382: An Action-Packed Born a Crime Lesson Especially for Gen Alpha (Bet That)
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
Release Date: 06/11/2025
406: Try this Choice Twist on Review
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
I bet you know your favorite way to learn something. Maybe it's by listening to a podcast, skimming a couple of articles on the topic, reading a book, going to a live lecture, taking a Masterclass, talking to a knowledgable friend, playing your way through an App like Duolingo, attending a conference... The point is, we're all pretty different when it comes to our FAVORITE way to take in information. The way that really helps it sink in. For me, it's often about visuals and color, dating all the way back to my high school years when I created my own visual notes summaries of the semester...
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405: 5 Creative Activities for A Christmas Carol
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
Dickens' A Christmas Carol stands out strongly from his other works, but not because it's so different, really, in what it hopes to accomplish. Critiquing society, drawing attention to the world outside the doors of the wealthy in Victorian England, hoping to create social change... this was Dickens. But it's in A Christmas Carol that he condenses this message and provides joy in equal measure with distress. I've read a lot of Dickens, though I never did quite manage to finish Bleak House even after carrying it around for months, but it's A Christmas Carol that most stays with me, and that...
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404: The Missing Piece in Most ELA Projects
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
According to , innovative businesses need to generate about 4,000 ideas to come up with two or three really good ones. Think about that. 4,000 ideas. What does that mean for our students? In their busy whirlwind days, they're likely to opt for their first or second idea on any given assignment. A thesis pops into their head? They'll probably hit the ground running with it so they can get their paper done. They think of a project concept for genius hour? Boom. They jump on board. In an era of busy busy and test prep, brainstorming often gets shortchanged. But what if that means...
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403: 5 Hexagonal Thinking Minis (Try One Tomorrow!)
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
It's easy to think of hexagonal thinking as a big event, a full-class activity that you set up and run for a whole period. But once your students know how to use this tool, it could come in handy in lots of other ways. Especially if you keep some blank hexagons on hand in your classroom. In today's short episode, I want to share five ten-minute hexagonal thinking activities you could use in your ELA classroom any old time, but my hope is that after hearing these ten, you'll realize there are hundreds more waiting. This is a tool you can reach for time and again, to help students warm-up for...
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402: Make Your Space a Partner with Flexible Resources
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
You know how some spaces just make you feel excited to DO something? Whether it's a Cricut getting your wheels spinning with what-ifs, beautiful shelves of paint inviting you to decorate holiday pottery, or a giant stack of cookbooks suddenly causing you to wonder if it's time to fill the cookie jar, well-organized resources in a creative space can help bring out your creative side. Today, let's talk about how to choose and organize flexible resources for your ELA classroom, anytime you've got the budget and bandwidth. (Check out , if your budget is continuously falling short of your needs)....
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401: Easy Wins on the Sensory Dashboard (yes, in ELA!)
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
The other day I found myself walking through a parking garage stairwell in Iowa City, and I realized they were using the same scent design as the local mall in Bratislava where we used to live. Half-shocked, half-amused, I climbed the cement stairs as I remembered riding the escalator through the same subtle scent cloud two years ago. The memory was visceral. Though we don't always think about it, our sensory experiences have a strong impact on how we feel and how we work. I do my best work in a situation where I feel comfortable. In fact, I generally prefer not to work at home because step...
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400: #evolvingEDdesign: Giving Students Real Agency
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
Imagine you and I were about to make a dinner together. Now, I bring a love of baking to our project, and a decently strong roast chicken game. But I don't want to dominate the conversation too much. "Let's make roast chicken and vegetables," I say, "and cookies." Your face falls a little. "Oh, but you can choose which vegetables we roast, and what kind of cookies - I have M & Ms AND chocolate chips." Perhaps you love making bibimbap, tagine, paella, tacos, or BBQ pork. Maybe you've got three Ottolenghi cookbooks in your bag and you were about to suggest a middle eastern buffet followed...
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399: #evolvingEDdesign: Crafting a Flexible Classroom
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
My first classroom was a little blue trailer on the edge of the soccer field. Every morning, I got my shoes clogged with mud hiking across the field, but I loved my corner of campus, and I felt pretty free to design it to work best for my students. And it turned out that what really worked best was constant change. Our desks were attached to our chairs, so to move one was to move both. And move them I did, frequently working up a sweat between classes as I threw them around the room as quickly as I could, moving from circular discussion seating in one class to desks pushed against the walls...
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398: A Simple Trick to Elevate Poetry Analysis: Poetry Blackout
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
The first time I had much use for poetry came in college, freshmen year. My professor assigned each of us to memorize a poem and recite it in class. Horrified, I chose ee cummings' "" and began the process of reading it a million times between tennis practices and snowball fights. Over and over and over I read it, trying to memorize how the words and lines zipped together without the usual literary wardrobe of grammar. I can still remember pieces, twenty five years later: "anyone lived in a pretty how town / with up so many floating bells down..." "no one loved him more by more..." As I...
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397: The Humble Webquest Levels Up (How-To + Templates)
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
I've got more and more respect, these days, for the humble webquest. Slash hyperdoc. Slash game board. Slash immersive digital multimedia experience. Slash clickable infographic. Slash playlist. Slash choice board. When it comes to sharing information and contemporary texts with your students, there is SO MUCH available online right now. Students can see actors practicing behind the scenes at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Read John Green's thoughts on drafting. Hear Jason Reynolds' read his children's book, There was a Party for Langston, while the illustrations wash across the screen....
info_outlineTrevor Noah's Born a Crime is trending, and for good reason. I'm seeing the evidence everywhere.
This spring, as I ran our curriculum book choice tournament across the high school levels and hundreds of teachers weighed in, I watched it soar to the finals in BOTH the 9th/10th category and the 11th/12th category.
Then, as summer began and I opened up this new podcast series, "Plan My Lesson" (which starts today, right now), I immediately received three separate requests for Born a Crime lessons. Naturally, with this book soaring in popularity but new to the scene, there isn't that much out there being shared yet.
One teacher was searching for ways to get students connecting the text to the 5 key themes of the I.B. curriculum (identities, experiences, human ingenuity, social organization, and sharing the planet). Another teacher was planning to use it as an anchor for a memoir class, and still another wanted to help students identity rhetorical devices inside while also developing their question-asking skills and connecting key moments in the text with argument claims.
Is it possible to fulfill all these needs with one lesson? I think so. What we want is an in-depth lesson on a section of Trevor Noah's Born a Crime, with a focus on connecting its big ideas to big ideas in our world today and in students' own lives, exploring text passages carefully along the way for writer's craft moves and theme development. And of course, we want it to be engaging. And fit neatly in one class period.
So today, in the first of our summer "Plan My Lesson" series of podcasts, let's dive into planning an engaging, goal-fulfilling lesson for Trevor Noah's Born a Crime. Whether or not you're teaching this book, you'll find lots of ideas for lesson planning here. After we walk through the lesson itself, we'll be talking about helpful takeaways from designing THIS lesson that you can apply to designing ANY lesson, so be sure to stay tuned to the end. I'll also be telling you how to grab all the curriculum for this lesson totally free. So let's dive in!
Grab all the materials for today's lesson free here: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/bornacrimelesson
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