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Recent episodes
429: Don't Miss this Essential Lesson on Multimodality
Jun 24, 2026
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428: Start a Classroom Library With Me
Jun 17, 2026
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427: Try this Colorful Maker Tool: Digital Idea Blocks
May 28, 2026
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426: I Read 17 PD Books this Year so You Don't Have to
May 20, 2026
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425: 5 Engaging Ways to Review in the Final Days
May 13, 2026
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| Date | Episode | Topics | Guests | Brands | Places | Keywords | Sponsor | Length | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6/24/26 | ![]() 429: Don't Miss this Essential Lesson on Multimodality | Recently I was invited to give a poetry workshop on a reflection day at a local school. They wanted the writing element of the day to help students understand themselves better, so I chose to provide a workshop based on George Ella Lyon's poem, "Where I'm From." You know I love that workshop. Together, we looked at how details bring poetry to life, brainstormed images about their childhood experiences, explored how various creators have interpreted the "I am From" prompt to create videos, paintings, photo essays, poems, and combinations thereof. Then I invited them to work multimodaly as they knit together their images with color and imagery. But I had never worked with them before, and none of them had heard of multimodal communication, though they're surrounded with it everyday. I realized I had left out a crucial step in the workshop, to help them see that multimodal communication would go well beyond "decorating" their poem or underlining all the lines in color. So how can we introduce this concept to students? How can we help them see that text, images, audio, and video can all convey such very different shades of meaning in communication? This week on the pod, let's talk about introducing multimodality, and showing kids what works and what doesn't. Be sure to grab the free download that goes along with this episode, a slideshow full of examples you can share with your students. You can sign up to have me send it over totally free right here. You'll also be subscribed to my teaching idea emails, though of course you can unsubscribe at any time. OK, let's dive in. Grab your copy of the multimodality introduction slideshow: https://spark-creativity.kit.com/bdde614049 Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Snag three free weeks of community-building attendance question slides Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the 'gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! | — | ||||||
| 6/17/26 | ![]() 428: Start a Classroom Library With Me | So maybe you already know I'll be teaching a section of ninth grade next year to help a local school fill a hole. Want to know what I was doing at 11 pm the night after I agreed to this role? Guess. If you guessed working on my class library, you are so right. Let's talk about first steps, for my library, and maybe, if you're thinking of starting one of your own, for yours. Whether you're completely new to building a classroom library, about to start a new one in a new place (like me), or building new layers onto a library you've already begun, I think you'll find some helpful inspiration in this episode. Links: Access the Scholastic Compendium on Reading Research: https://www.scholastic.com/worldofpossible/sites/default/files/Research_Compendium_0.pdf Sign up for Camp Creative Coming in July: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/Khm334 Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Grab the free Better Discussions toolkit Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the 'gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! | — | ||||||
| 5/28/26 | ![]() 427: Try this Colorful Maker Tool: Digital Idea Blocks | Walk into an expensive "Innovation Lab" or High Tech Cutting Edge University Makerspace, and you'll probably see a laser cutter, a 3D printer or two, all kinds of expensive technology and the adjacent software and screens that make it possible. That's cool. But that's also a high barrier to entry. Does it really have to be that way? And how did the maker movement come to sit so deep in pricey STEM territory? You probably know I've always admired the work of Angela Stockman, writing makerspace pioneer. She's been on this podcast several times, and I love what she shares around having students build ideas across modes, using free or inexpensive materials to help them construct concepts, characters, and storylines. In our interview a few years ago, she said: "When we ask kids to build, they typically come up with ideas they wouldn't have otherwise. When we ask kids to build and then talk about what they have built, the complexity of their ideas is usually higher." These feel like very worthwhile goals to me - kids coming up with innovative, complex ideas. But let's be clear, we don't have to ask kids to build on a 3D printer or learn to code in order to help them extend and amplify their thinking through maker tools. Angela has always said that, but