The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
Education:How To
Welcome to the Thursday edition of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, a podcast for English teachers in search of creative teaching strategies. Whether you’re new to the show or a long-time listener, I’m so glad you’re here for today’s edition of “Highly Recommended.” This week, I want to suggest you take the plunge and help your students create a tiny podcast.
The first time I rolled out a podcasting project was with my tenth-grade honors students. Our humanities team had decided to create a project connecting the English and History curriculum for the students’ honors Humanities portfolio, a new program we were trying. None of us really knew how to podcast, though we probably all enjoyed the occasional episode of This American Life. After all, this was thirteen years ago and podcasts were just taking off.
Nevertheless, we asked our tech team for help, figured out a program our students could use, and then launched the project.
Our students blew us away.
I think it’s important to remember that kids are often interested in exploring beyond our skills with tech. The answer to any question is generally just a Youtube search away.
That’s why in my mind it’s worth the risk of assigning a project you might not be 100% confident in. Learn alongside your students. Try assigning a 2 minute podcast - it could be a book review, a bit of research, an opinion on a current issue, a chance to teach a life skill or profile a career, or whatever fits your curriculum. Let kids know they can record the whole thing using the big red button on the Vocaroo website, OR they can explore other options they might be interested in. See what happens.
I’ve heard from so many teachers who’ve seen great success with their podcasting projects. Communication today extends far beyond the written word, and kids are eager to develop their media skills, so today, I want to highly recommend you spend just a couple of days on a tiny podcast project, and see where that leads you.
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296: My Favorite Final Exam (I mean, not that I don’t love Multiple Choice)
295: Do your Students Race through Superficial Revision? Try This.
294: Crying in the Dusty Stairwell (on Hitting a Wall in Teaching)
293: Creative Exam Review Activities for ELA (that don't involve a packet)
292: Try the Sesame Street Quiz (5 Different Ways)
291: When Genius Hour WORKS (The Elective Series)
290: Try this Hack to Teach Varied Sentence Structure
289: How to Launch Book Talk Podcasts in Class
288: A Lesser-Known Amanda Gorman Gem
277: How Erica Used the AI PBL Project to give her Students Voice
276: Let All Books Count: A Tale of Two Kids
275: Teaching SciFi & Fantasy (The Elective Series continues)
274: Using Students’ Love of Youtube to our ELA Advantage
273: First Chapter Friday: Nancy Tandon Reads
272: You Need to Know about this Short Story
271: #Bookface is Well Worth a Look
270: Try a March Madness Poetry Bracket
269: Teaching Research to Digital Natives
268: Try These Google Translate Tools in Class
267: So your Students aren't Doing the Reading? Here's Help.
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