Skip to main content

Using Podcasts in the High School ELA Classroom

 One thing I've really tried to focus on within the past few years in my classroom is differentiating not only my instruction, but also my assessments! I recognize that my students have a variety of different strengths and interests, and giving students some freedom in how they showcase what they've learned can be an amazing way to engage students, especially those who might not have been as excited about the content being taught in class. When they have some freedom to choose from a variety of different tasks or to collaborate with their peers on a project, it's fascinating what talents are revealed!

When providing students with options, one of my favorite choices for projects is to allow students to create a video or a podcast. Within the English Language Arts classroom, especially at the middle school or high school level, here are some ideas for potential projects using podcasting:

  • Interview with an Author: Students can take on the role of interviewer and "author" of a novel, poem, or short story the class read. The interviewer can ask questions that focus on the author's purpose, craft, structure, themes, or any other deeper meanings of the work. This is a great way for students to showcase higher level thinking and deeper understanding of the text. 
  • Talk show with Characters: Students can pose as characters from a novel or short story and one student can interview them, or they can facilitate discussion on their own. This allows students to utilize direct and indirect characterization from the text to portray the characters. 
  • Poetry reading and analysis: Students can take a famous poem, cite the author and title, perform a reading, and then can explain the meaning of the poem and any literary devices used. It would be fun to have each student do this for a different poem and then listen to each podcast in the classroom (or post to Google classroom). 

Although the ideas listed here are for creating podcasts, it would also be beneficial to listen to podcasts in the classroom as well! Check out Building Book Love's post about the benefits of listening to podcasts for teens, as well as some recommendations for great educational podcasts!

While these are just a few ideas, there are many more ways podcasts can be used in the ELA classroom! Have you used podcasts in your classroom, and if so, what subject matter, and how were they used?

Comments

  1. Leah ReasbeckOctober 8, 2020 at 7:04 PM

    Those are some great ways to make assessing students fun for them! It's amazing how easy it sounds, but how intimidating it can be for teachers to use different methods than what they're used to using.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dr. Clint BornOctober 11, 2020 at 7:24 AM

    Thanks for support of podcasts for learning! Auditory learners will appreciate the use of them. As you have seen, I use podcasts to deliver course content to students, particularly when the information is brief and visuals do not enhance the learning.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Monitoring Students Online & Keeping Them Safe: GoGuardian

 Although I absolutely love using technology in the classroom and that my students now have access to 1-1 devices, this does  bring about some issues, like monitoring students to make sure that they are being academically honest (plagiarism and cheating are huge concerns!), and that they are not accessing websites which they shouldn't. Even though our school has an Acceptable Use Policy and filtering, there are still times where students are either off task or are visiting websites that aren't 100% appropriate.  That being said, I want to recommend an extremely useful tool that your school district may want to adopt to prevent some of these problems: GoGuardian! GoGuardian is a suite of tools which can be purchased by the district either separately or as a bundle. These tools include Filtering and Monitoring content, Teacher Classroom Management, Suicide Prevention, Network Filtering, and Asset Management.  In a nutshell, the administrative tools can be used to block...
1 comment
Read more

Benefits of Using Google Docs

 If you're anything like me, you might have resisted your students' pleas to use Google Docs for their writing assignments instead of Microsoft Word for way  too long. When I was a high school student, we learned how to format our essays using Microsoft Word and only  Microsoft Word--no exceptions! I held onto that mindset for a long time, even though my students continually tried to persuade me that Google Docs is far more useful for a number of reasons! Well, I've finally made the switch, and I have to say (although I hate to admit it!), they were right! On one hand, there are many similarities between the two: the formatting options are fairly user friendly and easy to find on both, and the user is able to change font sizes, styles, and colors; adjust spacing; insert charts; insert images; and perform other simple tasks in both. However, there are a few reasons I prefer Google Docs for classroom use! 1. Students can share their document with other students for peer edi...
1 comment
Read more