the proliferation of high tech makerspaces can be hard to drown out when thinking about this issue. Making is not about having one specific tool. It's about what making can give to kids in terms of their development of ideas, as Stockman suggest above, and in their development as learners too (Cohen). When students make, they make choices, they make mistakes, they recover. Ideally, they develop new skills at the same time that they develop a growth mindset around iterating. Today on the podcast, let's talk about a fun new free tool I've created for you to help your students build their ideas. Sign up for the free block kit: https://spark-creativity.kit.com/2195ef8920 Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Get my popular free hexagonal thinking digital toolkit Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the 'gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! Sources: Ackermann, E. (2001). Piaget's Constructivism, Papert's Constructionism: What's the Difference? Future of Learning Group Publication, 5(3), 1-11. Cohen, J. D., Jones, W. M., & Smith, S. (2018). Preservice and early career teachers' preconceptions and misconceptions about making in education. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 34(1), 31-42. J, Jessie. "Price Tag." Spotify Lyrics. https://open.spotify.com/track/2vR1oGQdPfwJe4EVh8uNGc Kretchmar, Jennifer. "Seymour Papert and Constructionism." EBESCO: https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/religion-and-philosophy/seymour-papert-and-constructionism. 2021. Potash, Betsy (Host). (2018, September 6). The Power of the Writing Makerspace, with Angela Stockman (No. 47). [Audio Podcast Episode]. In The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2018/09/the-power-of-writing-makerspace-with.html Smith, S. (2018). Children's Negotiations of Visualization Skills During a Design-Based Learning Experience Using Nondigital and Digital Techniques. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning, 12 (2). Available at: https://doi.org/10.7771/1541-5015.1747 Stockman, Angela. (2016). Make Writing: 5 Teaching Strategies That Turn Writer's Workshop into a Maker Space. Hack Learning Series. TEDxTalk. (2013, January 10). Reimagining learning: Richard Culatta at TEDx Beacon Street [Video]. YouTube. | — | ||||||
| 5/20/26 | ![]() 426: I Read 17 PD Books this Year so You Don't Have to | I often see conversations online at this time of year about PD books worth reading over the summer. Maybe your PLC is looking for a good read, or you want to take something awesome with you on a plane ride or road trip, along with a stack of Emily Henry novels and A Man Called Ove (which, by the way, I'm giving my own personal read-of-the-year award to, wow). Or maybe not, which I totally get too. If you'd like to take the next couple months totally away and renew your energy and creativity and health and not even think about the classroom, that's great too! That's another way to help yourself be a good teacher next year. It's all valid. But just in case you are looking for a book, it just so happens that I have some recommendations. Because I read 17 books about teaching this year, watched myriad Youtube videos on creativity and design, and listened to a LOT of ed podcasts. So let me break down my favorites for you. Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Launch your choice reading program with all my favorite tools and recs, and grab the free toolkit. Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the 'gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! | — | ||||||
| 5/13/26 | ![]() 425: 5 Engaging Ways to Review in the Final Days | The countdowns are on all over the place, and that means in many classrooms, it's time to review. So let's dive into a lightning round of review ideas to help you come up with ways to make all that looking back engaging and memorable for your students. Links Mentioned: Hexagonal Thinking Review Activity Free Download Sign-Up: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/endofyearhexagons Jennifer Gonzalez's "Crumple and Shoot" Game from Cult of Pedagogy: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/how-to-play-crumple-shoot/ Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Grab the free Better Discussions toolkit Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the 'gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! | — | ||||||
| 5/6/26 | ![]() 424: Ready. Set. Engage with Dystopia! | Years ago, Teri Lesegne wrote a book called Reading Ladders, about meeting readers where they are and then guiding them to new heights. It's a lovely image. I've got my own twist on it; I like to think of helping kids get onto the reading escalator. They read the first book I hand them, or their best friend forks over after staying up til midnight to finish it, and boom, they're on that escalator cruising toward the next book without even realizing it. Sometimes it's a series that helps them on, or realizing that audiobooks count, or discovering Jason Reynolds for the first time. Sometimes it's a genre - they grab a Rick Riordan, then the next twelve, then realize that "fantasy" is a thing and cruise straight into Fablehaven, Skandar, and the Unicorn Thief, and Harry Potter. It's a genre I want