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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

education how to

All Episodes

05:54

340: 💬 Grading Discussion in a way that won’t ruin...

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/10/31

Grading discussion can feel like juggling cats. How can you be present in a class discussion while also trying to grade thirty people’s comments? But over the years, I’ve tried three methods that that have worked for me without causing too much strain. I call them the bump, the challenge, and the chart. In today’s mini-episode, I’ll walk you through all three so that the next time you feel you need to give credit where credit is due during a discussion, you’ve got a plan that doesn’t feel like a

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18:20

339: 💬 When Discussion goes off the Rails

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/10/29

We’ve all been in a discussion hurtling off the track and into the canyon, far, far below. Chances are, you’ve been in this type of discussion as a student AND as a teacher, and it’s no fun in either scenario. So how do we prevent it? And what do we do if it’s already happening and glaze is washing over our students’ eyes? In today’s episode, the fifth in our discussion series, we’re diving into how to deal with discussions that go off the rails. Because even if YOU prepare in all the ways,

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23:18

338: 💬 Discussion Dominators and Silent Students

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/10/24

Remember in elementary school, how some kids were so excited to answer a question that they would wave their hand back and forth in the air, lifting ever so slightly from their seat? The Hermione Grangers of 2nd grade. Yeah, that was me. So I have real sympathy for students who become discussion dominators. Though on the outside, this appears to make them successful students, it’s really just as important for them to adjust their approach to group dynamics as it is for students who are completely

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28:56

337: 💬 Student-Led Discussion: Setting up Success +...

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/10/22

Welcome back to our ongoing discussion series. If you missed the first two episodes, covering five types of discussion worth trying and introducing the Harkness method for student-led discussion, you might want to pause and go back to the last two episodes before continuing with this one. Today we’re diving deep into student-led discussion, specifically setting up a structure that will let you be successful. I’ll be sharing both highlights from what I learned at the Exeter Humanities

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08:40

336: 💬 How Harkness Won Me Over (Completely)

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/10/17

Today we’re talking about a model that influenced every discussion I ran in my classroom from my first year to my last, across grade levels, years, and countries. I’ve run hundreds of Harkness discussions - terrible ones, experimental ones, pretty ok ones, good ones, and absolutely incredible ones. Today I want to tell you how Harkness discussion changed the way I see group dynamics and why I can’t talk about class discussion without centering this model. I want you to try Harkness, or some spin off

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17:41

335: 💬 5 Discussion Types that Can Work for You, Even...

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/10/15

Discussion. Theoretically it’s the bread and butter of the English classroom, but sometimes it feels like all crusts and crumbs. How can you get students excited to talk about voice and theme, metaphor and symbolism, when they have a million other things going on? How do you inspire them to dive in together to the ways that literature illuminates life and life speaks back to the page, when they’re already nervous about speaking up in class and afraid they’ll look bad in front of their friends?

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04:08

334: The Writing Tip Every Kid Needs (that I Learned...

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/10/10

The late afternoon sun filtered through the windows of our tiny department office as I ran in to grab the papers I’d just printed. As I waited for them to finish, I examined the old books stacked on the shelf above the printer, brought to our school in Bulgaria by another ex-pat teacher many years ago, judging by the dust. One caught my eye - William Zinsser’s guide to writing nonfiction - On Writing Well. I snagged it with my papers and headed upstairs. Little did I know, I had just picked up my

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15:43

333: How to Teach a Multigenre Essay Project

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/10/08

Want to teach a multigenre essay project? Good! Our students see story splashed across so many platforms these days. Video, audio, visuals, and words all mixed up together in a daily swirl. Understanding how to tell a story across mediums is a highly relevant skill for students, and one they can quickly see the relevance of every time they switch on their phones or pop in their airpods. Enter, the multigenre essay project - a chance for students to tell a story of their own through multimedia

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04:18

332: The Rec Letter Tweak that gave me my Octobers Back

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/10/03

Welcome to the Thursday edition of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, a podcast for English teachers in search of creative teaching strategies. Tell me if this sounds familiar. You sit down to write a rec letter after a long fall day of teaching, meetings, coaching, and everything else on your plate. Maybe it’s 9 pm and you’re trying to remember all of Erica’s shining moments from the last three months. But they’re a bit jumbled together in your head with your grocery list, your toddler’s sleep

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15:34

331: Does Essay Writing Feel like Torture to your...

