Lately, I’ve been working on gamification. Not the kind where you get points and add custom outfits to your hamster avatar when you advance through a lesson - though don’t get me wrong, that seems cool - more the kind where learning takes place through an actual game structure. We’re big fans of games at my house - Catan, Parcheesi, Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, Wordle, Uno, Apple to Apples - and so I’ve had a lot of fun brainstorming ideas. But today I was zeroing in on brackets. You know, tournament brackets. Like at March Madness time, or at weekend pickleball tournaments. I’ve seen lots of folks try March Madness brackets with poetry, which I love, but I was brainstorming out at the edges of that idea today. What else could we bracket? 

So here’s my last quick idea for you as we all swirl into the break tornado and leave work behind for a while.

What if we held a bracket for writer’s craft moves? 

Imagine it. Sensory details vs. Personification. Symbolism vs. simile. Appositives vs. strikingly short sentences. The semicolon vs. the dash.

Which is more useful? 

Which paves the way to a great line and why?

Where have students seen the move in action and was it truly powerful? How can they use it in their writing and just how handy is it?

When you’re doing the faceoff, you could have students partner up and search for examples to share, or write examples to read aloud as part of the discussion of the merits of each side. 

Can you imagine debating which deserves to move forward, symbolism or simile, and then voting for one to advance in the tournament WITHOUT generating a pretty strong understanding of what it is and how to use it? And can you imagine how fun it would be to see students get fired up over the dash being better than the semicolon? Or are the parentheses crushing the ellipses? 

Yeah, I just had to tell you about this idea. Even though I know  you don’t have time to use it just at the moment, it was too exciting for me to hold off until next year. I can’t wait to hear about your writer’s craft tournament in 2025. You can reach me, as always, at [email protected] with your fabulous stories.  

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If the work week is starting to feel like a blurry hand sanitizer-scented haze at the moment, you're right on schedule. The crush of holiday to-dos (fun and not-so) alongside the slow but insistent slip of student attention spans, plus the inevitable wave of illnesses you're trying to avoid makes these last few days a challenge. So today I'm hoping I can help by giving you all the moving pieces for an easy and awesome last day.

Grab the Free Winter Book Tasting Kit Here: https://spark-creativity.kit.com/cc185a4a77

Make your Copy of the Snowy Day Poetry Tiles Here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1as6Q7PADsKIoYKOHlHUH7iZHseL342xts7E3UYk3Wjg/copy

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

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This week I’m thinking about those moments when the system collapses. Your toddler wakes up at 3 am and stays awake until 7. Your careful planning for a poetry slam explodes when you feel a sore throat lurking the day before and you get one of those icky awful chills on your way out to the parking lot. Your partner has to work overtime when you were counting on him to do dinner and bedtime while you graded 100 papers and prepped the next day. Today’s one of those days for me, with my partner on an international work trip with his students as what everyone is guessing is norovirus has hit our community and my household. Just before my daughter’s winter concert, my elaborately planned community cookie exchange, and my son’s golden birthday. As we say in Minnesota, uff-da.  So without further ado, I want to share three free resources I’ve created for you that you can use at times like this, when all else fails. Don’t worry, I’ll drop links to grab them all in the show notes. 

First of all, my old faithful, now in use in over 10,000 classrooms. The one-pager templates. You can bust these out and modify them to suit pretty much whatever you’re reading. The specific directions guide students in how to represent the text through imagery, quotations, and analysis on the template, taking away that fear of the blank page. A little creative constraint paves the way for students to share their top takeaways and make connections beyond the page, giving even your art-wariest students a chance to succeed with this colorful, creative, reading reflection. 

Next, there’s the Book Face challenge. This fun activity will promote your reading culture, and all you need are books. Have you seen the #bookface flood on Instagram in recent years? The idea is simple. You find a book with a picture of a face on it, then find a way to recreate the scenery featured on the cover and take a picture of the cover with the face in the book shown over your (or your partner’s face) so it seems like the book is actually part of the photo. It’s so hard to describe, but so cool to see! I created a bunch of examples and a quick guide so your students can easily try it. If you’re having a ridiculously stressful week, a day setting up fun #bookface photos with your students and then showcasing them in a big display can help. At least a little. 

Finally, there’s blackout poetry. If you haven’t tried this yet, take this as your sign. Download the free guide, put some old books in a corner of your classroom, and keep this activity handy for the next time all else fails. For blackout poetry, students choose words on an exciting page to arrange into a poem, then doodle around the words and black out everything but the doodle and the chosen words. OK, that’s a bit of an oversimplification but that’s why I made you the GUIDE. This project has a history of turning out amazing, and you can make it go with anything. You invite students to create a blackout poem that connects with a theme from your reading, an essential question from your unit, or just let them float free with their topics.

