This week I’m sharing an idea from Penny Kittle that is so lovely and adaptable, I’m sure you can find a wonderful way to use it - the "Beautiful Words" project.  Penny Kittle often shares strategies that involve looking to writing for inspiration and beauty. I’ve learned a lot from her about how to make mentor texts valuable, and how they are EVERYWHERE. One of her prompts to students is that they search out beautiful words as they read the books they're reading in book club, and write them down in their notebooks. She shares vivid examples of students who have drawn out their beautiful words with striking representations in color and sketching.  I recently tried this project out for myself and loved it. It’s endlessly adaptable. Here are just a few ways you could use Penny’s idea: Give students five minutes to find and sketchnote the most beautiful words they can from the reading prior to a whole class discussion, then invite pairs to share with each other and then someone to share with the whole class to begin a conversation around the writer’s style and word choice Invite partners to find and illustrate beautiful words from the whole class text to put up on the wall, then use them as writing prompts to practice different types of sentences or writing strategies Let the search for and sharing of beautiful words operate as a check-in and conversation starter to accompany book club reading, independent reading, or summer reading Run a beautiful words contest in your school library and put all the entries up on a gallery wall and let people vote secretly for their favorites However you use it, I highly recommend Penny’s “Beautiful Words” project! See examples from Penny Kittle's website here.  And here's my example... 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!     

I know how it is. One minute you're paddleboarding along the lake, the next your mind is back-to-school as you consider whether to add book clubs in September, buy new plants for your windowsills, or try to fight a Jason Reynolds book into your 9th grade team curriculum (Yes! Do it!). Don't try to tell me that's not you, because here you are, reading this teaching blog in July. It's nothing to feel bad about! Mixing a little fun creative work into summer relaxation is allowed. So is taking the summer 100% completely off of course - whatever works for you! But if you're looking for some ideas, things you can put into place right now this minute so that the year is exponentially easier and nicer, you've come to the right place. Because today, I'm sharing some fun favorites you can put into place now so you can enjoy them all through the school year. Looking for the syllabus templates, attendance questions, and other activities mentioned in the show? Visit the full blog post on the 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!   

A few years ago I read Sarah Fine and Jal Mehta’s book, In Search of Deeper Learning. These two researchers criss-crossed the country, searching out schools, programs, and classes where deeper learning was truly taking place behind the marketing hype about how “innovative” the school aimed to be.  One of the key concepts that stayed with me was an idea they shared from another education writer named David Perkins, who argues that students need to “play the whole game at the junior level.” Mehta and Fine found that when students played the whole game, more deeper learning took place.  So what the heck does that mean? Think of a baseball game full of six year olds. They don’t really know how to play, right? They could probably spend years just practicing batting, throwing, and catching before their games would be very meaningful. But why do kids want to play? They want to be in games! They come to practice and work on their swing and their fielding and deal with the mosquitos and the occasional boredom BECAUSE there’s a game on Saturday. With cool uniforms and their parents in the stands and maybe chocolate-covered frozen bananas afterwards. Do you think as many kids would sign up for little league if their first game was going to be when they turned 18?  I bet you’re already making the connection. When we practice skills with our English students, it helps a whole lot if they can see why they’re practicing those ELA skills and if they’re going to have a chance to put them into action in a way that parallels something they might do later on in the real world.  I highly recommend thinking about how you might build a few more “games” into your ELA curriculum, or if you’re already building English units this way, how you might use this powerful research to help explain to others why you do the projects you do. 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!   

As I sat in the warm theater watching my son's sixth grade class recount their favorite memories of school last week, I couldn't help but notice how many of them involved a field trip. Probably 95% of the kids' recollections revolved around special, memorable events that didn't happen every week - a trip to Austria, a trip to the river, a trip to a kitchen space where they learned to cook a lunch and then eat it following a project-based-learning unit on restaurant design. I remember field trips from my school experience too - to learn about wolves at Minnesota's Wolf Center in 5th grade, to hike through snowy fields and see the stars on a seventh grade overnight, to examine the inside of a mine on Minnesota's Iron Range when I got older. A field trip is a powerful thing, and it can come in so many forms. Today, I want to share some ideas for field trips you can take without a bus, and without a budget. Because I know both can be hard to come by. But that doesn't mean you can't set up some truly broadening experiences for your students from right within your classroom walls. Let's talk about virtual field trips, because there are a lot more options out there than you might think! Whether they're already curated online, waiting for you to design a webquest around them, or even shared in person over Zoom by a museum curator or an author in their studio. Visit the sites mentioned in today's show... Link: Holocaust Museum of LA Free Virtual Tours for Students Native Knowledge 360 Education Initiative Link: Google Arts and Culture  Link: "Discover Civil Rights History," "Risking it All and Riding for Freedom," and "Sitting Down to Take a Stand." Link: Globe Virtual Tour Link: Nat Geo Experiential Learning   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 on "Highly Recommended," I’m sharing my absolute favorite tool on the internet, which just so happens to be free for educators - CANVA!   So here’s what Canva does - it give you (and your students) the ability to do the kinds of things that only designers used to be able to do. Once upon a time, you needed to spend fifty hours learning Photoshop to layer colors and images, get rid of backgrounds, match image colors to font colors, and so many other small strategies that made a visual project look professional.  And now you don’t. You can design handouts, flashcards, games,  models, web graphics, and classroom newsletters in a flash using Canva templates. And your students can get results they’ll feel proud of as they create podcast covers, illustrated quotations, graphic novels, children’s books, infographics, social media posts, and more.  Canva design has a lot in common with Powerpoint and Slides, they’ve kept the menus relatively simple so you can create without feeling overwhelmed. The best way to learn how to use it is to go in and experiment, and then if there’s something you can’t figure out how to do, you just Google your question “How to remove a background in Canva,” etc. Soooooo many people are using it now that you’ll quickly find answers to your questions, as a million or so other people are asking the same ones.  Summer is a perfect time to register for a free account and start experimenting.  Visit Canva for Education 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!   