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/10/01

It's no fun announcing an argument paper and being met by groans. If your students have arrived at your class afraid of essays, you're not the only one. And we all know, buy-in matters. When students are confronted with a task they're horrified by, it's hard for them to access their skills and motivation to do their best work. So what are you supposed to do when you hit the groan skid? Today I want to talk about some on-ramps and side paths to the argument highway. Visual tools and modern mediums

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04:30

330: Routines that aren’t Boring for Whole Class Novels

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/09/26

If you’ve ever felt like you were stuck in a rut doing the same thing day after day, I’ve got a quick mindset shift to help. I do NOT want you to give up on whole class novels, so let’s talk about how to make them work. In theory, whole class novels are the bread and butter of the English classroom. But if you struggle to get students to read at home and you’re finding the daily routine of covering a few pages every day a total slog, I hear you. You might have heard me talk about this with Amanda

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03:24

329: Turn Dusty Old Books into a Stunning Display

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/09/24

Do you have old books lying around taking up space in your classroom? Books no one is ever going to read again? Recently in our Facebook group, Creative High School English, a fun visual thread erupted all about bookish page displays. So in today’s one minute idea-isode, I want to suggest you try one. You’ll clear space on your shelves, help the earth with your reuse/recycle mentality, and end up with a stunning display. Here’s how… Start by pulling the pages out of some old books. It will feel

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04:15

328: The Short Unit that Never Fails

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/09/19

On this week’s mini-episode, I want to tell you about a one week unit that has never failed to produce incredible results from my students. I’ve done it with 10th graders and 11th graders, honors students and their counterparts, American students and Bulgarian students speaking English as their second language. And I’ve loved it every. Single. Time. Wow, it’s kind of fun setting up all this suspense, but as you know, Thursday episodes are quick, so we better hop to it. The one week unit I’ve loved

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24:29

327: Dystopia Book Clubs: A How-To Guide

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/09/17

Let's talk about dystopia book clubs, a compelling unit option for ELA. I taught my first dystopian fiction, 1984, to tenth graders in Bulgaria. They had very strong reactions to the way Orwell portrayed communism, since Communist rule had existed in their family's living memories. For some, Orwell nailed it. Others, outraged, clearly thought he was slandering their country's history. For everyone, the line between fiction and fact in the text felt blurry. Perhaps because of its intensity, its

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02:59

326: The Literary Travel Poster Project

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/09/12

On this week’s mini-episode, I’d like to challenge you to get your students set up on Canva and help them get comfortable on the platform with a simple assignment that will give you a great fall display, literary travel posters. Have you seen PBS’ The Great Read posters, which are available for free download on the PBS site? I’ll link them in the show notes. They’re fabulous. Each poster invites the viewer into a literary world. “Join Don Quixote on an Epic Quest” is overlaid on a lovely background

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20:58

325: 6 Creative Video Project Ideas for ELA

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/09/10

Video is everywhere in communication these days, including on Reels, TikTok, and Youtube, where our students are. Building creative video projects into ELA can help leverage students' interests in these platforms toward building skills in research, storytelling, speaking, and building an argument. Not to mention skills within the genre itself, which are bound to come in handy in many fields. So today let's dive into video in ELA. We'll cover the best tech platform for straightforward editing,

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04:46

324: Try Tiny Audio this Fall

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/09/05

On this week’s mini-episode, let’s talk about how to build an audio assignment in early in the year without feeling intimidated. Maybe you joined me for Camp Creative last summer and you’ve got alllll the student podcasting background, or maybe you’re new to the topic and feeling a bit wary. Either way, this episode is for you! Let’s walk through how to add a short audio assignment to your fall lineup that paves the way for more complex assignments later on. First things first, you don’t need to use

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07:52

323: This I Believe (As My Life Changes)

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/09/03

We moved this month, and it wasn’t one of your quick moves. We did one of those once, from one cabin to the one next door, carrying our furniture and baskets of stuff across a soon well-worn path through the woods. But no, this one was an international move across four flights and nine time zones, with some of our stuff going by shipping container across the Atlantic, some by moving truck across the U.S., and some by plane with us. And then there was the cat. Anyway, I’ve been meeting a lot

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05:25

322: A Super Simple Way to Learn Names

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/08/29

On this week’s mini-episode, I want to talk about learning names, and my easy trick for mastery. It took me many years, but finally, after a year in which I had a Kalina, Karina, Ekaterina, and Katrina, I figured out a plan that really worked. I hate not knowing students’ names. It stresses me out, big time. Maybe you’re the same? The worst is when I think I know someone’s name and then it’s actually someone else’s name, so I feel like I betrayed them both. So finally, after about five years of

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19:38

321: Jason Reynolds doesn't write Boring Books

The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA ·

2024/08/27

Jason Reynolds' website headline reads "Here's What I Do: Not Write Boring books." How great is that? As with everything he does, he seems to be speaking directly to the young people he's always trying to reach. There's a reason The Library of Congress chose him as the national ambassador for young adult literature. Last year I created an Instagram series all about Jason's incredible work, and different ways you might use it in the classroom. But I've heard from a number of folks who aren't on

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