to talk about today, one that has exploded in popularity over the last twenty years, and just keeps going. Sometimes I think Neal Schusterman is keeping it alive singlehandedly, but then I remember that Margaret Atwood, Adam Silvera, Megan Freeman, and Darcie Little Badger are part of the movement, along with so many others. Have you guessed? Yep, it's dystopia. Dystopia provides a fast-paced reading escalator, with many series integrated inside. Students might pick up The Hunger Games, move through the whole series, snag The Maze Runner, move through the whole series, snag The Uglies, move through the whole series, pick up Scythe, move through the whole series, pick up Divergent, move through the whole series. You get the idea! There are many series-based, fast-paced starting points where students can step onto this reading path and find themselves carried upwards with a whoosh. Then, as they start to understand the genre more and more, and become intrigued with it, there are new angles to explore. They might try Megan Freeman's novel-in-verse, Alone, and its new companion, Away. They might pick up the graphic novel version of The Giver. They might imagine their lives with their internet feed planted inside their head, by reading Feed. Eventually, deep in the genre, they might be ready for Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, or another book that will stretch them further. Or, they might be much better positioned to engage those books in your whole class curriculum. Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Launch your choice reading program with all my favorite tools and recs, and grab the free toolkit. Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the 'gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! | — | ||||||
| 4/29/26 | ![]() 423: Try this Multimodal End-of-Year Review & Reflection✨ | end-of-year reviewstudent reflection+3 | — | Better Discussions toolkitThe Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast+1 | Creative High Sc | end-of-year reviewstudent reflection+3 | — | 9m 37s | |
| 4/22/26 | ![]() 422: 7 Research-Backed Steps to Better, Easier Feedback in ELA✨ | teacher feedbackeducation+4 | — | — | — | feedbackELA+5 | — | 11m 32s | |
| 4/15/26 | ![]() 421: Help for Teaching Poetry (Part II)✨ | poetrycreative activities+3 | — | Creative High School EnglishI am From poems+1 | — | poetry activitiesteaching poetry+5 | — | 15m 15s | |
| 4/8/26 | ![]() 420: My 9th Grade Dream Curriculum (as I get an Unexpected Request)✨ | curriculum designninth grade English+3 | — | New York Times | ninth gradeschool | ninth gradecurriculum+5 | — | 22m 44s | |
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| 4/2/26 | ![]() 419: Hate Teaching Poetry? Here's Help (Part I)✨ | teaching poetrycreative writing+4 | — | Chrome Music Labs Song Maker ToolBlackout Poetry Activity Full Handouts Free Resource+3 | — | poetryteaching strategies+5 | — | 25m 56s | |
| 3/25/26 | ![]() 418: Highly Recommended: The New York Times Contest Calendar✨ | student writingcontest calendar+3 | — | The New York TimesCreative High School English | — | NYT Student Contest Calendarwriting contests+3 | — | 2m 37s | |
| 3/18/26 | ![]() 417: Graduate Programs for English Teachers (Help to Launch your Search)✨ | graduate programsEnglish teachers+3 | — | Bread Loaf School of EnglishMiddlebury College+1 | VermontSanta Fe+1 | graduate programsEnglish teachers+5 | — | 12m 34s | |
| 3/10/26 | ![]() 416: Book Club It: How to Restructure (Almost) any Unit into Book Clubs✨ | book clubsELA curriculum+3 | — | — | — | book clubsELA+5 | — | 10m 31s | |
| 3/4/26 | ![]() 415: Struggling to Teach Narrative? 6 Craft Strategies for Students✨ | narrative writingwriting strategies+3 | — | — | — | narrativewriting details+3 | — | 25m 20s | |
| 2/25/26 | ![]() 414: Highly Recommended: Play the Whole Game✨ | sociologyeducation+3 | — | University of Minnesota | DuluthChicago+1 | sociologyeducation+3 | — | 4m 40s | |
| 2/18/26 | ![]() 413: Creative Lessons from Microschools and Portable Innovation Labs with Dr. Annalies Corbin | Today on the podcast we're digging into student agency and the lessons Dr. Annalies Corbin has learned from her work pioneering microschools and portable innovation labs. Who is Dr. Corbin, you ask? Well, she's the CEO and founder of the PAST Foundation. "From a single school partnership in 2006, Annalies has grown PAST's supporters across the nation, building a reputation for both transforming teaching and learning by understanding tomorrow's education needs. In 2015, Annalies' commitment to transforming schools led to the development of PAST Innovation Lab. Connecting directly with teachers through online professional development courses, MAEd program and on-site workshops, PAST Innovation Lab impacts more classrooms and expands learning opportunities for teachers and students everywhere. In 23 years, PAST has impacted more than 2,300,000 students, over 20,000 teachers across 42 states, hosting nearly 20,000 visitors and building hundreds of partnerships" (Foundation Website). To connect further after the show, you can find Annalies hosting the podcast, Learning Unboxed, or read her new book, Hacking Schools: Five Strategies to Link Learning to Life. I think you're going to be really intrigued by the programs the PAST foundation has put into action, and the ways they can be applied to ELA. So let's dive in. Connect with Dr. Annalies Corbin: Find out more about her new book, Hacking School, here. Learn about The Past Foundation. Say hello to Annalies on Instagram. Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Snag three free weeks of community-building attendance question slides Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the 'gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! | — | ||||||
