Improve your English listening skills by checking out some podcasts. Check out my list of the best podcasts for English learners!
These free and amazing podcasts will help your English listening and speaking skills. Try these podcasts if you want to speak clearly and understand English speakers.
Enhance your English proficiency with the world of ESL podcasts! We give you our top 10 picks of ESL podcasts you should check out now!
Looking for a great English podcast to listen to lessons on the go? Listen to the Espresso English podcast!
I am on the road, traversing through one of my favorite places, and post this week, will take a break from the blog for
Are you an English teacher like me, searching for innovative ways to engage your students in classic literature? Look no further! This blog post is a must-read for us, as it unveils fresh ideas to …
These ELA podcast pairings will help you design engaging text sets for you middle school and high school English classroom!
Learn more about My Open Passport Online Language School for both kids and adult who want online English classes or online Spanish classes!
Learn Australian English in this interview episode of the Aussie English Podcast Kel and I talk about how to improve your English reading skills
We're making EPP Wreaths
Improve your English listening skills by checking out some podcasts. Check out my list of the best podcasts for English learners!
This Georgetown professor, podcaster, and best-selling author of ‘Deep Work’ and ‘So Good They Can’t Ignore You’ has the key to meeting goals and having free time. His personal success is proof that his techniques work
Engage your ELA students this Halloween season with these spooky podcast episodes for the classroom! FREE podcast pages and activities included!
Teach students rhetorical analysis skills while engaging them with rhetoric used in everyday life. Here are ideas for analyzing rhetoric in social media...
Improve your English listening skills by checking out some podcasts. Check out my list of the best podcasts for English learners!
These ELA podcast pairings will help you design engaging text sets for you middle school and high school English classroom!
Want to get your students listening to podcasts, scripting podcasts, and then recording and publishing their own? Feeling nervous about the tech? Let me help with this complete student podcast project with rubrics and a complete guide for Project-Based Learning. In this full unit, you'll find everything you need to get your students listening to podcasts and then creating their own. It's a podcast curriculum designed by a podcaster (with over 800,000 downloads). Podcasting is as an ideal 21st century medium for students to experiment with. Think of the skills of a podcaster - writing, editing, speaking, recording, interviewing, researching, and designing. With millions of podcast episodes in circulation, and media organizations, business figures, and celebrities starting pods left and right, it's easy to show students that podcasting is relevant today. You'll have the tools you need to make it easy. The curriculum walks students through a simple process to record using the free online tool, Vocaroo, as well as how to create podcast art using the free online tool, Canva. They can put it all together using the included Google Slide template, or submit it however you prefer. Here's what's inside: A menu featuring six engaging podcast episodes to listen to through QR codes Sketchnotes templates to help students stay focused as they listen Easy guiding handouts for the entire podcast creation process (designed by a podcaster!) A rubric for straightforward grading A guiding handout for peer feedback *Please note, it's important to preview content to make sure it is just right for your classroom! I love the models I've shared, but only you know the unique situation of your students and district. THIS PRODUCT CONTAINS BOTH A PDF AND A GOOGLE DRIVE VERSION. From the reviews: "This is SUCH A GREAT way to connect with your students and have them connecting with each other during this challenging time. Allowing student CHOICE and VOICE? This podcasting unit is all about that! The flow to the unit is perfect allowing students to first dip their toe into the world of podcasting. The steps that follow are guided with examples to scaffold and support them on their journey. My final thought is about authenticity... you can share the students' work and give them a real audience." "This resource has it all. Incorporating podcasts into lessons is something I have wanted to do for a while. I love that it has the Google Slides that I can make a copy of and add new pieces as I begin to develop this unit for students. You have thought of all the pieces we will need to successfully implement podcasts! Thank you." *This product contains "The Podcast Listening Kit", which is also listed separately. Questions? I'm at [email protected]
Advice from three ESL teachers on the things regular classroom teachers can do to help English language learners thrive in mainstream classrooms.
