Podcasting Personal Narratives

Second grade students love to talk.  They love to tell their personal stories and anecdotes to all types of audiences. Second grade students also love to write.  Pop into a classroom during Writer's Workshop to see the children concentrating as they try to capture their ideas on paper. Thea Wirkus-Platz recently capitalized on these two truths by designing a project for her second grade classroom that allowed students to combine their love of writing with their love of talking.  The result....podcasting personal narratives!

This project began within the Writing Workshop unit of study on personal narratives.  Students chose to write about special events in their lives and illustrate their writing in their own books.  The second part of this unit was turning these stories into podcasts.  Thea utilized Audacity to capture her students' writing and create podcasts of their narratives. (If you are wondering what is a podcast, it's simply an audio or video file available to you on the web to either listen to or watch.  I regularly listen to different podcasts on my drive to school each morning via my Iphone on topics ranging from using Smartboards in the classroom to training your dog).

I was fortunate to be in the computer lab with Thea's class with a group of students learning how to podcast.  I listened attentively as one girl told the story of how she got her dog and a boy told the story of his first roller coaster ride with his mother.  The roller coaster story began with, "I hear a BOOM!  I hear an AAGGHH!  I'm scared to go on the roller coaster."  I could imagine the fear and excitement that this student had felt during his first roller coaster ride by his word choice and the sound of his voice. It was fascinating to see how enthusiastic the students were as they created these podcasts.  They had clearly practiced reading their stories as they read into their microphones with amazing fluency, expression, and inflection.

After creating their podcasts, Thea had each student write a self reflection using Max Write relating to this unit of study.  She asked the questions:

• Did you like making a podcast?
• Would you rather write your personal narrative using paper and pencil or create a podcast of your personal narrative?
• Why did you like podcasting?

Students also drew a picture of their podcasting experience.  Below are examples of the students' reflections.

Thea is planning on posting all of the student's podcasts on to her Blackboard page for families to enjoy.  

I asked some of the second graders what they thought about the podcasting project.  One girl told me it was important to do because, "All kinds of people get to hear my story."  Another student commented that, "More people get to hear our stories about special events in our lives.  We can share them with the world!"  Clearly even the second graders could appreciate the benefits of using this technology in a classroom as it gave them a real world audience for their stories.  Their writing was no longer confined to the classroom setting, they had an authentic purpose for crafting their stories, and their motivation increased as the new technology was introduced.   

Want to learn more about the potential of podcasting in the classroom?  Be sure to stop Thea or her students when you see them in the halls to ask them about this special project.  I know that they will be excited to share their learning with the CES community!

Want to learn more about podcasting in education?  Check out:

http://learninginhand.com/podcasting/