Blog Post #4

Preparation For Podcast

Langwitche's 1st Grade Read Along Book

Langwitche explains in this post how the students created their own audio read along book. She worked with the classroom teacher to create the interview script. The script was recorded with the students as they read the book chapter by chapter.

After the scripts had been recorded, she created a booklet for each of the students using a template in Microsoft Word. They played the podcast and her students were able to listen to the audio while following along in their little booklets.
I think that this is a really great idea when you are creating your own podcast, especially if you have to present it in front of an audience. Sometimes, you can't hear or understand what someone is saying in a podcast. If that is the case, then a read along book would definitely give you a better understanding of what the author of the podcast is trying to present.

Langwitche's Listening-Comprehensive-Podcasting

In this post, Langwitche highlights the importance of listening (hearing) and comprehension in podcasts. She describes hearing not only as hearing the sounds of the letters that make up a word, but also the context. You have to hear all of the words around it and hear the flow of the sentence to help you understand what is being said. She also states how important language is. When you are speaking in any language, be sure to put emotion and feeling into your words by using pronunciation, volume, and tone. This gives your language a meaning.
In her class, she gave her students the opportunity to record and edit a portion of a podcast. The class was reading the story of Purim. Each student had to record and edit one sentence. They had to speak in Hebrew. They then worked together as a class to put the clips they had recorded in correct order to tell the story of Purim.
I thought that this was such a great idea. It was amazing to hear seven and eight year olds speak Hebrew so well. I didn't realize that with the use of podcasts, many different skills could be taught such as listening, comprehension, collaboration and speaking.

Langwitche's Flat Stanley Podcast

In this post, Langwitche's first grade students sent paper Flat Stanleys to relatives and friends around the country and recieved images and stories back. The class had just finished reading the book "Flat Stanley" which was about a little boy who got flattened and mailed himself to places all around the world. She gave them a homework assignment in which they had to pick a location and write a short script. The script had to include the location, how they got there(transportation), what they did at that location, and how they got back home.
In class, the students created a podcast and told their stories and adventures of all the places they had traveled to on their "Flat" journey.
I thought this was a really neat idea as a lesson in class. I really enjoyed listening to the students and all their adventures. You could definitely tell that the students had a lot of fun doing this assignment. They were very creative with their scripts and very enthusiastic in the podcast.