I have to admit my kids have got me fully invested in "Is it Cake?" At some point in England last year, someone begged for us to watch the show while we ate green pesto pasta on the couch after a long day of hiking in the New Forest, and I said sure.

It was the beginning of our "Is it Cake?" era.

We've gasped, we've squinted, we've cheered.

We all love trying to tell which one is a purse and which one is a cake, and we've all exclaimed in SHOCK over those cake-based faux-leather laces.

All of which is not really an ad for the show, but just my introduction for today's idea for gamifying the study of thesis statements.

Because you guessed it, we're all about to ask ourselves... IS IT A THESIS?

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I miss the Eras tour. Even though it hasn't been that long. My daughter is requesting Wicked songs and Katy Perry in the car all of a sudden, instead of our usual Taylor Swift-a-thon.

But I haven't forgotten the joys of the Swiftiverse. And today I want to share a prompt you could use with any poem, short story, or novel that comes from Taylor's music, specifically her approach to bridges.

Links Mentioned:

Watch "Diary of a Song" from The New York Times about Taylor Swift's Song "Lover" (the key section begins at 6:52): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEeWmItgdxA 

Read "The Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu: https://gizmodo.com/read-ken-lius-amazing-story-that-swept-the-hugo-nebula-5958919 

Short Story Unit for "The Paper Menagerie": https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Short-Story-Unit-for-The-Paper-Menagerie-13421406 

Go Further: 

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It's poetry month, and that means it's time for me to share as many poetry activities, poetry projects, and poetry workshops as I can muster over here!

Today, I'm going to walk you through a toolkit of creative poetry options for your ELA classroom. 

We'll start with one of my favorite introductory activities for any poetry unit, poetry collage, and then go full steam ahead through poetry one-pagers, blackout poetry, great performances and verse texts, I am From poems, a colorful poetry annotation activity, and more!

Go Further: 

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This winter, inspired by cool bookish tournament projects by Melissa Alter Smith of Teach Living Poets and Jared Amato of Project Lit, I decided to launch my own English teacher-y tournament.

I wanted to know - of the hundreds of amazing books out there - which were working BEST in the classroom for the teachers in our community?

After polling over 2000 teachers over in Creative High School English for their favorites in 9th/10th grade (11th and 12th grade coming soon!), I landed on 16 great titles and we've been voting ever since.

Today on the pod, I'll be sharing the top titles and some of the comments and rationales teachers have shared along with their votes. If you're looking for a new book for your curriculum, or you're curious what other teachers are focusing on in theirs, today's show will help!

See the links below for comments and voting from teachers throughout the tournament (additional voting happened live through Instagram stories which I can't as easily share):

• The initial poll calling for titles for the tournament

The Round of Sixteen:

• Long Way Down vs. The Book Thief
• Animal Farm vs. Romeo and Juliet
• Night vs. Macbeth
• Fahrenheit vs. Of Mice and Men 
• The Odyssey vs. The Lord of the Flies
• Speak vs. The House on Mango Street
• Dear Martin vs. Born a Crime
• The Firekeeper’s Daughter vs. The Poet X

The Quarterfinals:

• Long Way Down vs. Lord of the Flies
• Night vs. House on Mango Street
• F451 vs. Born a Crime
• Romeo and Juliet vs. The Poet X

The Semifinals:

• Night vs. Long Way Down
• Poet X vs. Born a Crime

The Finals:

• Night vs. Born a Crime.

If your podcast player doesn't support links in the show notes, you can find the full show notes with graphics and links at nowsparkcreativity.com. 

Thank you to everyone who participated in the voting and shared your thoughts and experiences!

Go Further:

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If you’re teaching Long Way Down (and ready for some Long Way Down lesson plan ideas!), let me just start by saying “YAY!”

It’s a reader-maker, an incredible book you can teach in a short time with a high impact.

Today, I’m going to be sharing some of my favorite ideas and resources for you to pair with this book. We'll talk about discussion formats, project ideas, Jason Reynolds-themed multimedia waiting around the web, and a creative writing pairing that I think you're going to love too.

Heads up, as I’m sure you’re aware, this book does have some language. You may need to give a heads up to parents, depending on your school community. But you can, at the same time, mention the Walter Award, Coretta Scott King Award, Printz Award, Newberry Honor Book Award, etc. Maybe throw in the fact that the Library of Congress named him the national ambassador for Young People’s Literature. 

Here's a quick peek at the visuals available in the FULL BLOG POST: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2025/04/long-way-down-lesson-ideas.html. 

