The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | 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!
Latest episodes
Feb 25, 2020 • 47min
086: Take Action for Deeper Learning, with Sarah Fine
Wish your students kept talking about classwork out in the halls? Want to tap into the research when it comes to creating opportunities for deep, meaningful learning in your classroom? Of course you do! In this episode of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, learn from author and researcher Sarah Fine, who visited thirty schools across America with her co-author, Jal Mehta, to discover when and why student learning goes deepest.
Feb 11, 2020 • 13min
085: 5 ELA Tech Tools to Try
Want the best of teacher tech? Discover five top tools for ELA teachers available in 2020. Screencastify, My Shakespeare, Kaizena, Flipgrid, and Anchor all hold wonderful possibilities 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!
Jan 29, 2020 • 17min
084: These are a Few of my Favorite (English Teacher) Things
I've worked on so many projects this year, and not all the delightful resources, books, websites and products I've discovered fit neatly into a post or podcast. So today kick back with me and hear about some of the hidden gems I've encountered in my work this year that I think you'll love. 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!
Jan 10, 2020 • 35min
083: Engage your Snapchatters with Booksnaps, featuring Tara Martin
Students always on Snapchat? Harness their love of the app with #booksnaps, a powerful reading comprehension strategy that brings annotation into the 21st century, whether students use Snapchat, Google Slides, Flipgrid, Seesaw, or some other program to create their snaps. In this podcast episode, learn how booksnaps came to be and how to use them with Tara Martin, their creator. 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!
Dec 22, 2019 • 16min
082: Innovative Elective (or Unit) Ideas for ELA
In search of creative elective ideas? Join my brainstorming session and hear my five favorite ideas for electives right now, then adapt them for your own elective proposal (or innovative new unit). 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!
Dec 10, 2019 • 48min
081: Empowering Students with Project-Based Learning
Project-based learning is messy and sometimes, intimidating. But it's also AWESOME. In this episode of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, find out how two teachers are empowering their students by learning to understand their gifts, building real relationships with them, and jumping into creative community projects that make a difference. 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!
Nov 25, 2019 • 10min
080: Let's Teach Students how to Collaborate
It's not easy to get students to navigate collaborative work well. There's usually someone who does all the work, someone who stays silent, someone who feels bitter about everything. (Do you still remember it bitterly from your student days? I do. Ugh.) Here's the thing - by the time they get to us, our students have rarely been taught HOW to collaborate. In this episode, discover five ways you can take the guesswork out of group work, and head to the show notes to find a free download that will make it sooooo much easier. 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!
Nov 12, 2019 • 49min
079: Less Testing. More Innovating.
If you're interested in saying goodbye to testing and embracing progressive education, you'll want to learn more about Ted Dintersmith's trip across all fifty states in search of creativity and innovation, and about his new project, "The Innovation Playlist." 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!
Nov 5, 2019 • 3min
078: The Quick Guide to First Chapter Fridays
Want to get students excited about your reading library? Try First Chapter Fridays. This quick episode gives you all the details you need to get started. If you've got a great book and ten minutes, you can give this a whirl immediately! 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!
Oct 30, 2019 • 54min
077: Integrating the Arts & ELA
Want to get students out of their seats and on their feet? Arts integration is a powerful tool for engaging students creatively with print texts. In this episode, learn from Eileen Landay, co-founder of The Arts Literacy Project and professor emeritus at Brown, about how to use different arts integration strategies to enrich your community and your ELA curriculum. Watch out for La Literatura de Cordel, one of my favorite strategies Eileen shares for ELA (and really, any discipline!). 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!
