Listening to Podcasts (1)
I am utterly, hopelessly, desperately addicted to podcasts and I suspect most of you are too. But do we use them regularly in the classroom? Podcasts are an untapped goldmine for English teachers. Free, accessible, and absolutely contemporary, podcasts can be used to expose pupils to a range of styles, genres, and communication skills. There isn’t a Broad General Education experience or outcome that cannot be tackled through exploring podcasts. That is why each month we’ll endeavour to suggest ways that podcasts might be used in the secondary English classroom or for home learning.
If you want to explore podcasts and investigative journalism with BGE classes…
Try WNYC’s Radiolab for Kids. The award-winning podcast series has reached into its archives and curated a list of family-friendly podcasts. The podcast episodes themselves attempt to use investigative journalism to make science more accessible, and these short episodes (about 25 mins on average) could be used in class to hone key understanding, analysis and evaluation skills. Use episodes as springboards into wider research projects with BGE classes. Alternatively, match up episodes with short science fiction texts. The Radiolab website offers a good example of what this might look like in practice: listen to ‘The Distance of the Moon’ episode before reading the Italo Calvino short story of the same name (this text can be found in its entirety online).
If you want to develop talking and listening skills at Levels 3 and 4, why not study episode one of the magnificent Serial (Season One)? This podcast investigates the murder of a high school pupil in Baltimore in 1999. Analyse features of podcasting such as representation, subjectivity, credibility and balance. Pupils could record their own 15-minute podcast episode, in which they explore their own reactions to the questions thrown up by Serial or use source material on the series website to draw together a persuasive case for or against the man convicted of the murder.
See our Teaching and Learning page for resources (including a glossary of podcasting terms) that can be used by pupils to analyse podcasts.
If you want to use podcasts with Senior Phase pupils…
Try Frank Skinner’s Poetry Podcast. In each episode, the comedian highlights poetry that he loves and does his own textual analysis on it in a bid to convince his listeners to read it. Episodes of particular note include those on Wordsworth, the Beat Poets, Larkin, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Cathy Park Hong. These episodes are great resources to use with Advanced Higher pupils focusing on poetry for the Textual Analysis component of the exam. Pupils could try their own TA of the poems before comparing their interpretations with Skinner’s. See the Teaching and Learning section of this website for a classroom-ready resource based on this podcast.
Alternatively, use an episode of the magnificent long-form musical analysis podcast Dissect (hosted by Cole Kushner) as the stimulus for a piece of broadly discursive writing with an S5 Nat 5 class. Ask pupils to listen to an episode and then dissect a classic album or song of their choice in a similar way over the course of a 1,000-word essay.