7th Grade Podcast Work

With one year of podcast work under their belts (see previous podcast posts), seventh graders were ready to move ahead with some different podcast activities.

Photo by Jonathan Velasquez on Unsplash

At the end of their podcast work as sixth graders, students completed a reflection that provided some important information to consider moving forward with podcast work. Overwhelmingly, 84% of all students said they "liked" or "really liked" the podcast unit, and 93% wanted to do more with podcasts in school. The two areas that students said needed improvement were time and choice; in their written responses, students said they wanted to have more time to listen to podcasts in class, and they wanted to be able to choose the podcasts to listen to.

So, in planning and revising and creating a new seventh grade podcast unit, students got what they asked for: time and choice.

The updated lesson for seventh graders became a digital notebook activity with background graphic organizer work to help shape their review writing. Even before that work began, students used Jamboard to include notes about things they recalled about our podcast work from the previous year. Many, many thanks to our school AEA technology consultant Cathy Hines who developed the digital notebook and graphic organizer! 

Before setting to work individually, we took two class days to listen to a podcast together and work through a graphic organizer example. Students listened to the first episode of "Six Minutes," then as a group filled in the graphic organizer. 

“Six Minutes.” Gen-Z Media, 5 Feb. 2021, gzmshows.com/shows/listing/six-minutes/.

The items included relate directly to the Iowa speaking and listening standards, as well as the AASL Learner standards.

The students' graphic organizer work will transfer directly to their digital notebooks that include a cover or title page for their podcasts and a review page.

Addressing students' request for more time to listen to podcasts was only a matter of structuring the lessons over plenty of calendar days. The request for more choice, however, was a little more tricky. After many conversations with Cathy and with the students, they were able to refer to a recommendations list as well as use Google Podcasts.

Screenshot of some of the podcast recommendations for students

Over the course of several class days, then, students had the opportunity to choose a podcast based on their interests, listen to it, and complete the Slides work. While many chose to continue to listen to more episodes of "Six Minutes," others returned to "The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel," which reflected their interest in last year's podcast work. With access to the Google Podcast search engine, students were also able to listen to podcasts about hunting and fishing, football and hockey, and dogs and cheerleading!

Students' work isn't quite finished; they'll be sharing out their work and reflecting again on the revising of the podcast unit. Stay tuned for a future follow-up post!

Using Digital Gallery Walks as a Response Tool

Now that we're into the swing of things, Literacy Studies students have been working on a variety of activities, including a quarter project related to work in their reading classes.

Photo by João Silas on Unsplash

Sixth graders completed Google Slides explaining and supporting the genre of their independent reading books while seventh graders applied literary terms to one of their own independent reading books. Once their work was complete, it was time for our digital gallery walks!

If you're unfamiliar with a digital gallery walk, Matt Miller from Ditch That Textbook explains it as "collaboration on their feet" and "...lets students display, share and discuss work much like a visit to an art museum. (You can read the full blog post and explanation HERE.)

Literacy Studies students have an extra opportunity with their gallery walks by writing comments related to their classmates' work. Their gallery walk comments reflected what the assignment asked of students.

After the day's gallery walk, I collected students' responses, not only so I could read through their work, but also to leave my own comments on students' papers. Now students have feedback from me through Google Classroom and in written form on their pages, as well as feedback from their classmates related to their work.

Stay tuned for more examples of digital gallery walks with variations on students' response activities!

7th Grade Literature Circles Book Preview

Recently 7th grade language arts teachers approached me about helping introduce a literature circle unit--could I recommend some titles for their project, and would I like to also book talk any of these titles? Of course! Let the collaborating and planning begin!

We put together a list of titles, and then made arrangements to book talk them in the library. The Google presentation for the book talks is below:



Students in Mrs. Reels' and Mrs. Larsen's classes combined their meeting times to sit in on book talks earlier today.

Students will make their book selections soon, and their work in the next weeks will focus on these books. A great activity for student choice to support reading what you love!

AN UPDATE (Saturday, April 19, 2014): After tweeting out a picture with a quick word about our lit circle book talk activity on Friday, a Southern California public radio station picked up on it! 

In a post featuring #TeacherTweets, KPCC included this image:

Looks like others noticed! What a neat and unexpected connection!