Teaching today’s teens necessitates that we integrate technology into our practice. We get that. This is not new. But how? Sure, it does mean going digital, and many schools are making the move to 1:1 classrooms; that’s a great step in the right direction. Yet we cannot simply place laptops in front of students with digital versions of paper-based worksheets and feel as though we have that 21st-century-skills-box ticked. No; it cannot be an add-on. We as educators need to find ways to interweave our instruction with digital experiences, to infuse our lessons with social media interactions, and to permeate our practice with new media elements. That’s how we make learning relevant and instructive with the technology we have at our fingertips. MUSIC VIDEOS LESSON PLANS (click to view) So many teachers are doing this incredibly: teachers right here on this blog. For example, I have aimed to really do this with my music videos lesson plans which have students analyzing currently videos to help teach a range of ELA skills; Sara, from Secondary Sara has a year of multimedia poetry lessons which you really need to check out; Presto Plans has a great resource for using videos as writing prompts; and Nouvelle ELA uses webquests to help bring Shakespearean language to life. Here is another way to integrate technology and new media in your ELA classroom: PODCASTS. Ok, so there are a world of incredible podcasts out there, yet how exactly might they be used in the classroom? Here are just a few ideas for when/why I use them. 1. To teach LISTENING SKILLS: So much of communication is listening, and this really is a vital skill for students to learn. Podcasts are a great way to teach this skills as students really have to think about what they are listening to, and try to comprehend, engage with and respond to the contents. 2. To teach NOTE TAKING SKILLS: It is vital that we help our students learn to take notes and make sense of the information with which they are engaging. Therefore, having them listen to podcasts and try out different note taking strategies, is a really important part of the ELA skillset. 3. To help MAKE CONNECTIONS ACROSS GENRES: I love using podcast to pair with my novel studies: for example, when studying The Great Gatsby we might listen to a podcast about desire or the American dream. This will help students synthesise information across text and types of texts to provide more meaningful engagement and learning. 4. To facilitate PROJECT-BASED LEARNING: Why not have students create their own podcasts? Not only does this help teach new media skills (editing, recording, designing etc.) but it can also be great for collaborative work, as well as helping student to think about communication of information and skills of delivery. SKETCH NOTING 1) Hand out large pieces of paper and lots of colorful markers. 2) Play an engaging podcast and instruct students to draw, write keywords, link ideas, make connections etc. FLIPPED CLASSROOM 1) Instruct students to listen to a podcast for homework and to come to class with questions for discussion. 2) In the next class, facilitate a discuss / complete a comprehension exercise / have students write an essay as a response. SOCRATIC SEMINARS 1) Instruct students to listen to a podcast and take notes (You could use this FREE worksheet for this purpose) 2) Hold a socratic discussion in response to the podcast: this hits both listening and speaking goals! OUTSIDE TIME 1) Instruct students to find the podcast on their phones (if allowed). 2) Go outside on a beautiful day to have them listen and breath in some fresh air! WRITE POETRY 1) Have students listen to a podcast and just write down words and phrases, lots and lots of them that they pick up on. This could be a list, or sketch note. 2) Then have students write found poetry from these words noted: a great way to turn non-fiction into poetry, and scaffold the process of writing poetry. If you are new to podcasts, you may be wondering how to even select one to use in the classroom. So here are just a few of my current favorites; yet I encourage you to get listening to find others that will work for your students. TED Radio Hour TEDtalks are awesome. We all know that. But did you know that they also make fabulous podcasts? What I love about them is that often take a concept or idea, and then pull from a variety of talks on the stage, and weave them together with interviews and ideas. For example, their episode “The Hero’s Journey” would be an excellent addition to a mythology unit. This American Life If you haven’t listened to This American Life yet, grab a coffee, put it on, go for a walk and listen with joy (while thinking about all the classroom possibilities!). Woven together through the iconic voice of Ira Glass, each episode follows a theme, and then in 4 acts this idea is examined from varying angles. My absolutely favorite episode is 3 Miles: a story of two schools divided by huge class disparities. This episode has sparked many a lively and meaningful debate in my classroom. Radiolab If you are looking for a way to collaborate across subjects, ask the science or computing department what the currently teaching, and then head over to Radiolab and look for something on that topic: indeed, they weave stories and science into sound and music-rich documentaries which would be great to integrate into the classroom. A great starting place is the episode, Super Cool. Invisibilia Looking at the invisible forces around us in the world, the two female presenters (yay!) of this podcast present some really thought-provoking stories and concepts. For example, I recently played the episode on Fear during my Lord of the Flies unit as we discussed the fear the boys experience on the island: we did this while sketchnoting and my students made connections between the contents of the podcast, and the theme of the novel. The Allusionist This one is great specifically for the ELA classroom: the host, Helen Zeltzman, explores words and phrases of the English language - the weird and the wonderful. Each episode is only 20 minutes long, and will be sure to spark an interest in the way we communicate with each other every day. Serial There are many great teaching resources out there for this one! I would be surprised if you hadn’t even heard of Serial as it certainly created quite the buzz and even made listeners out of those who had never even heard of podcasts. It is investigative journalism which tracks a true story over many episodes. One of the great parts of this is that you can listening to the whole season over many classes and really get into it as you would with a novel study. Do you use podcasts in your classroom? We'd love to hear which ones and how you use them!
If books are a uniquely portable magic, then podcasts are the wizard in your pocket. When you find interesting podcasts for teens that they want to listen to, you will open up a whole new world of literacy for secondary students. Did you know that podcast listeners are 29% more likely to have a household ... Read More about Why You Should Be Using Podcasts in Secondary ELA
Yesterday's Newsletter is Today's Classroom Podcast Ever thought about producing a classroom podcast? When I was a kid we had a class newsletter and it was so much fun to write and put it
Podcasts in the classroom are so fun and engaging! Have you jumped on the podcast train yet?! I have a great system for using podcasts in the classroom...
On Monday, Alex Fitch from Panel Borders came to the studio to find out about the three of us who work at the Fleece Station. Gary Northfield had a meeting and couldn't be there, but Viviane Schwarz and I chatted happily to Alex about comics, picture books, gossip about Gary, and how we got…
If you're learning Italian like me, check out this handy list of 5 excellent podcasts on Italian to help you in your Italian language journey.
