"What's this?" I was crouched alongside a student on the first day of school as she filled out her reading profile. She pointed her pink highlighter at the section of genres, unsure how to proceed.

I wanted to know if she liked scifi or romance, dystopia or suspense or YA.

She wanted to know what they were, and she wasn't the only one to ask.

So I pushed back my plans for the next class a bit, and made time for a lesson on genre instead. And it was such a blast, I want to share it with you today, in case your students are asking the same questions as mine.

Today I'll walk you through a speedy way to introduce the idea of genres across artistic disciplines, a fun option for brain-dumping the background knowledge kids may or may not realize they've already got when it comes to genre, and then a game you can play to bring it all together that's not just great retrieval practice, but also helps bond your new community of kids as they get to know each other.

Make a Copy of the Slides for this Lesson: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1UMIrcBKJhxxuzjE1i-AkUdQV6y4H5YQO1BvO5pkFyuM/copy

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Launch your choice reading program with all my favorite tools and recs, and grab the free toolkit.

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There are so many ways to grade students. You can avoid zeros, use a standards-based approach, allow iteration, tweak your late policy, experiment with different categories and percentages.

What works best? That's hard to say. But today's guest, Dr. Brittany Dillman, wanted to try something different. She's an expert in educational psychology and educational technology, and directs several online masters programs at Michigan State University. She decided, with her colleagues, to step away from traditional grading and its many remixes altogether, and pursue an alternative known as "ungrading."

As a student myself in several educational technology courses there, I noticed the ways this approach felt different, and I liked it. So today I'm delighted to welcome Brittany to talk about ungrading - what it is, how it can help students, and how you can try it out in small ways to reap its benefits and learn from your experiments even if you're not prepared to chuck your digital gradebook.

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Recently I listened to Daniel Wilingham's book, Why Don't Kids Like School?, about how we can use what we know about how the mind works to make school work better for kids.

And I found myself nodding along in chapter two as he talked about reading: "Do whatever you can to get kids to read, but it's not enough. People sometimes ask whether graphic novels count, or whether audiobooks do. The answer is an emphatic yes." I couldn't agree with Wilingham more.

Sure, I've heard the argument that students need "rigor" at school. The canon. The classics.

But I would certainly side with Penny Kittle and repeat the mic-drop line from her book, Book Love: "A book isn't rigorous if students aren't reading it."

Sure, we can give kids only Dickens, Austen, and Hawthorne. That's an option. We can say only print-reading is "real" reading. But what will we gain, and what will we lose? It seems pretty obvious to me that while a few more kids might read classics if they're the only option, what will mostly happen is that we'll lose the majority of kids who might have started to love reading in our classrooms, given different starting points.

So today I want to share the graphic novels I'll be showcasing in my classroom library this year. I'm really happy with this collection for my high school students, and I hope you'll find some new options for your library as I share mine. Of course, as always, you know your community best.

Dig into the research and see the infographic and sources here: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2026/07/the-uncrackable-justification-for-choice-reading.html

Watch Gene Luen Yang's Ted Talk, "Comics Belong in the Classroom" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjvTIP7pV20

Go Further:

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You know how I love to share a great find, and this week I've got a real winner for your vocabulary program. On this episode of "Highly Recommended," I'll tell you about a new tool I just found and why it's so high impact for helping kids learn new words. Let's dive in.

Word Dissector App Link: https://word-dissector.irrc-tools.org/

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Sources:

Cambridge Dictionary Online. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/

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

Merriam Webster Online. https://www.merriam-webster.com

"Word Dissector." (2026). Iowa Reading Research Center Morpheme Lab. https://word-dissector.irrc-tools.org/

Your Dictionary. https://education.yourdictionary.com/education/for-students-and-parents/greek-and-latin-word-roots.html

If you joined us for Camp Creative last week, you know we spent one of our days focused on AI. I shared a variety of activities to help students consider, discuss, and write about how AI affects them and their learning. Because I received so much positive feedback about these activities, I want to share them here too, in case you missed Camp. So today, let's talk about how to dig into one of the big questions facing our profession right now, with your students, right from week one. Because I hope there's a middle option between going entirely to paper and staying digital but playing the role of constant AI detective. Because there are digital activities I really love, activities that put the world at students' fingertips. And we already know that AI Detectors constantly make mistakes or are duped by AI Humanizer programs.

Make your copy of this curriculum as a station set or as individual activities in the full show notes at nowsparkcreativity.com.

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My first first day of school, as you probably know, did not go well. Unless you count laying on the floor of my office crying at the end of the day "going well." It was the first time I ever realized you could be thinking one thing while saying something completely different. "Take a look at the syllabus," said my mouth, while my brain said, OH NO, they hate this! They're looking at the clock! And you have nothing else planned! And you have to do this with three more classes! Since then, "going over the syllabus" is not in my first day playbook. Nope, the last thing I want on day one is to stand in front of the class and lecture about our course texts, my expectations, and their upcoming units. So what will I be doing instead, in my first year back in the classroom in a bit? That's what today's podcast is all about.

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I'm not going to lie, the prospect of getting to set up a classroom space after years of dreaming about that very task is one of the reasons I'm headed back into the classroom this fall to teach one section of freshmen English. I just believe SO HARD that secondary spaces matter as much as elementary school ones.

Heck, I'm an adult, and the space around me matters enormously to my productivity and pleasure in work. How could it not matter to teenagers?

So today, I want to share a quick look at some of the resources and recommendations we'll be diving into at the end of the month inside our free (asynchronous) PD, Camp Creative: Your Stress-Free School Kickoff Kit. We'll keep it simple today, digging into five colorful, fun ideas for your walls. I'll be sharing all the resources and links for these resources inside Camp, don't worry!

Sign up for Camp Creative (free PD lands in your inbox July 27-31): https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/Khm334

Visit the Downloads section at PBS' The Great American Read: https://www.pbs.org/the-great-american-read/resources/downloads/

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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!