background preloader

Public Radio in the classroom

Facebook Twitter

Modern Methods of Teaching Listening Skills. Effective, modern methods of teaching listening skills encompass everything from interactive exercises to multimedia resources. Listening skills are best learned through simple, engaging activities that focus more on the learning process than on the final product. Whether you are working with a large group of students or a small one, you can use any of the following examples to develop your own methods for teaching students how to listen well. Interpersonal Activities One effective and nonthreatening way for students to develop stronger listening skills is through interpersonal activities, such as mock interviews and storytelling.

Assign the students to small groups of two or three, and then give them a particular listening activity to accomplish. For example, you may have one student interview another for a job with a company or for an article in a newspaper. Even a storytelling activity, such as one that answers the question "What was your favorite movie from last year? " Audio Segments. Understanding Auditory Learning: Integrating Listening into the K-12 Classroom | Learning and Teaching. Guest blogger Monica Brady-Myerov is a 25-year veteran public radio journalist and the founder and host of Listen Current, an online instructional resource that uses radio stories to foster students’ listening skills.

Before founding Listen Current, Monica was a senior reporter and assistant managing editor at WBUR in Boston, and her reports have aired on NPR, Marketplace, and many other outlets nationally and internationally. She won two Edward R. Murrow Awards for her stories on closing the achievement gap. On February 24 (3:00-4:00 ET), Monica will be the featured presenter for EDC's EdTech Leaders Online free interactive webinar “Listen to Learn: Building Critical Listening Skills Using Online Tools.” Listening offers exciting possibilities for meeting the needs of the Common Core State Standards and 21st century learners. Overview: Today’s K-12 students are different from even their recently graduated peers.

What does Effective Listening Look Like? Effective listening includes: Listen Current - Home - Current Events and Featured Lesson Plans. Cool Tool | Listen Current. This tool makes it easy to bring current events, authentic voices and engaging non-fiction stories to the classroom. They curate the best of public radio to keep teaching connected to the real world and build student listening skills at the same time. Non-fiction storytelling works for science, social students and ELA. The curated public radio stories are carefully chosen for relevance to your curriculum and relevance to your students. They come with provocative discussion questions and pre-made Socrative.com quizzes. Like this: Like Loading... Related Cool Tool | Listen Edition Edmodo users now have an easy way to connect real world events to their classroom teaching with the FREE Listen Edition Current Events app.

In "cool tools" Using Tech to Connect A day in the life of a fourth-grade classroom. In "guest column" Cool Tool | Soo Meta. Startup Teaches Students To Listen With Public Radio. Listen Current, a Boston-based ed-tech startup, uses public radio stories as classroom tools for middle school and high school students. (bernhardbenke/Flickr) BOSTON — Monica Brady-Myerov truly believes in public radio’s mission to teach. So much so that in 2013, after 25 years in radio, she left her job as a public radio reporter to found a company focused on harnessing public radio as a tool of education — shocking even herself.

“I never thought I would do this,” Brady-Myerov says with a laugh last Friday in a sunny corner of Boston’s LearnLaunch Campus, a co-working space dedicated to ed-tech startups. Although her days working in public radio are behind her (she spent 15 years at WBUR), the reporter-turned-CEO has not completely stepped away from that world. Listen Current, Brady-Myerov’s company, is a subscription-based website that provides middle and high school teachers with curated public radio stories aligned with content in science, social studies and English language arts. To Keep Focus On Learning, Montbello Teachers Try To Calm The Classroom. Sandra Baca has a big personality. “I’m kind of sassy to some people,” she says, her long brown hair pulled loosely into a high ponytail. And the fifth grader's guard is always up.

If somebody’s rude to her, or gives her what she calls "a dirty look," they get a quick "you got a problem with me? " In third grade she said that to a girl she’d never seen before. “She’s like ‘who do you think you’re talking to?’ ” Sandra remembered. Turns out, the girl was just visiting the school.

She tries to leave that behind every morning when she walks into Room 115 at John H. The poster is divided into red, yellow and green categories that help students assess step-by-step how they’re feeling and if they’re about to get into a conflict, how to calm down. “It's kinda like, ‘whewwwww,’ Sandra says as she exhales. The PATHS curriculum is a comprehensive program, developed in the 1980s, that promotes emotional and social competencies. “It’s ‘how do you solve problems with your groups? Troubled kids. Listen Current – Public Radio for the Classroom | Socrative Garden.

11EmailShare We’re super excited about our new partnership with Listen Current! Back in the day when I was an ESL/ELL teacher, I often used audio recordings, like NPR stories, in my classes. Authentic listening activities elevated the class discussions while building useful vocabulary and fluency. Students could simply relate to many stories and were always inquisitive about colloquial phrases. What’s Listen Current? Started by our friend and respected public radio journalist Monica Brady-Myerov, Listen Current brings high quality public radio stories to the classroom to teach social studies, history, science, and more.

Socrative Blend In order to bring a higher level of assessment to their lesson plans, Listen Current has partnered with Socrative. Listen Current Advantage By using public radio stories in the classroom, Listen Current aims to teach students important interdisciplinary skills like civil literacy and global awareness. Sign Up for Free! Listen Current, which Brings the Power of Public Radio to the Classroom, Announces $950,000 in Seed Funding. About ETR Community EdTechReview (ETR) is a community of and for everyone involved in education technology to connect and collaborate both online and offline to discover, learn, utilize and share about the best ways technology can improve learning, teaching, and leading in the 21st century. EdTechReview spreads awareness on education technology and its role in 21st century education through best research and practices of using technology in education, and by facilitating events, training, professional development, and consultation in its adoption and implementation.

Out Of The Classroom And Into The Woods : NPR Ed. Philby Illustration/Corbis Kids in the U.S. are spending less time outside. Even in kindergarten, recess is being cut back. But in the small town of Quechee, Vt., a teacher is bucking that trend: One day a week, she takes her students outside — for the entire school day.

It's called Forest Monday. Eliza Minnucci got the idea after watching a documentary about a forest school in Switzerland where kids spend all day, every day, out in the woods. "I would do that in a heartbeat," she thought to herself. But her principal at the Ottauquechee School in central Vermont surprised her by saying: Try it. Every Monday morning, the kids suit up for a day outdoors. First thing, the kids go to their "sit spots. " "There's more moisture in the air," a boy named Orion Bee tells me.

Playtime is next. "We can't roll it," says one boy, pushing with all his might to try to move a downed tree onto the dam. "We can roll it! " There are formal lessons in the forest, too. "I'm going to get some curvy sticks! " Listen Up! 5 Reasons to Use Public Radio in the Classroom. There is a lot going on in the world that teachers need to help their students understand, put into context or just process. They need to arm their students with the facts about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Or they might want help explain what ISIS is and why the US is bombing targets in Iraq and Syria. These recent current events have been well covered by public radio. Before starting Listen Current, I was a reporter for public radio for 25 years on the front lines of current events. I covered pro-democracy riots in Kenya and marched alongside angry demonstrators in Brazil who wanted to impeach the president.

I sat the press galley at the US Capitol watching democracy in action. I always had a front seat and my radio stories put listeners in that seat--listening to current events unfold. But what I realized was that students were missing out. You might be asking yourself, why should I use radio instead of print or web for current events? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.