| 2/11/26 | ![]() 412: Fresh Ideas for your BritLit Curriculum | A few weeks ago I shared my dream American Lit curriculum 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 podcast project, Shakespearean book clubs, a mashup of dystopia and contemporary street art, and more. Whether or not you teach a British Literature course, I think you'll find some fresh ideas and inspiration for new unit possibilities today. Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Launch your choice reading program with all my favorite tools and recs, and grab the free toolkit. Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the 'gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! | — | ||||||
| 2/4/26 | ![]() 411: 41 Authentic Audiences for your ELA Students | 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 grade class at Wilson elementary down the street... it matters. It changes the way they work, and helps their work parallel the writing they'll do one day across a wide variety of careers, in which their emails will go to someone, their presentations will be to a room full of co-workers, and their social media posts will make the difference between their small business making it or not. An authentic audience brings engagement and motivation, helping students be successful at school and beyond. So today, let's talk about where to find it (hint... around every corner!). One quick note before we begin - for any of these audiences that exist online, keep in mind that you would need appropriate parent and/or school permission for students to submit to be published, and that students should never share their personal information or photos of themselves. Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Snag three free weeks of community-building attendance question slides Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the 'gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! Sources: Landay, Eileen and Kurt Wooton. A Reason to Read. Harvard Education Press, 2012. Warner, John. Why They Can't Write. John Hopkins University Press, 2020. Zemelman, Daniels and Hyde. Best Practice. Heinemann, 2005. | — | ||||||
| 1/28/26 | ![]() 410: The American Lit Curriculum I Would Teach Now | 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 see their identities. Their communities. Their problems. Their hopes. I learned from Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop's call for books in which students can see themselves and learn to understand others in her appeal to our collective humanity in her landmark essay, "Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors." I learned from Felicia Rose Chavez, author of The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop, who shared her personal experience as a young reader: "It's startling as a young person of color to stare down the spines of literacy and note the neat annihilation of most of the world" (29). I learned from Dr. Claudia Rodriguez-Mojica and Dr. Allison Briceño, co-authors of Conscious Classrooms, that using culturally relevant texts can improve student outcomes by helping improve their comprehension, motivation & engagement. I learned more about pairing contemporary texts to the canon from the #distrupttexts movement, about "completing" the canon from Chavez, and about layering multicultural, multimodal texts from Dr. Gholdy Muhammad's Cultivating Genius. For me, it feels so clear. And yet I still see so many curriculums either still cleaving to the classics for the most part or abandoning books altogether in favor of textbooks and " short selections." So today I want to offer my American Lit dream. If I had an unlimited budget, and didn't have to worry about book challenges, this is an outline of the American Lit curriculum I would love to teach today. If you're an American Lit teacher, I hope you find an idea for a new unit or two or five that you'd be excited to try out. If you don't teach American Lit, I think you'll still get a lot of ideas about curriculum possibilities in terms of structure and balance from this episode, which you could remix with any authors you choose. Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Launch your choice reading program with all my favorite tools and recs, and grab the free toolkit. Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the 'gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! Sources: Chavez, Felicia. The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop. Haymarket Books, 2021. Bishop, Rudine Sims. "Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors." Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom. Vo. 6, No. 3, Summer 1990. https://scenicregional.