ELA Podcasting

Students in Mrs. Bush’s 8th Language Arts at Chisholm Trail MS class have recently discovered the wonderful world of podcasting. Before actually creating their own podcasts, students learned a lot about the process that leads up to being ready to record: research, script writing, editing, recording, publishing. Part of the process included finding and listening to podcasts for inspiration.

For this project, Mrs. Bush had students individually brainstorm a list of hobbies and interests they would feel confident talking about. Students then shared and discussed the topics on their cards with their peers and were able to partner up as they found commonalities among interest and hobbies. These partners became teams that would collaborate on the podcast. They created a title for their podcast and began scripting their first episode. Partners worked with Google Docs to collaboratively write their podcasting scripts. Their scripts were shared with Mrs. Bush for feedback along the way. When it was time to record, students used Audacity and shared their recordings on a Google Site.

Canaan and Asia partnered up due to their passion for debate. It was decided their podcasts would center around various topics of their choosing that the two would choose a side and debate it out. Their first episode was a debate over which era of music was better, the 80’s or 90’s. Canaan had never heard of podcasts before this project. “I enjoyed having the voice in my writing actually be heard. Pen and paper writing can cause your voice to be lost and the reader to not truly understand that you are saying.” Both students agreed that their communication and writing skills were strengthened through this project. 

These students also had the opportunity to present their podcast at this year’s Techno Expo. Asia said, “It was so much fun presenting our work and such a different experience. Having an audience made us feel like people really cared about the work we were doing”. Receiving feedback from their audience at Expo provided them with possible topic ideas for future podcasts, as well as suggestions for ways to improve their next episode. 

Mrs. Bush hopes to continue using podcasts throughout the year. She would like to see her students eventually begin creating podcasts in response to books they have chosen to read for the campus 25 book challenge. Because of this project, both Canaan and Asia have expressed an interest in joining their future high school debate teams. Stay tuned!