Like most of us, Christina Schneider didn't find teaching writing one bit easy at first. Despite her background as a journalist, putting all the puzzle pieces together in the classroom to help her students understand how to build a thesis, introduce and analyze evidence, and express their ideas felt like a pretty tough task.

But over time she had one breakthrough after another with her high school students in California. She figured out how to meet them where they are and guide them through the process of building their academic writing skills day by day throughout the school year.

Now she steps up to the plate each August with her new students feeling confident that she can take them where they need to go. She's recently written a new book, Building Strong Writers, where she shares everything she's learned in step-by-step walkthroughs to make it easy for you to try too.

Today on the pod, we'll be exploring three of her top writing scaffolds, and how you can get started with them tomorrow to make argument writing instruction simpler and more successful in your classroom.

Connect with Christina, from The Daring English Teacher

Hi! I’m Christina. I’m a full-time high school English and journalism teacher, wife, and mom. I’ve taught every high school grade level, and I love sharing my ideas, lesson plans, and ELA resources with other teachers. One of my passions is providing engaging, robust, and differentiated learning experiences to my students while helping other teachers do the same.

Explore more of Christina's work on her website: https://thedaringenglishteacher.com/

Grab your copy of her new book, Building Strong Writers: https://www.amazon.com/Building-Strong-Writers-Strategies-Scaffolds/dp/1956306854

Follow along with her tips and ideas on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedaringenglishteacher/

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It's February, the perfect time to feature work by contemporary Black authors in your book talks, poetry clip showings, First Chapter Fridays, book displays, and bulletin boards. It's also a good time to look ahead to next year and consider whether you want to order some of these books for book clubs and whole class texts in the 2025-2026 school year.boo

Of course, I know you know every month is the perfect time to feature these books in all kinds of ways. But today let's talk about five authors you might want to highlight especially right now, and why. As always, you know your classroom best, so be sure to preview books before teaching them to be sure they're the right fit for your students' ages and your community.

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How many times have you sat in a PD meeting that didn't apply to you? One where you were learning an 11 letter acronym for a strategy you'd never use, a 3 point plan for a new program that wouldn't fit with your curriculum, or a training you'd already had?

A PD meeting that was... irrelevant.

In their book, Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters, Kylene Beers and Bob Probst use one word to describe a key component we need in our in our curriculum in order to keep students' attention: relevance (115).

Relevance hit home for me, conceptually.

For many years, I've argued here for authentic audience, more contemporary texts featuring diverse voices, real-world projects like genius hour and podcasting, exploring modern mediums for communication, and student-led discussion.

Relevance - in the words of the latest visual trend on Insta - fits the #vibesibringtothefunction here at Spark Creativity.

I want it for you, of course, in your professional learning, and that's why I'm here. And I want it for your students, in their learning in your classroom.

When Beers and Probst polled high school students on what issues they'd be interested in exploring, the issues that feel relevant to them, they named things like solving hate/bullying, fighting racism, ending discrimination around mental illness, and protecting the environment (117).

It's not easy to dive into issues like these if you're tied to an aggressive standardized curriculum. As Beers and Probst put it, it's easier to create a learning environment that matters to students "if the question begins, 'What do kids want to know?' rather than 'What does the curriculum say we must cover?'" (116).

And yet, there are inroads you can make in your classroom toward relevance, while you have larger conversations with your colleagues and administration about the wider curriculum and the freedom (or lack thereof) it allows you as you design your units.

So today, I want to explore ways to build more relevance into the curriculum, even if you don't have carte blanche to teach whatever you want, however you want to.

Links Mentioned:

Kylene Beers and Bob Probst's Book: Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters

David Kelley's Incredible Ted Talk: How to Build your Creative Confidence

Jared Amato's Book: Just Read It

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I've been reading Kylene Beers and Bob Probst's Disrupting Thinking: How Why We Read Matters this week, and one of their points that has really come home for me is how often the standards and the pressure to boil books down to skills leads to pulling plot-based facts and point-based evidence out of a book, blocking opportunities for students to think about what the book means in the context of their lives.

How it might change them, influence them, give them something new to think about in the way they approach the world.

It reminded me of a comment my son's history teacher made recently, asking for him to focus not just on the events of history, but on "making meaning" out of them. I loved this directive, and at the same time, I knew a lot of follow-up was required. "Making meaning" out of what we learn is right up there at the top of Bloom's taxonomy, a combination of "evaluate" and "create," and not something that will just happen by itself.

So how DO we bring our students from memorizing plot details to creating a dialogue with books that help to shape who they become?

Today I want to share a story with you, about a time I taught a novel without considering the implications in the lives of my students, and how their reaction changed me as a teacher.

As you'll see from my story, helping students make meaning from reading isn't as simple as some catchy acronym or a certain type of double-sided journal.

But I will share some ideas for starting points you can use in class, strategies, discussion questions, and project possibilities that can help students ask a text: what do you want from me? And why? What do I want from you?

You can listen in below, or read on for the written version.

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This week I want to share a project idea that you can use for a ton of different texts - the mock trial. I’ll tell you why the mock trial was one of my FAVORITE projects as a student, and one fun way I used it as a teacher. By the time you finish listening to this quick episode, I hope you’ll be excited to put a mock trial into play in your own classroom.

My senior year of high school, my AP Lit teacher thought of a wonderful way to spice up our Madame Bovary unit. She had us re-enact Gustave Flaubert’s obscenity trial. Did you know he stood trial for offending public morals with his novel? Yep. Anyway, we all took on different roles - Flaubert himself, and the lawyers and witnesses - and started meeting in class to plan our arguments, our questions, and our opening and closing statements. As Flaubert’s defense lawyer, I thought it would be helpful to have the transcripts of the original trial, so after school I headed for the local University Library to check out the transcript, which I used to create my seven page single spaced opening statement for Flaubert. It was so much fun pulling those transcripts out in class the next day. Needless to say, Flaubert was declared innocent by the trial’s end, and the project has always stuck with me as one of my favorites from school.