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Mirrors-Windows-and-Sliding-Glass-Doors.pdf Accessed November 2, 2025. Graham, S., MacArthur, C., & Hebert, M. (Eds). Best Practices in Writing Instruction. The Guilford Press, 2019. Hillocks Jr., G. Narrative Writing: Learning a New Model for Teaching. Heinemann, 2007. Kittle, Penny. Micro Mentor Texts. Scholastic Professional, 2022. Muhammad, Gholdy. Cultivating Genius. Scholastic, 2020. Potash, Betsy. "Students Need Diverse Texts and Choice, with Dr. Claudia Rodriguez-Mojica and Dr. Allison Briceño." The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, Episode 204. Resolution on Grammar Exercises to Teach Speaking and Writing. NCTE online: National Council of Teachers of English Position Statements: https://ncte.org/statement/grammarexercises/, Accessed January 2026. Schoenborn, Andy and Troy Hicks. Creating Confident Writers. W.W. Norton, 2020. Zemelman, Steven, Harvey Daniels and Arthur Hyde. Best Practice. Heinemann, 2005. | — | ||||||
| 1/21/26 | ![]() 409: How to do a Multimodal Flash Verse Project | 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 brilliant mode collaborations of Jason Reynolds. Let's dig into it. Links Mentioned: Jason Reynolds' Interview with the Kennedy Center: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuXNsJvNaFs Book Trailer for Ain't Burned all the Bright: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjqvOyAh36Y Reynolds on his collab with Novgorodoff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ErpAXd7Swg There was a Party for Langston Read-Aloud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4MYO4WmR9s Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Get my popular free hexagonal thinking digital toolkit Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the 'gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! | — | ||||||
| 1/14/26 | ![]() 408: For Better Student Revision, Play the Matching Game | 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 processin the FAQs on his website: "...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 my hard drive is called aok284; the final copy of TFiOS is called okay192." If I'm understanding John correctly, that means he wrote 284 drafts with dramatic changes for just one of his novels. Let's let that sink in for a moment. Let's be sure to mention that to students sometime soon. I tried to demonstrate some of this to my students back when I was at the Bread Loaf School of English in the summers (find out more about that fabulous program here in episode 223), and teaching in the school year. I photocopied every phase of one of my major papers, from random thoughts on paper to sort-of-organized thoughts to outline to research notes to draft to draft to draft to final paper. The booklet I passed out to students literally looked like a book. I wanted them to understand that writing isn't a matter of freewheeling a draft and then cleaning it up. Recently, I spent twenty or so hours over winter vacation (soooo much travel time) reading up on the most current best practices in writing instruction. It was a good time. There's nothing quite like reading classroom stories about integrating sensory detail at 3 a.m. over the Atlantic while the plane around you sleeps. (Yep, stop laughing. You always knew this about me. Pedagogy is my jam). A lot of it felt familiar, but there were also things that sparked new connections for me, and a few surprises, too. So today, let's tackle a huge topic together: student revision. We'll dive into the challenge and some solid solution options, and I'll hand over a curriculum booster pack to help you put it all into action. The visual walkthrough of this episode: Make a copy of the curriculum that goes with this episode: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TIxaV1lgaAJMZipDt6hgoPC6-Tz7wAi2P4KF2uSd_pE/copy Sources: Green, John. "FAQs." John Green Books: https://www.johngreenbooks.com/where-i-get-my-ideas-inspiration-and-general-writing-stuff. Accessed January 2026. Hillocks Jr., George. Narrative Writing: Learning a New Model for Teaching. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2006. "How to Teach Authentic Writing in the Age of AI." Edutopia: The School of Practice Podcast. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-teach-authentic-writing-in-the-age-of-ai/id1840474338?i=1000736252749. Accessed January 2026. "Improve Students' Evidence Analysis: Meet Mr. Skeptical." The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2025/05/improve-students-evidence-analysis-meet-mr-skeptical.html. Accessed January 2026. MacArthur, Charles. "Evaluation and Revision" (Chapter 12). Best Practices in Writing Instruction. Ed. by Steve Graham, Charles MacArthur, and Michael Hebert. New York: Guilford Press, 2017. Wilson, Joshua. "Assessing Writing" (Chapter 14). Best Practices in Writing Instruction. Ed. by Steve Graham, Charles MacArthur, and Michael Hebert. New York: Guilford Press, 2017. Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Get my popular free hexagonal thinking digital toolkit Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the 'gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! | — | ||||||
