1. Let your students listen to Podcasts on the standards.
There are SO many websites with amazing podcasts for any subject matter that students can listen to on any device. You do NOT need an Apple product to listen to podcasts, you can go straight to the website or YouTube to listen to Podcasts. The podcasts below are listed with some examples of podcasts and appropriate subjects.
- Radiolab: Eye in the Sky (5th Amendment rights: US History), Musical Language (Music), The Rhino Hunter (Environmental Science), Antibodies (Science), and MANY more.
- This American Life: Human Spectacle (World History), Wait, do you have a map? (Geography)
- Stuff You Missed in History Class: Boston Tea Party, American Revolution, and MORE!
2. Let your students listen to fictional podcasts or “stories” in order to encourage creativity and enhance listening skills.
This could go along with a writing activity or an introduction to a creative writing unit.
- Lime Town: A seven part podcast of a fictional story where three hundred men, women, and children disappeared from a small research driven town.
- Serial: Serial isn’t fictional BUT is a collection of stories, accounts, and data from a young Muslim teen accused of murdering his high school ex girlfriend. This podcast could be taught as a modern day Romeo and Juliet and allows students to examine all the facts presented.
3. Let your students create their own podcasts!
After listening to a few podcasts students will get the idea of what it would be like to create their own. You can have students work in groups of 3-5 to go through all of the steps of creating a podcast to show their knowledge of whatever standard you are teaching in class. In my 8th Grade History class students created a podcast on the American Revolutionary War and followed these steps…
- In a group of four students began by researching the American Revolutionary War by using a Hyperdoc given to them by ME! [a hyperdoc is fancy word for a Google Doc or Google Draw that has a bunch of links, videos, and information for them to explore independently – talk about differentiated!]
- Next, students shared a Google Doc with each other and wrote a script for their podcast (modeling what they had heard before). This script looked something like this..
Emily: Thanks for tuning in to our podcast. Today we will bring you an extraordinary account of the American Revolutionary War from Mrs. Tyler’s classroom.
Jose: You betcha Emily. This will be a rivoting time where we discuss how in the world our country ever beat the British!
3. Finally after the podcast was written and checked off by Mrs. T, students were given an iPad or a Chromebook and recorded their podcast! The application I chose to use was Voice Record.
4. Podcast RECORDED, if using Voice Record just click Send to Google Drive, and the podcast will go right into the student’s account. Viola!
Now who said you can’t use a podcast in the classroom? 🙂
Teaching Without a Quill 