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PODCAST

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

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All Episodes

08:19

380: The Easiest Last Day in ELA (Community Favorite)

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/05/28

Last year, at this time, I was preparing to move from Bratislava to California when I released the episode we’re revisiting today, all about the easiest way to approach the last day in ELA. And it turned out to be the most popular episode I’ve ever released, with more than 25,000 teachers tuning in. So it seems only fitting that as the end of the year approaches once again, and my life is ONCE AGAIN in boxes, preparing for our move on Thursday for a very new and exciting job for my husband in the

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13:44

379: 6 ELA Review Activities for a Strong Finish

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/05/21

A few engaging review activities for ELA come in handy around this time of year, as the calendar takes over and students pop off to random awards ceremonies, spirit events, and slideshows. Sometimes you see them for one day in a row, sometimes two, but getting in a groove is definitely a challenge! So, in case you're in search of creative review activities that will get students looking back over all that they've learned before a final project or exam, or just before heading off into the summer

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08:45

378: Improve Student Evidence Analysis: Meet Mr....

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/05/14

When it comes to evidence in their argument papers, students have a tendency to mic drop way too soon. "Here's my evidence, BOOOOOOOM!" you can almost hear them saying. Because right after the evidence, they move on. Oops. That's not what we want, and I bet you've written "be sure to analyze this evidence and explain how it proves your point" a few (hundred) times. So what do we do? How do we make the idea MEMORABLE that students must analyze their evidence before moving on? There are a lot

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10:04

377: Teaching Students to Write an Argument...

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/05/07

Sure, there's no one right way to write an argument paper. It can be three paragraphs, nine, or even seventeen. It can be loaded with research. It can be full of voice and personal anecdotes. It can be intensely academic, with a formal objective perspective and thirty-two sources cited with MLA. We want our students to understand the rich palette of tools available to them, and mentor texts, varied writing assignments, and encouragement to try new things are all so important. But so is a place

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11:46

376: Gamifying Argument Basics

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/04/30

I have to admit my kids have got me fully invested in "Is it Cake?" At some point in England last year, someone begged for us to watch the show while we ate green pesto pasta on the couch after a long day of hiking in the New Forest, and I said sure. It was the beginning of our "Is it Cake?" era. We've gasped, we've squinted, we've cheered. We all love trying to tell which one is a purse and which one is a cake, and we've all exclaimed in SHOCK over those cake-based faux-leather laces. All

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09:34

375: Try this Engaging Swift-Inspired Prompt with any...

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/04/23

I miss the Eras tour. Even though it hasn't been that long. My daughter is requesting Wicked songs and Katy Perry in the car all of a sudden, instead of our usual Taylor Swift-a-thon. But I haven't forgotten the joys of the Swiftiverse. And today I want to share a prompt you could use with any poem, short story, or novel that comes from Taylor's music, specifically her approach to bridges. Links Mentioned: Watch "Diary of a Song" from The New York Times about Taylor Swift's Song "Lover" (the key

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14:35

374: 5 Top Poetry Activities Worth Trying

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/04/16

It's poetry month, and that means it's time for me to share as many poetry activities, poetry projects, and poetry workshops as I can muster over here! Today, I'm going to walk you through a toolkit of creative poetry options for your ELA classroom. We'll start with one of my favorite introductory activities for any poetry unit, poetry collage, and then go full steam ahead through poetry one-pagers, blackout poetry, great performances and verse texts, I am From poems, a colorful poetry annotation

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22:27

373: The Most Popular Books to Teach 9th and 10th...

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/04/09

This winter, inspired by cool bookish tournament projects by Melissa Alter Smith of Teach Living Poets and Jared Amato of Project Lit, I decided to launch my own English teacher-y tournament. I wanted to know - of the hundreds of amazing books out there - which were working BEST in the classroom for the teachers in our community? After polling over 2000 teachers over in Creative High School English for their favorites in 9th/10th grade (11th and 12th grade coming soon!), I landed on 16 great

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32:26

372: Teaching Long Way Down? Flash Verse, Colorful...

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/04/01

If you’re teaching Long Way Down (and ready for some Long Way Down lesson plan ideas!), let me just start by saying “YAY!” It’s a reader-maker, an incredible book you can teach in a short time with a high impact. Today, I’m going to be sharing some of my favorite ideas and resources for you to pair with this book. We'll talk about discussion formats, project ideas, Jason Reynolds-themed multimedia waiting around the web, and a creative writing pairing that I think you're going to love too

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28:06

371: Top Middle School Book Recommendations (A...

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/03/26

Today's guest, middle school teacher Susan Taylor, has repeatedly gone the extra mile to build a reading program that makes an impact. Not only does she guide her students towards the best books available, she guides her teaching network the same way, through her podcast, Wonder World Book Cafe. Today, we're going to go rapid fire through her favorites to recommend to students, and why she likes them so much. You'll walk away with fantastic recommendations for novels-in-verse, graphic novels,

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32:30

370: An Easy Win for Differentiating Writing...

