Bri Haven, Justin Addis, Noah Schagelin and I teach our ‘Podcast Lesson’ to Ms. Cosgriff’s 5th grade writers at Central Elementary School.

For our third visit to Ms. Cosgriff’s classroom, Justin, Noah, Brianna, and I taught a short lesson on how to record a podcast.

The students have been working for a couple weeks on gathering research and creating storyboards for a podcast project on different Immigration groups. However, they have not reached the recording process yet and we thought a lesson on how to record would be a good fit for where they were in their projects. To do this, we had a slideshow presentation on the steps involved in the process. This included preparing your script, sound effects, and recording equipment; practicing your script; testing your sound equipment; recording the podcast; and citing your sources. Briana and I acted as the “teachers” and presented the slideshow. Then, we had Justin and Noah at a table acting out little skits of examples for the kids to visualize what we were talking about. For example, when Brianna and I talked about practicing your podcast and not talking too fast, Justin and Noah would then read their script really fast. Then when finished going through the steps, Justin and Noah demonstrated them “recording” a podcast about Sandwiches, taking into consideration all the points we had made in the presentation. We also had a handout of Noah and Justin’s script so the kids could see an example script that included each group member’s role, ques for when to play sound effects, and basic citations for sources. This allowed the kids to visualize what we were talking about and follow along during the lesson. One thing that surprised me was how engaged the kids were when Justin and Noah were acting out their skit. Also, after the lesson and when we broke into groups to help the kids continue their projects, the students took into consideration what we had talked about. The group I was working with added in ques for their sound effects and assigned roles for what each group member was responsible for saying in the podcast. Also, when we went to look for a new fact for one of their episodes, the student made a note to remember the site she was on to use in her citations.

In building our lesson, we took into consideration two of Boss’s scaffolding principles. The first one was modeling. This was where the idea for the skit came from. We wanted to model for the students how to record a podcast in a fun and interesting way that would be engaging. We also considered the use of objectives. In the beginning of the presentation, we stated the objectives of the presentation and basically stated what would be covered in the presentation and skit. Then, Boss recommends that objectives are revisited multiple times in order to keep the lesson on track with the purpose. So, we also revisited these statements at the end of the presentation, after Justin and Noah ran through the full demonstration of their Sandwich podcast.