Today on the podcast, I’ve got a great story for you. It’s the story of how one senior class stayed engaged right up to the end through an incredible book club unit on verse novels. The heroine of this story? English teacher Caitlin Lore. She’s about to tell you how she captured her seniors’ attention and held it. Wait till you hear about her title selections, her book tasting, her pop-up poetry workshops, her book club meetings, and her poetry Palooza! I think you’re going to love this episode! Ooh, one more thing. You’ll hear Caitlin mention some special resources she used for this unit from The Lighthouse. If you’re listening/reading as this comes out, I want to tell you that The Lighthouse, my teacher membership full of hundreds of creative lessons and projects to inspire you and save you time, is open until tomorrow night. 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!   

So here’s the thing. High school kids have about 10,000 things on their agenda just above going to the library to pick out a book. And if they do make it to the library, the librarian (through no fault of their own!) likely won’t know them well enough to help them get the book that is going to have them flipping the pages at midnight when they know they should be asleep but the plot is just so amazing they can’t help but read.  These days I see a classroom library as an absolutely essential part of any high school ELA classroom. They can all be books borrowed from the school library - in fact, that’s pretty much always what I did when I was first getting started with choice reading. Or they can be books you gather over the years through donations, book sales, garage sales, and Donors Choose projects. Having books right in your classroom that students can borrow and read in your choice reading program makes a huge difference. Especially if you can showcase some of them covers out and incorporate them into your choice reading system with book talks and fun displays.  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 Laura Lee Gulledge, the graphic novelist behind The Dark Matter of Mona Starr. She's an Eisner Award nominated cartoonist, teaching artist, musical librettist, and collaborative muralist based in Charlottesville, VA. Her books include YA graphic novels The Dark Matter of Mona Starr, Page by Paige, Will & Whit, and the interactive Sketchbook Dares: 24 Ways to Draw Out Your Inner Artist. If you've ever wondered where to start with getting students drawing and creating their own graphic stories and mini-comics, today's episode is for you! Laura Lee has generously shared ideas and materials for four different creative lessons you can try with your classes. We're diving into her graphic novel - The Dark Matter of Mona Starr, her creation process, and a wide range of activity ideas for class. Quick Links for two of the storytelling activities:  You can find the materials for the mini-comic project on Laura Lee's website here.   Laura Lee's "Draw Darkness" (grab it 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!  

Do you know about Libro FM's free audiobook program for educators?  It's easy to sign up - they approved me in just one day!  You can register for a free account and sign up here.  Once you’ve enrolled in the ALC program, you’ll quickly build an audiobook library in your account. Even if only a few books a month in the educator program feel exactly right for your classroom, that could be 30+ books a year you’re adding to your device, for free. Then you can use them for First Chapter Fridays, a classroom audiobook listening station, to preview books you might want to order in paper copy for your library, and just for your own joy! I HIGHLY recommend you take a minute to sign up today, and you can always figure out how to use all your books later. The sooner you sign up, the sooner you can start building an audiobook library to use later on!  You might also want to tune into episode 166, How to Build an Audiobook Listening Station for your Classroom.    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!   

Interactive wall displays are one of my favorite new things. Adding a QR code to a poster gives students the opportunity to take things further. If you've been hanging out with me this year, you know I've created interactive displays for you to celebrate Black History Month, Women's History Month, and AAPI Heritage month. Now it's Pride Month, and I've got another one for you. Maybe you're already out of school, or maybe you've still got a few weeks left (here's looking at you, New York teachers). Whether you use it now, or put it up to celebrate LGBTQ+ creators throughout the year, this new interactive pride display features ten creative LGBTQ+ authors to share with your students. Today on the pod, I'm going to introduce you to a few of these creators, so you know more about what's behind the display. If you already get my emails each week, you'll be getting this display on Friday. If not, you can sign up for the free display in the blog post here.  Here's who we're talking about... Erika Sanchez Becky Albertelli Alice Oseman Rainbow Rowell Adam Silvera   REGISTER FOR CAMP CREATIVE NEXT WEEK   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!