Years later, I decided to put my own spin on it with my 10th graders in Bulgaria as we studied The Crucible. We put the judges, Hawthorne and Danforth, on trial for letting it all happen. Students took the roles of defense and prosecution lawyers, characters in the play who could be called to the stand, and jury members. Everyone had specific tasks to help them prepare, and each witness worked on either the defense or prosecution’s team in building a case. The lawyers wrote opening statements and worked to come up with strong questions for each witness. Witnesses worked with their lawyers on their answers to the questions they would know, possible questions the other team might ask, and how they would respond, and reviewed their characters’ actions and dialogue in the play. Jury members came up with argument ideas for both sides, as well as evidence to support them, so they’d have a clear picture of the text going into the trial. I was the judge, so I could run the order of the day and keep things moving on schedule. While I felt the judges were to blame for allowing the court to abandon real justice, I believe in the end the jury found Hawthorne and Danforth innocent, after a highly engaging day of official process.

I bet there’s a mock trial spin waiting to happen for at least one of your class texts…

In Romeo and Juliet, you might put the priest on trial for Romeo and Juliet’s deaths. In The Great Gatsby, you might put Daisy on trial for Myrtle’s death. But it doesn’t always have to be about an actual crime. You might let Frankenstein’s monster sue him for not creating a mate for him, and decide whether or not to award damages. You could try the insurance case of Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman.

While a mock trial isn’t right for every book, it’s a great way to create engagement and buy-in around building skills with argument, evidence, and analysis while also practicing public speaking. It doesn’t hurt that law if a popular career many students may be considering. That’s why this week, I want to highly recommend you give a mock trial project a try the next time you’ve got a project-shaped hole in a whole class novel unit.

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Open The New York Times today and you'll see photos, headlines, interactive infographics, audio, videos, and text articles. I could name almost any newspaper, magazine, social media platform, campaign website, or brand home page, and say the same.

Communication today switches mediums like a chameleon switches colors wandering in a field of Skittles.

Our students know communication has changed. They need practice sharing ideas in different mediums and weaving those mediums together.

Enter, one-pagers, an easy on-ramp for communicating through multiple mediums at once. Students learn to play with color, icons, and imagery that complement their quotations and analysis in bringing home their ideas.

Today I want to walk you through everything I've learned about one-pagers over the last decade or so working with them. We'll start with the nuts and bolts of what they are in a quick review, and then talk about where to find models, why templates are such a helpful scaffold, what elements you might require on your one-pagers, and a laundry list of ways to use them creatively in class. Oh, and we'll wrap up with some ideas for other projects and strategies you might try in class if you love one-pagers.

Links Mentioned:

Grab the Novel One-Pagers 4 Pack Free Download: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/ready-for-one-pager-success

Grab the Rhetorical Analysis One-Pager Free Download: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/ready-for-one-pager-success

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This week I want to share a piece of advice that really comes from my wonderful husband and it’s this: Don’t send emails that make your heart race. That email will only make it worse. Let me explain.

Just a few days ago I found myself in bed at eleven, eyes wide open in the dark, building an email in my mind. I laid there meticulously building a case in my imaginary email to explain why I was mad at a person who was mad at me.

Soon I was bathed in the midnight glow of my screen, writing the email. And rewriting it. And editing it for grammar. Rereading it again. And feeling more and more and more upset as the clock ticked on to 1 a.m.

I sent it to my husband the next day to ask if he thought I’d explained myself well. The email was temporarily dominating my life, and I wasn’t sure anymore if it was saying what I wanted to say.

He called me as soon as he got my message, rather than write back.

“It’s well put. But it’s not an email,” he said. “It’s a conversation. This is just going to stoke a fire, it’s not going to do anything to resolve the situation.”

I didn’t send it. So much for the three hours I spent on it. But on the other hand, I didn’t feel like I was going to throw up all day waiting for whatever response would have come.

Perhaps you can relate to me when I say I am quite conflict-averse. I feel much more comfortable explaining myself in writing than having emotional conversations, especially at work. I’ve been involved in several back-and-forth email tangles over the years where the drama grew and grew and grew as we emailers exchanged missive after missive between classes, over lunch, after school, at night.

Whether an email whirlwind like this is with an angry student, an upset parent, an administrator, or a colleague, it rarely ends with sunshine and rainbows.

But here’s what my husband has learned from years working in the student life department at different schools, trying to help upset people resolve situations. Usually, if your heart is racing as you go to click send, it’s meant to be a conversation. Where you can see the feelings of the other person on their face. Where you can explain what you meant when they look blankly at you. When you can see that they’re maybe having a hard time with something else and it’s exploding out at you. Or they can see that. So this week, as much to myself as to you, I want to highly recommend that if our hearts are racing, we have a conversation instead of hitting “send.”

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There's a lot of takes on the New Year and how it fits into our lives. There's the change-everything-starting-January-1 take. The New-Year-Same-Me take. The choose-your-word take. The pick-your-theme-song-take. There are SMART goals and stepping stone goals, personal goals and professional goals. Then of course there's the gentle twist that takes goals and turns them into habits and then stacks them, á la James Clear.r.

But what - she said with a gentle chuckle - about sneaker goals?

Yep, today I'd like to offer you a little twist on the whole goal smorgasboard. An activity your students can do this week as you return to school that will help them think through what they want from next year in a serious way, with a lighthearted frame.

They'll create vision boards... on sneakers. Paper sneakers.

Grab your Copy of the Curriculum: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/vision-board-activity

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