” For him, the answer often meant listening to inspiring music while typing up paperwork as a young doctor. For me, it often means I put a vase of flowers in the window behind my desk as a step toward accomplishing my daily work goals. It means putting George Winston on the wireless speaker, clearing away clutter, lighting a candle. It means changing out the cute little postcard I bought in Vienna that sits on my windowsill for one of the other ones that fit my mood. It means filling my water bottle and jotting my big plans in a beautiful planner that is always right next to my computer. But enough about me - what about you? What would some of your daily tasks look like if they were fun? What can you do to make the place that you work feel GOOD? Would photocopying be more fun if there was a lovely bulletin board and twinkle lights next to it? Maybe you could make that happen. Would grading feel better if you had a mug full of flair pens next to your computer and a cozy teal-colored blanket on your desk chair that felt like a hug?  Would notes home to parents feel enjoyable if you had a stack of lovely postcards you printed and kept in a little basket in your windowsill? Would changing out your bulletin boards feel better with Taylor Swift blasting from your wifi speaker on your desk and a peppermint life saver in your mouth from your secret snack drawer? These small things may seem frivolous at first. But actually, the research supports them as productivity boosters. So you don’t have to feel guilty for taking time to make your space pleasant, comfortable, and inspiring. And this week, I want to highly recommend that you make a quick list of work space changes you can make ASAP so you can enjoy your work more AND, as a result, get more done.    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!   

There's nothing quite like knowing exactly what you're going to do on the first day back after break as you cruise into the winter vacation. Giving yourself that mental cushion means that maybe when you wake up in the middle of the night over break, you can think about what cookies you want to make in the morning and which book you want to read by the fire instead of what to teach on the first day back! Because it's OK to take a break. So in today's short and sweet episode - because I know you're BUSY right now - I want to suggest an easy lesson for the first day back - the one-word project. I first heard about the one-word project fifteen years ago when I was living in Bulgaria. Struggling a bit to adjust to my new surroundings in post-Communist Sofia (Bulgaria's capital), I started listening to Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love on my regular jogs around my neighborhood, Mladost 1-A. It helped to listen to Elizabeth Gilbert process her life in Italy, India, and Bali as I tried to process my first foray into Eastern Europe. One of the things she talked about - I think it was during her time in India - was this idea of choosing a word to define the year ahead. Unlike a six word memoir, which stems from all that we have been, the one word project helps us envision the future we want and choose a way to guide ourselves into it. Now this project could be incredibly quick if you just pass out paper and invite kids to choose a word. But I'd scaffold the process a bit to make it more meaningful. You might start by having students write some reflection on the past year, 2023. What was most meaningful for them? What did they learn that they valued? What do they want to build on that really mattered to them? What would they say their theme songs were in 2023? If they're up for it, you might let them share with a partner, or add their theme songs to a big list on your white board. Next, turn their attention to 2024. You know how I feel about one-pagers. I think the combination of visuals and text can really help highlight meaning. So I suggest you invite students to start by just jotting ideas in a notebook for possible words they'd like to use and ideas, goals, and visuals of their own lives that relate to those possibilities. Then you can share a one-word prompt that invites them to write and illustrate their one word. They'll want to write that defining word in big bold letters, then illustrate it with the smaller goals and steps that will help them to truly live that word in 2024. Maybe some of your students aren't big on paper and markers? No problem. The one-word one-pager works great on a platform like Slides or Canva too. In fact, if you're hoping to help students get onboarded to Canva in 2024 this could be a wonderful starter project. If you'd like to share a basic template with them to help them get started, feel free to use the one I used for the model above! You can find it here. Once your students have created their one-word visual, either on paper or digitally (and printed them out), I highly recommend you turn them into a display! Covering a wall (with permission from students) in the words your students hope to use as guiding lights for the year can help keep them front of mind. You can even revisit them every few months with some reflective writing about how things are going with regard to their goals. If some kids prefer to keep their words private, that's totally understandable. You might suggest they tape them into the front of their notebook or hang them by their bed at home. But most kids will probably be OK with displaying their goals. If you still have time in class, you might introduce students to the idea of SMART goals, a popular form of goal setting in many workplaces these days. If you haven't heard about this format, here's what SMART stands for: Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant Time-Bound Invite students to create three SMART goals in different areas of their lives for the term with their one-word in mind. So, for example, let's say a student's one word is "Strong." Maybe they really want to become an incredible athlete in 2024 and make the varsity hockey team the next winter. A SMART goal would be to choose a strength benchmark they can realistically work up to and a time by which they will achieve it. Like "I will be able to do 10 pull-ups by May 1st." Maybe they want to become stronger in math, as it's an area of struggle for them. A SMART goal might be "I'm going to ask my older brother to tutor me once a week on Tuesday nights and raise my math grade to a B by the end of this quarter." Maybe they want to become a stronger boyfriend, as they feel their relationship could be going better. A SMART goal might be "I'm going to try to ask my girlfriend how she's feeling in a thoughtful text every weekend." Giving students time to really reflect on how to integrate their one-word vision into their lives is a gift to them, and a great way to start the year! 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!   

