The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA

As the back-to-school season rolls around, attendance questions are a super easy strategy to help you build community and get to know your students. In today's episode, I'll share what they are, how to get rolling with them, and how to use them flexibly throughout the year.  Here’s how they work…. At attendance time, instead of calling roll and having students say “here,” have them share their answer to a question. The question should usually lead to a SHORT answer – one or two words – but if your class is dealing with something or reeling from something, you could always take more time. The questions can be serious or funny, asked aloud or projected on an image slide. 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 talking about why offering our students diverse texts and giving them choice over their reading is so vitally important. My guests, Dr. Claudia Rodriguez-Mojica and Dr. Allison Briceño, have recently written a carefully-researched and well-crafted book called Conscious Classrooms, all about why students need to be surrounded by diverse texts and how teachers can choose and integrate these texts. While Claudia and Alison share examples in their book from their work with younger children, the research and practices they provide are equally important for students of all ages. We’ll be talking about how to choose diverse texts for your class, why it matters so much, and how to help your students develop a critical lens about representation when they read. You can learn more about the book, Conscious Classrooms, and order a copy of your own, 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! 

This week on "Highly Recommended" I’m sharing my absolute favorite way to start school - the name tent one-pager.  Long-time listeners to the show will know that my first ever first day of school was an utter disaster. It was probably the day I came closest to leaving the profession. But at least I learned a valuable lesson - NEVER read the syllabus out loud on day one!  A few years after my first first day, I discovered name tents. I was struggling so much with remembering my students’ names, and I felt terrible as I saw their disappointment when I was still grappling to remember the right name after a few days. So I started printing name tents for them. Then I let them decorate the name tents.   A few years after that, I became pretty obsessed with one-pagers, and realized how easy it would be to turn the name tents I loved into a getting-to-know you activity. With a name tent one-pager, you just divide the name tent half page into sections that correspond to categories, like favorite book, favorite quote, favorite type of project, or whatever else you'd like to learn about students right away.  Then, with their permission (and depending on school regulations), you can snap photos of kids holding them up so you can study them at home. But even if you can't do this, you can use the name tents for as long as you need until you get everyone's name down.  Name tent one-pagers are a three-in-one deal. They’ll give you something engaging for day one, help you build relationships and community, AND solve your name memorization struggles.   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!     

Silent discussions are a handy go-to option for helping every student participate in a discussion. They can help break up discussion ruts, show your classroom community how much quieter students really have to contribute, and let everyone think carefully about a topic before diving into a big oral discussion or related writing prompt. Sounds pretty good, right? I've found them to be gold. So in today's episode, let's talk about three easy ways to try your first silent discussion. Sign up for the colorful (free) silent discussion templates mentioned 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!   

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!