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
May 31, 2018 • 10min
039: Overwhelmed? Try this simple strategy.
I didn't hear about "The Ideal Week" until at least a decade after I started teaching, but it's such a simple and helpful tool to help you cut overwhelm as an ELA teacher. It's the difference between a thirty item to-do list hanging over your head all the time, and specific days and times when you know you'll complete certain tasks (work ones AND fun ones!). In this episode, I'll share how this simple strategy can help you prioritize what's most important to you and schedule your week so you don't always feel pulled in a dozen directions. Because who wants that?! 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!
May 17, 2018 • 19min
038: 10 Ways to Fill a Hole in your ELA Curriculum
Got a day between testing and your new unit? A week between the end of term and a break? A month before the end of school and no new books left? No problem! In this episode, discover ten great options for that hole in your ELA curriculum, whether it's large or small. This is also a helpful episode if you're writing a new course, restructuring a course, or looking to add a unit into a course you've already got. 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!
May 2, 2018 • 15min
037: Cut Year-End Teacher Stress
As the end of the year comes at school, there's so much to do! And yet, engagement and persistence start to drift as the cares of the year pile up and summer beckons. What's a creative ELA teacher to do? In this episode, discover five simple strategies for ending the year with less stress and more creativity. Plus, I'll share some small tweaks you can make so you head for summer feeling less exhausted and more fulfilled. Which is always a good thing! 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!
Apr 19, 2018 • 23min
036: Host a Successful Class Play
Ever wanted to put on a class play with your ELA students? With an audience and costumes and programs? Don't be intimidated, it IS possible! In this episode, Danielle from Nouvelle ELA, theater guru, shares her structure for a successful class play. This awesomely engaging activity is more doable than you might think, and OH so much fun. 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!
Apr 5, 2018 • 26min
35: Crush it with Book Clubs
Book clubs are such a great way to give students choice and include a wider variety of books in your curriculum! Try novels-in-verse clubs, graphic novel clubs, memoirs, coming-of-age stories, or whatever theme suits you. But how do you get started? And what will kids do in class during your book clubs unit? And is there a difference between book clubs an lit circles besides the name? Join me as I talk to special guest Melissa Kruse of The Reading and Writing Haven all about book clubs. Get the information you need to get started with a successful book club program 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!
Mar 29, 2018 • 12min
034: 4 Ways to Integrate STEM into ELA
STEM, STEAM, or is it STABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPEAM? STEM gets a lot of attention, but we all know the ELA skills play a huge role for scientists, engineers, and technology leaders. In this episode, discover how to create interdisciplinary bridges between STEM and ELA through creative novel projects, nonfiction articles that will peak student interest, the ELA makerspace, and social media campaign projects for change. 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!
Mar 15, 2018 • 22min
033: Your Genius Hour in ELA Roadmap
In this episode, I'll give you the roadmap for using genius hour in ELA. Find out how it fits the standards, how to structure it, how to grade it, and where you can find an amazing free resource set to get you started using genius hour in your 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!
Mar 2, 2018 • 10min
032: Shakespeare Activities for Any Play
Teaching Shakespeare? So often we're trying to help our students understand the language and context of the era, and make a real connection to the Bard. So whether you're teaching Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, Hamlet, or one of his others, there are certain solid go-tos you can weave in to help your students get excited about reading a Shakespeare play. In this episode, find six creative new ideas for writing and performance activities that will work for ANY Shakespeare play. 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!
Feb 22, 2018 • 25min
031: Using Murder Mysteries, Ted Talks, and SNL Clips in English Class
Want to engage your students with murder mysteries? Make them laugh while they learn with SNL clips? Hook them with great Ted Talks? Uh, yeah, of course! Learn more about all these great strategies in this popular episode with special guest Amanda from the "Engaging and Effective" blog. I think you're going to love Amanda's fresh take on engaging students and helping them to buy in to your curriculum. 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!
Feb 16, 2018 • 6min
030: The Simplest Method for One Pager Success
One-pagers combine visuals with text to make ideas come alive in students' minds and memories. But it's easy for students to struggle with one-pagers if they're not naturally inclined toward art and have not previously been encouraged to represent their ideas this way. They may feel they're being graded unfairly on their artistic abilities. Some students will hear directions to create a graphic representation of a reading and dive right in. Others will moan and mutter things about "ridiculous art projects." But if students can get over their hang-ups, they really learn a lot from processing what they've read in visual form with a one-pager. This episode is all about how to make this powerful activity successful, whether or not the majority of your students love art. 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!
