Podcast+Lessons+-+Teacher


 * Teacher Created Podcast Lesson**

I created two different podcasts to use in my classroom. The first is a very brief review that I made to help my students collect general information about the six simple machines we are studying in science. I played it for my students when I gave them their test reviews to begin working on. I also made it available to anyone who wanted to listen to it. The students agreed with me that it wasn't very exciting, but the ifnormation is there for anyone who might need it. The really nice thing about this is that I had several students absent throughout this unit, so it serves as a nice review for them as well.

media type="file" key="Simple Machines - A Quick Review.mp3"

The podcast below was a bit more fun! At the end of the year I have my students write letters to themselves. I mail the letters back to them when they are about to graduate their senior year of high school. A while back I happened to hear a song that I thought fit this topic. For my podcast, I used some of the lyrics of that song, along with a message from myself, to introduce the lesson. I had to cut quite a bit out of the song to make it fit sixth graders more than the original version, which was geared toward an older audience. It was a lot of fun to work so hard on a message that I wanted to leave my students with.

When I played the podcast for the students it created a really neat moment for our class. A few students cried, but everyone just sat silently and listened. After listening to the song, I asked the student what they thought the message was that we should get from it. They had some really neat answers, which led to a perfect discussion about how they would be writing letters to themselves. The unusual introduction to this activity really got them focused and interested. They immediately began passionately working on their letters and continued to talk about them throughout the week. media type="file" key="If I Could Write a Letter.mp3" (Music and lyrics from Brad Paisley's "Letter to Me" © 2007)