OK, my friend. Time to go deal with the fact that there’s a lot to deal with. I know you know, and I hope one of these activities can help the next time you’re doing the same. Remember, I’m going to link to all these free downloads in the show notes, and I’m ALSO going to link to a fun recent collab I did with 9 other creative curriculum designers to showcase emergency sub plans. If you grab these three and a bunch of those too, you’ll have a dozen or so options ready the next time all else fails. 

Links Mentioned:

Pick up the free one-pager templates: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/ready-for-one-pager-success 

Grab the free Bookface Activity: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/bookface

Get the free Blackout poetry guide: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Blackout-Poetry-Activity-l-black-out-poetry-l-blackout-poetry-passages-4165682

Go further with 10 more emergency sub plans: https://buildingbooklove.com/ela-emergency-sub-plans-for-middle-school-and-high-school-english/ 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Snag three free weeks of community-building attendance question slides

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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! 

Ever struggle to get students to stop talking? Keep their phones put away? Stay focused during the lesson? Stop whispering during an assembly? Engage with the classwork? Classroom management can sometimes feel like death by a thousand distractions.

Today’s guest can help.

Claire English is an experienced Australian secondary English teacher and senior leader, specializing in supporting students with complex social, emotional and mental health needs. Over her career, she has worked across the United Kingdom and Australia, dedicated to transforming volatile, challenging, and chaotic learning environments into places of safety, support, and learning.

She’s got a new book out – It’s Never Just About the Behavior – which I happily rate at five stars and strongly recommend (check out her #1 best-seller in secondary education here). When you join our conversation today, you’re going to hear about big picture shifts you can easily make to help your classroom run more smoothly and productively, as well as quick small shifts you can try immediately for a better tomorrow.

LINKS MENTIONED:

These show notes contain affiliate links. When you purchase something through my affiliate link, you support my work here at no additional cost to you. 

Grab the Task Card Template: https://www.the-unteachables.com/taskcardfreebie 

Tune into Claire's Podcast: https://www.the-unteachables.com/podcast

Explore her (wildy popular) bite-sized tips on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.unteachables/

Check out the Behavior Club Membership for live training, mentoring sessions, and access to the Low Level Behavior Bootcamp: https://www.the-unteachables.com/a/2148008553/5BiUqegp 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Snag three free weeks of community-building attendance question slides

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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! 

In today’s short episode of “Highly Recommended”, I’m here to tell you it’s time to try a poetry video project! Harness students’ excitement over the creator economy and the survival of TikTok and get them interpreting poetry through a medium that only keeps getting MORE relevant to communication today. 

First things first, let’s talk mentor texts. There are some VERY cool poetry videos online that take their interpretation in wildly different directions. I suggest taking a look at Amanda Gorman’s “Earthrise,” Ada Limón’s “A Poem for Europa,” and Rudy Francisco’s “Complainers,” which I’ll link for you in the show notes. As students watch, have them sketchnote ideas for CRAFT moves. What do they notice about the combination of talking head shots vs. B-Roll? Is their background music? How did the producer make cuts and transitions? How does the video bring out the meaning of the poem? How about the audio?

Once students have started to warm up to this idea of interpreting poems through video, it’s time for them to choose a poem of their own to interpret. Now you could easily make this a project to help them dig deep into a famous poem of their choice, OR you could let them record and create around an original piece of their own, depending on your goals. They should print up a script of their poem which they can annotate with ideas for visuals and how they will want to read the poem aloud. Parallel to their written script, they’ll want to do some storyboarding, sketching out the order of their film clip videos.

Now there are two free platforms I’d recommend for this project. Vocaroo, which we’ve discussed many times, is perfect for recording the audio easily and snagging the MP3 file. Then they can upload it to Canva, which will allow them to combine photos, videos, and audio of their own with photos, videos, and audio available on Canva. This is the most technical part of the project, so I’ve made you a little tutorial video for how to put together a video in Canva (which I’ll link in the show notes). While there will be a learning curve on learning to put together a video, it’s a learning curve well worth trekking. This would be a great starter project leading toward video options on future choice boards, documentary projects, PSA projects, and other types of video projects in your class or department arc. 

Inside Canva, your students will be able to sequence text slides, video clips, and photos to create a visual sequence that represents their interpretation of the poem, and overlay it with their audio recording of their script. They can even add music at a low level behind their voice in different sections if they wish. 