Discussion Option: Hexagonal Thinking

Discussion Option: Silent Discussion on the Walls

Activity Option: Flash Verse Creative Writing

Activity Option: The Open Mind for Character Analysis

Links to Explore:

• One example of conversations happening in Creative High School English about Long Way Down in our Book Brackets
• Dear, Dreamer documentary about Jason Reynolds
• Long Way Down graphic novel opening
• There was a Party for Langston read aloud
• Ain't Burned all the Bright trailer
• Jason Reynolds on working with artist Danica Novgorodoff
• Long Way Down Curriculum 

Today's guest, middle school teacher Susan Taylor, has repeatedly gone the extra mile to build a reading program that makes an impact. Not only does she guide her students towards the best books available, she guides her teaching network the same way, through her podcast, Wonder World Book Cafe.

Today, we're going to go rapid fire through her favorites to recommend to students, and why she likes them so much.

You'll walk away with fantastic recommendations for novels-in-verse, graphic novels, historical fiction, and much more. You'll discover Susan's top pick for First Chapter Friday, the one book she thinks every classroom library should have, and the superb (easy-to-copy) way she helps students recommend books to each other all year long as part of their regular reading routine.

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.

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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! 

If you've ever felt stymied over the fact that some of your students aren't sure how to write a thesis while others are ready to tackle counterargument, today's episode is for you.

Not so long ago, Kareem Farah of the Modern Classrooms Project was here to share the MCP vision for a differentiated blended classroom, and how it can support all learners (and all teachers!). Today, his founding partner, Rob Barnett, joins us to follow up, sharing specific techniques for easily creating instructional videos and learning roadmaps in ELA. 

We want to help you design writing units that let your students move through the material at their own pace, reviewing and repeating lessons when they want to, skipping ahead when they're ready. 

Let's dive in.

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Related Links:

Explore Classrooms using MCP pedagogy: https://www.modernclassrooms.org/exemplars 

Take the Full Free Course to learn about MCP: https://learn.modernclassrooms.org/ 

See the Progress Tracker Templates from MCP: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1i46SSU3PozMk3bQ06-d1Od09vqZLqIx_2St7FTX8A50/edit 

Discover Rob's Book, Meet Every Learner's Needs: https://www.meeteverylearnersneeds.org/ 

It all started with 1984, as so many things do. I wanted students to see how the ideas in the book were splashed across the world around them - yes, in their magazines and ads, but also in the current events they saw on the news and the news sites covering them.

So I asked them to create collages, connecting 1984 to their lives.

As we put the collages up across one wall on the classroom, the startling connections between what they were reading and what they were seeing in the world around them sprang out in bright colors. Sitting beside us as we discussed and wrote about the novel, they provided a constant reminder that Orwell’s writing was as relevant as it gets, many decades later.

So am I suggesting you do a context collage next time YOU teach Orwell? Nope, today I want to suggest that a context collage as a stellar go-to anytime you’re trying to help students see the connections between a text and their lives.

Let me walk you through it.

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You’ve probably heard me talk about my first poetry slam. The project that became my go-to vehicle for teaching poetry every year that followed.

The book I was handed - 6 American Poets - was chock full of great poetry. Dickinson, Whitman, Hughes… but I knew that I, like every paper worth reading, would need a solid hook. 

That’s how I ended up staying up til one in the morning the night before my poetry unit was set to kick off searching for poetry slam clips without swearwords. 

Eventually I found some incredible clips and the philosophy that would guide much of my time in the classroom.

I thought of the philosophy then as “using showcase projects.” 

Now I think of it as finding the glue that would keep students engaged with my material.

So how can you find your own glue? Let’s talk.

Go Further: 

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I can still remember the faded, chipped blue print of my childhood game of Memory. The thick cardboard squares we flipped in search of pairs, thrilled when we found a match, frustrated when we accidentally revealed a match to our opponent.

I’ve played a million games now as a parent too, watching my children’s eyes light up when they rack up more matches than I do, which is pretty much every time. I think my daughter was beating me consistently by the time she was four.

The memory game seems to stick in our game culture like no other. I see a new twist on it everywhere, most recently National Parks memory when I stepped into the store at Sequoia National Park last week. 

So how can we use this go-to in the classroom to gamify ELA? Well, in a million ways. Let’s talk about how you can make your own memory game, with pretty much any material you want to cover.

Go Further: 

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Get my popular free hexagonal thinking digital toolkit

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