This week I want to talk about the literary food truck project and why it’s time to try it if you haven’t yet! Since I designed this project many years ago, I’ve heard from sooo many teachers about how well it worked for them as an engaging AND analytical way to wrap up their choice reading or book club unit. I got three lovely notes from teachers this very week, and each one had me grinning from ear to ear. I know it can be hard to find a project that doesn’t make you feel like the book police, but this one checks all the boxes. Here’s the basic premise. Students in groups or partnerships imagine they are creating a food truck based on the book they’ve just read. The menu, social media accounts, playlist, apparel, etc. will all flow directly from their understanding of the text. They’ll create the props and make the food items that will make their final display pop for their classmates, and then explain them in a more analytical paper.  On the day of the festival, students have a chance to wander from booth to booth, seeing the visuals for each truck, tasting menu items, exploring how the different books have inspired different themes, and getting ideas for their TBR lists. Because of the fun format, students don’t feel like they’re being quizzed on their books so much as being invited to share them. The final festival becomes a buzzworthy school event, and something that easily rolls over into an anticipated tradition. So this week, I want to highly recommend you try a literary food truck project of your own. You can grab the free curriculum for this project right 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!   

Did you know that in Iceland they have a special holiday tradition called "Book Flood" on Christmas eve? People gift each other books, then relax and read them while drinking hot cocoa or eating holiday chocolate. Isn't that just the best idea? I love it. This year I want to suggest you help your students have a book flood of their own, by making sure they have a great book (or two) to take home over winter break from your school or classroom library. And that means making a special effort to help your students find something they will actually want to read! What better way than a book tasting? Don't worry, I know you have a million things to do right now, so I'm going to share the quick step-by-step in this podcast and provide you with all the free curriculum to make it super easy. 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!   

This week I want to talk what to do if you're trying to help your students take advantage of the benefits of sketchnotes but they're stuck. We’re going to dig into a special video series by Sylvia Duckworth called “Sketchnote Fever” and how it can help. Students often struggle at first with sketchnotes, because they feel ill-equipped to add icons and doodles to their notes if they aren’t natural artists. Someone probably told them when they were 6 that they were bad at art, and they’ve integrated that into their identity by high school. HOWEVER. Sylvia has a wonderful series of short videos teaching by demonstration how to draw simple icons to help illustrate ideas. If you take a few minutes before a time when students will be taking notes and play one of her super short videos, like “School icons,” “Subject icons,” “frames,” or “banners,” students will have a chance to practice these easy icons and build confidence in how to integrate them.  Ask your students to keep a special place in their notes where they always draw their icons from the videos, so they slowly build a visual library they can refer to - then REMIND them to refer to it!  Little by little, students will become more proficient at creating meaningful sketches to complement their text notes. Which means that they will become better at making their notes memorable through the critical thinking and dual coding that happens when translate what they hear into words and imagery that work together to make meaning.  So this week, I want to highly recommend that you follow THIS LINK  and check out Sylvia Duckworth’s amazing “Sketchnote Fever” series. You’ll discover 34 super quick videos and printable handouts of the icons featured in every single one. Isn’t that amazing? Thank you, Sylvia! 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!   

The week before winter break can be a great time for wintery poetry. A mini-unit like this is flexible, seasonal, and easy to fit around whatever else is going on in those final (frantic? fun? festive?) days. You may have favorites of your own to incorporate, but today I just want to share three quick and creative ideas for your toolkit. #1: Winter Holiday Lipograms Ever since Melissa Alter Smith of Teach Living Poets introduced me to lipograms, I've been so intrigued by this poetic form. A lipogram is simply a poem in which a poet avoids a certain letter (or letters) of the alphabet, but I love the way Melissa had her students avoid all vowels except one. For this project (grab the free curriculum I designed with Melissa here), students will choose one vowel and then write a holiday poem using only that vowel. There are three quick brainstorming activities they can do to help them generate enough words with their chosen vowel to write a poem (it's harder than it may sound!). 2: Winter Poetry Tiles If you've ever played with magnetic poetry on your refrigerator, you already have the idea of digital poetry tiles. These kits are so easy to use to create poems, and they help students relax and move beyond writer's block. All you need is a Google Slide and a bunch of individual word images to move around on that slide. You can make it as complex or as simple as you like. Get the full walkthrough in the full shownotes at nowsparkcreativity.com.  Designing these kits does take a little time, and might best be enjoyed with a fun movie and a warm mug of cinnamon apple cider. (Or you can always use mine, which you can peruse here or grab from The Lighthouse). 3. Winter Poetry One-Pagers The Poetry Foundation has a lovely collection of Winter Poems, including Mary Oliver's "White Eyes," which I would really recommend. Its lovely language and gentle structure gives students plenty to dig into without being overwhelming. Whether you use "White Eyes" or another winter favorite of yours, why not try a poetry one-pager? Maybe you've tried one-pagers for novels and you're ready to branch out. Or maybe this will be your first one-pager. Either way, it's a great activity to help students dig into a poem and show their understanding through both words and visuals - a skill vital to many types of real-world communication in our world today. As always, I suggest sharing a template with students (this is mine on TPT). When you design your template, think about the types of things you want your students to really explore in the poem. For example, your one-pager instructions might ask students to include: a border of imagery from the poem poetic devices they notice along with quotations to illustrated them connections between the poem and other poems, pieces of art, or books connections between the poem and current events or their own lives themes from the poem along with illustrations of those themes through quotations and/or imagery a look at the poet's style a key symbol or image from the poem If students need full scaffolding, you can let them know where on the page to include each element. If they have some experience and are ready for more independence, you can let them choose where to put everything, or even to use blank paper instead of a template.   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!       

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.  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!   

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. 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!