The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
Betsy Potash: ELA
Want to love walking into your ELA classroom each day? Excited about innovative strategies like PBL, escape rooms, hexagonal thinking, sketchnotes, one-pagers, student podcasting, genius hour, and more? Want a thriving choice reading program and a shelf full of compelling diverse texts?
You're in the right place!
Here you'll find interviews with top authors from the ELA field, workshops with strategies you can use in class immediately, and quick tips to ignite your English teacher creativity.
Love teaching poetry? Explore blackout poems, book spine poems, I am from poems, performance poetry, lessons for contemporary poets, and more.
Excited to get started with hexagonal thinking? Find out how to build your first deck of hexagons, guide your students through their first discussion, and even expand into hexagonal one-pagers.
Into visual learning? Me too! Learn about sketchnotes, one-pagers, and the writing makerspace.
Want to get your students podcasting? Get the top technology recs you need to make it happen, and find out what tips a podcaster would give to students starting out.
Wish your students would fall for choice reading? Explore top titles and how to fund them, learn to make your library more appealing, and find out how to be a top P.R. agent for books in your classroom.
In it for the interviews? Fabulous! Find out about project-based-learning, innovative school design, what really helps kids learn deeply, design thinking, how to choose diverse texts, when to scaffold sketchnotes lessons, building your first writing makerspace, cultivating writer's notebooks, getting started with genius hour, and so much more, from our wonderful guests.
Here at The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, discover you're not alone as a creative English teacher. You're part of a vast community welcoming students to their next escape room, rolling out contemporary poetry and reading aloud on First Chapter Fridays, engaging kids with social media projects and real-world ELA units.
As your host (hi, I'm Betsy), I'm here to help you ENJOY your days at school and feel inspired by all the creative ways to teach both contemporary works and the classics your school may be pushing. I taught ELA at the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade levels both in the United States and overseas for almost a decade, and I didn't always get support for my creativity. Now I'm here to make sure YOU get the creative support you deserve, and it brings me so much joy.
Welcome to The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, a podcast for English teachers in search of creative teaching strategies!
You're in the right place!
Here you'll find interviews with top authors from the ELA field, workshops with strategies you can use in class immediately, and quick tips to ignite your English teacher creativity.
Love teaching poetry? Explore blackout poems, book spine poems, I am from poems, performance poetry, lessons for contemporary poets, and more.
Excited to get started with hexagonal thinking? Find out how to build your first deck of hexagons, guide your students through their first discussion, and even expand into hexagonal one-pagers.
Into visual learning? Me too! Learn about sketchnotes, one-pagers, and the writing makerspace.
Want to get your students podcasting? Get the top technology recs you need to make it happen, and find out what tips a podcaster would give to students starting out.
Wish your students would fall for choice reading? Explore top titles and how to fund them, learn to make your library more appealing, and find out how to be a top P.R. agent for books in your classroom.
In it for the interviews? Fabulous! Find out about project-based-learning, innovative school design, what really helps kids learn deeply, design thinking, how to choose diverse texts, when to scaffold sketchnotes lessons, building your first writing makerspace, cultivating writer's notebooks, getting started with genius hour, and so much more, from our wonderful guests.
Here at The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, discover you're not alone as a creative English teacher. You're part of a vast community welcoming students to their next escape room, rolling out contemporary poetry and reading aloud on First Chapter Fridays, engaging kids with social media projects and real-world ELA units.
As your host (hi, I'm Betsy), I'm here to help you ENJOY your days at school and feel inspired by all the creative ways to teach both contemporary works and the classics your school may be pushing. I taught ELA at the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade levels both in the United States and overseas for almost a decade, and I didn't always get support for my creativity. Now I'm here to make sure YOU get the creative support you deserve, and it brings me so much joy.
Welcome to The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, a podcast for English teachers in search of creative teaching strategies!
Episodes
Mentioned books
Sep 21, 2022 • 29min
162: Active English Teaching: 10 Out-of-their-Seats Activities
Beat the after-lunch lethargy with these active classroom strategies for ELA. Learn how to use stations, escape rooms, speed debating, hexagonal thinking, performance, and more to help keep your students up an engaged. In this episode, we're running through my favorite ways to help shake it up with movement in the English 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!
Sep 6, 2022 • 19min
161: The Ultimate Guide to First Chapter Friday
First Chapter Fridays let you introduce students to a wide range of diverse compelling authors even if you can only spare a few minutes a week. In this episode, discover book choice inspiration, display options, author video options, sketchnotes templates for students, and more. Plus, get some ideas for how to save your voice! I've been singing the First Chapter Friday song for years, but here's a complete take on how to do it right, with tons of resources and visuals waiting for you in the podcasts section over at nowsparkcreativity.com.
Aug 23, 2022 • 21min
160: The College Essay: What Students (and Teachers) Need to Know
Need help teaching the college essay to your students? Learn about what makes a strong college essay from four experienced college admissions officers and high school college counselors from around the United States. Play this episode for your students too! Find the show notes and grab the free companion curriculum at: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/podcast
Aug 11, 2022 • 15min
159: 3 Creative Ways to Teach Varied Sentence Structure
Want to teach sentence structure in a creative way that really helps? Try these three fun twists on the traditional worksheet. Check out the visuals at nowsparkcreativity.com. Just click the "podcasts" tab at the top of the page!
Jul 27, 2022 • 25min
158: How to Create a Successful International Classroom Partnership
Want to try an international classroom collaboration? Learn the tips and tricks from Andrea Greer, who runs a five country collaboration from Japan. Check out the show notes and find a collab partner through the link inside at nowsparkcreativity.com.
Jul 13, 2022 • 48min
157: Designing Back-to-School for Belonging, with Dr. Susie Wise
What if faculty meetings deepened relationships and helped people feel connected and inspired? In this interview, get ideas for changing the design of back-to-school with Dr. Susie Wise of the Stanford D School.
Jun 28, 2022 • 46min
156: How to Teach Living Poets, with Mel Smith
Want to build more contemporary poetry into your ELA classroom? Find out how with #teachlivingpoets founder Mel Alter Smith. Discover poetry collections, activities, and full units ready to use in class through her work at teachlivingpoets.com.
Jun 13, 2022 • 31min
155: 21 Creative ELA Lessons you can use Immediately
Goodbye chapter comprehension questions, hello creative lesson ideas! In today's episode, discover 21 creative lessons, activities, and units you can use in any ELA class. These are the most popular tried-and-true options I've discovered over the last decade! Try blackout poetry, silent discussions, hexagonal thinking, literary food trucks, book tastings, digital poetry tiles, and so many more!
May 31, 2022 • 24min
154: Colorful Vocabulary Activities: Story Tiles, Wordy Decor & More
Looking for creative vocabulary activities that aren't boring? Want students to get excited about using words in interesting ways? Check out these colorful vocabulary options for your secondary ELA classroom. See the images and sign up for the vocabulary quiz templates in the show notes at: https://nowsparkcreativity.com Come hang out on Instagram @nowsparkcreativity.
May 17, 2022 • 19min
153: 6 Powerful Mentor Texts for Secondary ELA
Looking for creative multimedia mentor texts for your ELA students? Check out these options, from picture books to podcasts, videos to poetry, student work to YA novels. Get mentor texts kids will reallys it up and pay attention to! Sign up for Camp Creative: The Roadmap to Student Podcasting here.
