Since Pinna has launched, some of our biggest podcast fans have been teachers and students! Over the years, we have heard from many educators how much they and their students love using podcasts in class, citing the many benefits.
Integrating podcasts into your curriculum can provide:
- relevant and entertaining (screen-free!) content related to curricular topics
- tools for developing literary skills related to comprehension and critical thinking
- techniques for teaching the craft of storytelling
- increased engagement and participation
Check out some of the suggestions below to get started using podcasts in your curricula:
- Introduce or supplement a unit with a podcast about a relevant topic: Podcasts cover a wide variety of topics and subjects while providing an opportunity to engage kids via a new medium. They are a perfect tool to spark interest by offering students a different way to learn and interact with a topic you're teaching. Learning about Ancient Egypt? Listen to Tara Tremendous: The Egytian Curse; Learning about money or financial literacy? Listen to Emma-Made Lemonade! Want to sharpen your students’ vocabulary in a silly yet satisfying way? Learn a new word everyday with HiLL-LaRRy-uS Word of the Day! For additional ideas for how to match audio content with subjects, check out our recommendations by grade level in Additional Resources.
- Provide opportunities for students to explore their interests and passions: Whether during free time, center time, or independent work, students can choose and listen to podcasts based on their interests and hobbies in order to learn more about their passions. Sports fans and athletes can learn about professional athletes when they were kids with “Good Sport.” Animal enthusiasts can learn even more about animals with “Kyle’s Wild World,” and Pokemon and Minecraft fans can “fan out” with “The Totally Unauthorized Pokemon Fan Show” or “The Totally Unauthorized Minecraft Fan Show.” Have students share what they learned with a culminating project or class presentation. You can even pair up kids with the same interests, and have them listen to and discuss a podcast together.
- Start a class podcast: Instead of class newsletter, try a student-created class podcast! Students can share what they’re learning and generally describe what the class is working on. They can interview each other, share their writing and book (or podcast) reviews, and celebrate everything from classmates’ birthdays to individual or class-wide achievements. You can use the TIME for Kids Explains podcast as a model for the class podcast, or let students come up with their own format and ideas. Create the podcasts on a schedule that works for you (weekly, biweekly, monthly, once a semester), and share episodes with parents. This is a great way to build your class community and inform parents of the class going-ons, all while helping your students gain valuable skills.
Looking for more ways you can use podcasts in your teaching? Check out Pinna’s teaching resources section for curricular guides and supporting downloadable student activities.
We’re all ears!
Want to possibly get your class podcast featured on Pinna? We’d love to hear from you! Find us on all our social platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest – or email us at contact@pinna.fm.
