When you think back to your high school English classes, is there a certain activity that really sticks with you? One lesson or project that still hums through your brain and puts a smile on your face when you look back? I have a feeling that today's guest, veteran teacher Wendy Eberhardt, will have a lot of students who look back on their lives in high school and think about the activity she's about to share with us. I don't want to ruin the surprise, so let's just say that Wendy has come up with an incredible way to help her kids find their voices, and she's about to give us all the details.

Grab Wendy's guide to panel discussions: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1iVAMzrYrhljA_9NvxcL2wNHeuF6ENzd44v161JjiETA/copy

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As a fairly constant reader for the last few decades, I sometimes forget how challenging reading can be. But then I get into, for example, a dense thirty page research write-up about the study of how different factors affect relationships between kindergarten teachers and kindergarten moms in Finland, and I remember.

Reading can be so hard.

So how can you make it easier for your students, as they dive into the books you share? Well, one option is to share explicit strategies they can plug into along the way. Penny Kittle does such a beautiful job of demonstrating the way she does this in her book, Book Love, and in the reading conference videos she and Kelly Gallagher share alongside their book, 180 Days. Another go-to source on this for me is Shea Kerkhoff, whose recent book, Adolescent Literacy: Integrating the Sciences of Reading and Writing in Grades 4-12, is full of strategies teachers can pull out to help students who struggle with comprehension.

But how and when do you tap these strategies, especially considering some kids will really need them and others will find their mere mention a waste of time?

Today on the pod, we'll talk about six reading strategies that can help students understand what they're reading, plus how to introduce them, ways to spiral back, and options for keeping them in mind for individual kids. Note, we won't be talking about what you, as a teacher, can do to make comprehension easier (like building background knowledge in advance, or providing key vocabulary up front). Nope, today is about the strategies kids can implement on their own, and how to make it easier for them to tap those strategies.

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Kerkhoff, Shea. (2026). Adolescent Literacy: Integrating the Sciences of Reading and Writing in Grades 4-12. Bloomsbury Academic.

Kittle, Penny. (2013). Book Love. Heineman.

Online Supplementary Videos Associated with Kittle, Penny & Kelly Gallagher. (2018). 180 Days: Two Teachers and the Quest to Empower and Engage Adolescents. Heineman.

Leong, Kristin. (Host). (2025, October 28). The Extraordinary Impact of Drawing to Learn. [Audio Podcast Episode]. In Edutopia's School of Practice Podcast. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-extraordinary-impact-of-drawing-to-learn/id1840474338?i=1000733852674

It's easy to think of hexagonal thinking as a one-and-done. But it's not. It's a strategy you can tailor to a thousand different situations. Andi Jackson, veteran teacher, creative thinker, and hexagonal thinking launcher-extraordinaire, is here today to spotlight the possibilities. She's taken hexagonal thinking, originally developed by Anthony Hodgson in the business world, and remixed it in three different creative ways to help guide her students through complex thinking toward original writing. She's about to share her stories and tips with us, and I'm positive you'll come away from today's episode with fresh ideas for your own use of this fun discussion strategy.

Go Further:

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Get my popular free hexagonal thinking digital toolkit

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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!