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/03/19

If you've ever felt stymied over the fact that some of your students aren't sure how to write a thesis while others are ready to tackle counterargument, today's episode is for you. Not so long ago, Kareem Farah of the Modern Classrooms Project was here to share the MCP vision for a differentiated blended classroom, and how it can support all learners (and all teachers!). Today, his founding partner, Rob Barnett, joins us to follow up, sharing specific techniques for easily creating instructional

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05:08

369: Highlight Real-World Connections for Any Book...

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/03/12

It all started with 1984, as so many things do. I wanted students to see how the ideas in the book were splashed across the world around them - yes, in their magazines and ads, but also in the current events they saw on the news and the news sites covering them. So I asked them to create collages, connecting 1984 to their lives. As we put the collages up across one wall on the classroom, the startling connections between what they were reading and what they were seeing in the world around them

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04:46

368: The Glue: One Thing You Need in Every ELA Unit

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/03/05

You’ve probably heard me talk about my first poetry slam. The project that became my go-to vehicle for teaching poetry every year that followed. The book I was handed - 6 American Poets - was chock full of great poetry. Dickinson, Whitman, Hughes… but I knew that I, like every paper worth reading, would need a solid hook. That’s how I ended up staying up til one in the morning the night before my poetry unit was set to kick off searching for poetry slam clips without swearwords. Eventually

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08:04

367: Gamify ELA Review with a Colorful Memory Game

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/02/26

I can still remember the faded, chipped blue print of my childhood game of Memory. The thick cardboard squares we flipped in search of pairs, thrilled when we found a match, frustrated when we accidentally revealed a match to our opponent. I’ve played a million games now as a parent too, watching my children’s eyes light up when they rack up more matches than I do, which is pretty much every time. I think my daughter was beating me consistently by the time she was four. The memory game seems to

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18:37

366: ELA Electives with a Twist: Outside-the-Box...

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/02/19

Teaching an ELA elective that you've dreamed up yourself is such a joy. Today I want to stir up some ideas together for the next time you've got the chance to put your own spin on an older course or propose a new course altogether. So let's start with a few questions: Would you rather take a course called "Theater" or "Contemporary Theater: The Triumphs of Hamilton & Wicked "? "Creative Writing" or "Writing for Change across Platforms"? "Film & Literature" or "How the Oscars got it Wrong"?

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26:29

365: 3 Easy Ways to Help Kids Build Better Arguments

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/02/12

Like most of us, Christina Schneider didn't find teaching writing one bit easy at first. Despite her background as a journalist, putting all the puzzle pieces together in the classroom to help her students understand how to build a thesis, introduce and analyze evidence, and express their ideas felt like a pretty tough task. But over time she had one breakthrough after another with her high school students in California. She figured out how to meet them where they are and guide them through

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12:14

364: Contemporary Authors to Feature this Black...

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/02/05

It's February, the perfect time to feature work by contemporary Black authors in your book talks, poetry clip showings, First Chapter Fridays, book displays, and bulletin boards. It's also a good time to look ahead to next year and consider whether you want to order some of these books for book clubs and whole class texts in the 2025-2026 school year.boo Of course, I know you know every month is the perfect time to feature these books in all kinds of ways. But today let's talk about five authors you

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14:00

363: The Secret Sauce to Help Students Care

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/01/29

How many times have you sat in a PD meeting that didn't apply to you? One where you were learning an 11 letter acronym for a strategy you'd never use, a 3 point plan for a new program that wouldn't fit with your curriculum, or a training you'd already had? A PD meeting that was... irrelevant. In their book, Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters, Kylene Beers and Bob Probst use one word to describe a key component we need in our in our curriculum in order to keep students' attention:

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23:39

362: Art as Influencer: The Reason my Orwell Unit...

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/01/21

I've been reading Kylene Beers and Bob Probst's Disrupting Thinking: How Why We Read Matters this week, and one of their points that has really come home for me is how often the standards and the pressure to boil books down to skills leads to pulling plot-based facts and point-based evidence out of a book, blocking opportunities for students to think about what the book means in the context of their lives. How it might change them, influence them, give them something new to think about in the way

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04:24

361: Amplify Argument Engagement with a Mock Trial

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2025/01/16

This week I want to share a project idea that you can use for a ton of different texts - the mock trial. I’ll tell you why the mock trial was one of my FAVORITE projects as a student, and one fun way I used it as a teacher. By the time you finish listening to this quick episode, I hope you’ll be excited to put a mock trial into play in your own classroom. My senior year of high school, my AP Lit teacher thought of a wonderful way to spice up our Madame Bovary unit. She had us re-enact Gustave

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