If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to get your feet wet with video, let this be your sign that YOU CAN DO IT! It’s OK to launch a project without total confidence in the tech. Your students may just know a lot about this and be able to help each other and you, and there are not many tech problems out there that a quick tutorial search on YouTube won’t fix. I’ve seen some wonderful student work from the poetry video project, and so can you! 

Links Mentioned:

"Earthrise," by Amanda Gorman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwOvBv8RLmo

"Complainers," by Rudy Francisco: https://youtu.be/nrh1JlP8R2E?si=8BvEmi0mIr8NCAEJ 

"A Poem for Europa," by Ada Limón: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgWbeDNPD6o

How to Create a Video in Canva: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/videopage/createavideo 

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.

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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!

So you want to give the nod to the season, but you also want to make sure all your students feel included. Good for you!

I've been privileged to see the holidays I celebrate centered in The United States for much of my life, but I've also had a lot of opportunities to see what it's like beyond this glow.

I've lived in four other countries where some of the holidays I am used to are not very important at all.

At one of my schools, I had the role of international-student coordinator. As part of that role I got a chance to work with kids from around the world to share their cultures through different types of holiday celebrations, like a Day of the Dead dinner and a Lunar New Year party.

I married into a family with a different religious background than mine, and I've seen how it can feel difficult when other traditions take the limelight at this time of year. 

It means a lot to have your traditions acknowledged at any age. But I'll be the first to say it's not uncomplicated territory in the classroom. I know I've messed up, learned, and evolved. I keep trying.

I very much believe that when we can expand our cultural viewpoints, we all benefit. Of course, perhaps your school or community won't allow you to discuss or celebrate any type of holiday at school. I can understand the circumstances that might lead there. If that's the case, you might want to choose one of the other hundreds of episodes to listen to today. But if you've always loved - like me - to give a nod to big days on the calendar throughout the year, I've got ideas to share today - ways to enjoy fun wintery activities in the next few weeks that make space for kids to celebrate whatever special days they want to, whether it's Kwanzaa, Hannukah, Christmas, Lunar New Year, Snow Days, or one of the many other holidays flowing out of our rich worldwide blend of cultures.

Links Mentioned:

Liz Kleinrock's book, Come and Join Us: https://www.amazon.com/Come-Join-Us-Holidays-Celebrated/dp/0063144476

Holiday Makerspace Project (Free download): https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Winter-Holiday-Maker-Space-Writing-Project-3505860 

How to make Digital Poetry Tiles: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2020/11/109-how-to-make-digital-magnetic-poetry.html 

Holiday Lipogram Project (Free Download): https://spark-creativity.kit.com/c9338cdf76

Winter Book Tasting (Free Download): https://spark-creativity.kit.com/cc185a4a77 

Poetry Foundation Winter Poems Collection: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/144637/winter-poems 

Welcome to day five of gratitude week here at Spark Creativity. Today, on our final day, we’re looking back at an interview with my friend Angela Stockman about how to get started with her innovative writing makerspace concept. She is a force of creativity, hope, care, and innovation in the education world, and I’m grateful to know her and to share her work with you. 

Check out the original show notes: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2018/09/the-power-of-writing-makerspace-with.html 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Grab the free Better Discussions toolkit

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! 

Welcome to day four of gratitude week here at Spark Creativity. Today we’re looking back at an interview with Dave Stuart Jr. about how to help fight apathy in the classroom. I’m grateful for Dave’s hopeful voice in the world of education, and glad to share his ideas with you today.

Check out the original show notes: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2019/07/070-help-for-student-apathy-with-dave_16.html 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

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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! 

Welcome to day three of gratitude week here at Spark Creativity. Today we’re looking back at an interview with Dr. Claudia Rodriguez-Mojica and Dr. Allison Briceño about just how important it is to provide students with diverse books and choice in their reading experience. I’m grateful that they took the time to talk with us, and to be able to spotlight their work here again. 

See the original show notes: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2023/07/students-need-diverse-texts-and-choice-heres-help.html 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Grab the free Better Discussions toolkit

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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! 

Welcome to day two of gratitude week here at Spark Creativity. Today we're revisiting a popular interview with Dr. Sarah Fine, whose insightful work around deeper learning I am so grateful to be able to share with you. She crisscrossed the nation in search of the places and programs where students were truly engaged in deeper learning, and she shares what she found in this conversation. 

See the Original Show Notes: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2020/02/086-take-action-for-deeper-learning.html 

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Grab the free Better Discussions toolkit

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!