390: A Lesson for Book Clubs with a Genius Hour Twist
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
Release Date: 08/13/2025
412: Fresh Ideas for your BritLit Curriculum
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
A few weeks ago I shared here on the pod, and soon after I heard from a British Literature teacher who was hoping for some new unit ideas for her curriculum too. She shared her starting point, which sounds like a highly engaging set of texts: "Our long reads," she wrote, "are The Princess Bride, Macbeth, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Beowulf- a hero’s journey theme!" So today I'd like to brainstorm with you, throwing out ideas for a British Lit curriculum, based on some of these starting texts and a few more I'll throw into the mix. Get ready for a Holmes-inspired True Crime...
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411: 41 Authentic Audiences for your ELA Students
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
The word audience conjures up a crowd, perhaps people watching an opera late at night at the Santa Fe outdoor amphitheatre, as the moon rises over the spectacle of Cosi Fan Tutte. Or wearing sparkles and friendship bracelets as they scream themselves hoarse at the Eras tour. Or packing a stadium as they stomp their feet and cheer at a Lakers game. But audiences don't have to be so huge, or dramatic. When it comes to students, what they need is to know they'll pretty often have one for their best work. A friend, the kids walking through the hallways every day, the school principal, the 2nd...
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410: The American Lit Curriculum I Would Teach Now
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
American Lit has the potential to be an engaging, broadening, fascinating course. We're in what I consider an in-between era, where many schools are still providing the historical American lit canon to teachers, while other schools or independent teachers going around the system have moved into teaching a broader swirl of America's diverse stories. The American Lit curriculum I was handed twenty years ago was 98% written by dead white men. Since then, I’ve learned about the impact on our students when they can (and can’t) see themselves in the books they read. When they can and can’t...
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409: How to do a Multimodal Flash Verse Project
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
Let's talk about an incredibly adaptable project in which students experiment with creative ideas across modes. It's easy to plug into a variety of units and times of year, and ready to tap at a moment's notice. It remixes easily for Valentine's Day on the horizon, but it could also work well at Halloween, or as part of a creative writing unit, or when you're reading any verse novel or graphic novel. This project starts with fiction, moves into verse, and lands in a multimodal combination of verse and imagery. I call it a multimodal flash verse project, informed along the way by the...
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408: For Better Student Revision, Play the Matching Game
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
The more time you spend writing, the more you know that revision is everything. Let me cite writing superhero John Green on this one, who discusses his drafting process: "...I’m a big believer in revision: I almost always delete most of my first drafts (often as much as 90%). But there are many mini-drafts along the way, so it’s hard to talk about the process quantitatively. I do try to save the file with a different name each time I’ve made some dramatic changes I fear I might later regret, so that’s some measure, maybe, of how many drafts there are. The final copy of Katherines on...
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407: Build a Better Choice Board Project for any ELA Unit
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
We know we want kids to have choice. As much choice as possible in creating the education that is meaningful and helpful for them. That choice can come through choice over content, medium, expression of ideas, types of discussion, seating in the classroom, what to work on when, when to take a break...there are so many possibilities! If you make it a professional challenge to start seeing the possibilities for choice, you'll find them everywhere! As I've been working on choice as a theme for The Lighthouse this month, I knew that I wanted to create a final choice board project adaptable for...
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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...
info_outlineHave you been hooked by the idea of book clubs lately? Wondering how you can integrate book clubs with essential questions, supplementary short stories and podcasts, and everything else you're up to? Then today's episode is for you. Today's "Plan my Lesson" request comes from a creative teacher trying to blend a lot of wonderful things into her new plan for the year.
Here's what she writes: "Hi, Betsy! I am a huge fan and avid listener! As a teacher who is nearing retirement, I found myself in a slump. You’ve been an inspiration! I have completely changed my curriculum for next year (we are mid-process in curriculum writing). For the first time, all of my classes are completely novel-based using lit circles. I have selected five titles for students to choose from each quarter, with plans to supplement like crazy with nonfiction pieces, TED talks, podcasts, etc. I have created an overarching essential question for each semester to tie all the pieces together. It’s a bit overwhelming, but I am super excited to get started! Any ideas you have specific to lit circles would be much appreciated! And if I can figure out a way to intertwine genius hour, I would be thrilled 😊"
So today we're diving into this wonderful creative planning process. We'll start by looking at a big picture structure that can help support all these wonderful pieces while creating consistency throughout the term, then dive into a single day in the life lesson for balancing all of these elements.
Book Club Warm-Up Examples:
Book Club Activity Examples:
Genius Hour Curriculum Examples:
Tune in to episode 291, "When Genius Hour Works:" https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2024/04/when-genius-hour-works.html
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