Reading & Literacy

For Valentine’s Day, Enjoy Student Podcasts About Love

By Sasha Jones — February 13, 2019 1 min read
Kindergarten teacher Kimberly Calhoun and her students write scripts, in which students discuss the “best part” about themselves.
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In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, one kindergarten teacher is having her students tell her what they love about themselves in the form of a podcast.

Inspired by Wendy Ewald’s book, The Best Part of Me, Kimberly Calhoun, a teacher at the Mount Washington School in Baltimore, had her students write about a part of their bodies that they love, and why they love it. Students then used the Anchor app to read their sentences out loud and create a podcast.

One student said that he loved his brain because it can “think about the Transformer’s movie,” while another explained that, with her voice, she can “give a speech like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

For Calhoun, the podcast goes beyond the cute things that her students will say. The process teaches students to write full sentences and use their “strong voice” for presenting. Listen to the results here:

The topic of love also provided some podcast inspiration last year for students at Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, Calif. Michael Hernandez, a cinematic arts and broadcast journalism teacher at the high school, instructed students to create a podcast series on love to promote his students’ speaking and interviewing skills.

The students broke into groups and each one took a different look at the subject. While one group asked elementary schoolers what love is, another questioned high schoolers about their experiences.

This Valentine’s Day, get inspired yourself. Read more about how teachers are turning podcasts into instructional tools.

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Curriculum Matters blog.