On this week’s mini-episode, I want to share my top strategy for taking the pressure off you while delivering a great experience for parents on back-to-school night, stations.    Back-to-school night, like the first day of school, can be a stressful time. You’re trying to get a lot of information across quickly, and it can feel like the only way to get that accomplished is by talking fast and furiously for the eight or so minutes you have with your rapidly moving parents.  A colorful presentation that you love is great, if that works for you, but if you’d prefer to go interactiv ..read more

If I told you the elective we’re about to dive into has an “awkward party” unit, would you believe me? Well, it does, and I can’t wait for you to learn about it and start planning an awkward party lesson of your own. Today on the show, we’re continuing our creative electives series with veteran teacher Lisa Blake, who's been teaching for 33 years in Northern California. She's built a life skills elective to give her students confidence in how to learn new skills, not just to teach the skills themselves. As she empowers them to explore and discover paths to success, she's not just teaching them ..read more

On this week’s mini-episode, I want to answer a question from our community about reading in class. Here it is “ Hi all. Next year my middle school will be implementing a 45-minute every-other-day reading block for all students. All teachers (ELA or not) will be required to cover the class. I am wondering…what you do with it…” In today’s episode, I’m going to weigh in on how I would use a gift like this. If you give kids time to read in class, hopefully you’ll find some helpful ideas in how you can structure it so you all enjoy that time and benefit from it as much as possible. The most import ..read more

What would you do if you had nine weeks to help ELA students imagine the real-world use of ELA skills? Inside the unique elective wheel program at Lisa Jones' school, students explore each discipline for nine weeks before moving onto the next. To show them literacy in action, Lisa has crafted an elective with three real-world projects to help them imagine how they might use their ability to communicate across modern mediums. Listen (or read) on to dive into these three real-world projects with us. Whether you'd like to create a Literacy in Action elective of your own, or just add more real-wor ..read more

This week let’s talk about careers. I don’t know if you can relate, but I graduated from high school with a general awareness of maybe six careers - law, medicine, teaching, ministry, science, and business. Let’s talk about how we can show our students a broader view of what’s out there - and build in some ELA skills to the process.  A fun way to start any careers unit is with a careers scavenger hunt,  an easy form of research students can do as they move through their days. Just ask your students to begin noticing the careers they’re interacting with, making a list of every career ..read more

Today on the show, we’ll find out what happened when an administrator attended a student’s genius hour project presentation about a new elective she wanted to see proposed Teaching African American Literature. Spoiler alert, magic. We’re continuing our elective series today, and I’m delighted to tell you we're hearing from passionate veteran teacher Bethany Yuninger. She'll be sharing her African American Literature Elective, and wait til you hear the story of how this elective came to be - it's incredible!   Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Po ..read more

On this week’s mini-episode, I want to answer a question sent in by a member of our community. Here’s what she writes: Hi Betsy, I have classes of 10th graders who are SO divergent in skill levels. Some are reading Murakami for fun, and some are reading at a 5th grade level. I am struggling to differentiate for them and provide challenge for the strong and support for the others.” Today on the show, I’m going to offer some ideas for this listener, and I hope they can help you too, if you find yourself in the same boat. My first thought with this class is to suggest trying hard to have a range ..read more

Today on the show we’re hearing from Valerie Boehm, who teaches a Dramatic Writing elective in Georgia as part of the state’s initiative to help more students find their way to good jobs in the film industry. So cool, right? This episode is part of our continuing series on electives, which has been SO MUCH fun to record. I hope you’re as excited to be hearing from all these wonderful teachers about the creative things they’re doing with their courses as I am! (Check out past elective episodes on Socratic Seminar, Genius Hour and SciFi & Fantasy). Whether you’re considering a new elective p ..read more

Join me each week for innovative teaching strategies you can use immediately in your ELA classroom, from choice reading help to book clubs, project-based-learning to AI, student podcasting to genius hour, we cover the good stuff. Whether you're trying to figure out how to engage your eighth graders, trying to help your 11th graders through the college essay, or trying to shepherd you twelfth graders through to the end, you'll find help here! Follow along on Instagram @nowsparkcreativity or visit my website at nowsparkcreativity.com  ..read more

It's day four of Camp Creative - time to explore three types of student podcasting projects you might want to use next year! The book talk podcast, the life skills podcast, and the full PBL podcasting unit.  Remember, Camp Creative is my favorite event of the year, and I wanted to make sure that no matter how busy you are, you can just pop in some earbuds and follow along.  But you DO need to be signed up for camp to snag all the free resources (like all three of these podcasting projects), and it's not too late. You can sign up here:  https://sparkcreativity.kartra.co ..read more