| 1/7/26 | ![]() 407: Build a Better Choice Board Project for any ELA Unit | 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 any text that would provide a range of options for students. But I also knew I wanted to avoid the pitfalls of some of the choice projects I designed for my own classroom, when I ended up having to create seven different rubrics and rewire myself for a huge range of requirements on my different project options as I graded them. While I was glad to give my students those choices, it was frustrating how long it took to complete my comments. So I took some of my favorite types of projects, what I've learned about creating linked hyperdocs, and my strong desire for an easy grading situation and mashed it all up into an adaptable final project with nine choices, including one that allows students to create their own way to make meaning from what they've studied (so really, a million choices). I'm going to walk you through the process today, so you can do the same next time you'd like to create a project full of options, gifting your students agency as they synthesize what they've learned and create something new. Let's dive in. Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Snag three free weeks of community-building attendance question slides Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the 'gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! Sources Considered: Beghetto, Ronald. "Does Assessment Kill Student Creativity?" The Educational Forum, 2005. Beghetto, Ronald. Killing Ideas Softly: The Promise & Peril of Creativity in the Classroom. Information Age Publishing, 2017. Accessed Online through the Ebesco Database. Chavez, Felicia. The Anti-Racist Writer's Workshop. Haymarket Books, 2021. Gabriel, Elise. "Six Ways to Help Kids Grow their Creativity." Greater Good Magazine Online: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/six_ways_to_help_kids_grow_their_creativity. Accessed 28 October 2025. Gonzalez, Jennifer. "Meet the Single Point Rubric." Cult of Pedagogy Online: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/single-point-rubric/. Accessed May 2025. Pringle, Zorana Ivcevic. The Creativity Choice. Public Affairs: 2025. Wiggins, Grant. "Creative." https://grantwiggins.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/creative.pdf. Accessed 28 October 2025. | — | ||||||
| 12/17/25 | ![]() 406: Try this Choice Twist on Review | 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 for each class before finals. I enjoyed reading through all my notes and condensing them into a couple of brightly colored pages. Once I had done that, I barely had to study those highlight reels, because the process of making them had done most of the studying for me. Honestly, I looked forward to exam week because I could take my exams and look at my notes for the next day more quickly than I could get through the work of a normal week of school. I had more free time when we had tests, and I enjoyed my review process. Today on the pod, as many folks may be headed into a unit or term review, just as student focus is already taking a left out of school city toward vacation land, let's talk about an easy way to give students agency over their review, ANY review. Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Get my popular free hexagonal thinking digital toolkit Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the 'gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! | — | ||||||
| 12/10/25 | ![]() 405: 5 Creative Activities for A Christmas Carol | 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 most feels like a doable add to a high school curriculum filled with many voices. At the same time, we can't talk about A Christmas Carol without considering how it centers Christmas. If you're going to teach this book, consider how you can also acknowledge the many other holidays that happen in this season - Diwali, Hanukkah, Eid, Lunar New Year, and more. I recently redid all the imagery in my winter holiday maker project (snag it free here) because I realized that although I had tried to keep Christmas from dominating, it was still too red and green. Take a look at the simple changes I was able to make (below) to create a more inclusive project, featuring imagery from many holiday traditions. And if you'd like to explore more inclusive holiday activities, you can find a bunch in this round up blog post. But to come back to Dickens, I think it's important to use the vehicle as a book to discuss Dickens' desire to use his art to create change, his context in Victorian England, and the transformation of his character, Scrooge, rather than seeing it as mainly a fun holiday activity, because of course, many students do not celebrate Christmas and so reading a Christmas story won't necessarily feel like a fun holiday activity to them. IKYK. OK, with all this said, let's dive in to five creative activities you can use with this text, whether you choose to read the play, watch the movie, or some combination. Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Launch your choice reading program with all my favorite tools and recs, and grab the free toolkit. Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram. Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the 'gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you! | — | ||||||
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