Week 4 - Engagement Activity 5
Finding and Using Podcasts
For young children, Sesame Street podcasts offer fun, engaging, relevant lessons for everyday life, ranging from the concept of a 'tool' to 'having patience'. The larger-than-life characters are hard to ignore, so capturing the attention of young students would not be a problem. It never ceases to amaze me how puppets draw children in and make them believe practically anything!!! As a learning tool, I absolutely adore puppetry for early childhood settings. These podcasts also use a variety of delivery methods, with several small 'acts' to suit young children's short attention spans, and keep them interested. For example, the 'patience' podcast includes sesame street characters 'on the street' interviewing real children and adults, discussions between a sesame street character and a celebrity, animated stories, rhymes and songs, sesame street characters interacting with each other in Sesame Street, such as Bert and Ernie in their house - all discussing the topic of 'patience' within approximately a 5 minute time interval. Sesame Street is an old favourite that spans the generations, making concerted efforts to remain current for the young children of the day.
Follow the link below to access Sesame Street podcasts:
For Years 1,2 & 3, the following podcast, Fun Kids A-Z of Wildlife, is contemporary and fun! It is a radio podcast, so no images or video, but maintains focused attention and high energy through introducing some really interesting animals and unusual facts that are generally well appreciated by young children's questionable sense of humour! For example, the Zorilla (aka the striped polecat) is the smelliest animal in the world, and lifts his tail to squirt nasty smelling secretions from the scent glands in his bottom, all over offenders to ward them off! Kids love that kind of information! And there were plenty of really educational facts delivered within about 2-3 minutes. Even I was left wanting to listen to more podcasts about other strange but noteworthy creatures! To put the cherry on top of the cake, at the end of this podcast, it was suggested that children play a game of Sleeping Lions but call it Sleeping Zorillas ... and I am sure I don't need to explain what the zorillas do if all else fails! This is certainly a podcast that makes learning fun. I immediately googled to see what a zorilla looks like, so if this podcast encouraged me to research further, I am sure students would want to as well! I shouldn't have been surprised to see that the zorilla resembles a skunk - I thought a skunk was a skunk was a skunk, but you learn something new every day they say! These podcasts could be used as a hook or engagement tool to encourage children to complete research on a particular animal or group of animals, or simply to just love learning. There is a range of other topics within the Fun Kids podcast range. Here is the link:
The link below is for another Fun Kids podcast, Alphablocks. Each short 1-2 minute podcast plays a game to see how many words children can think of that begin with the given letter, introduced by its sound. This is a game students could play at any time of the day, as a time filler, through which valuable learning can occur. It is fun to listen to the podcast
though, because it is lively and fun, and the clock is started and
sounds when time is up. The idea is that children call out any and all
words they can think of within the ten seconds, that begin with the given sound, while the podcaster lists as many as she can think of at the same time. The children could also count the words on their fingers to introduce a numeracy aspect as well. Then when the podcaster asks, "How many words did you think of?", they could all call out the number.
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/alphablocks-on-fun-kids/id551974120
There are many more Fun Kids podcasts available.
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/alphablocks-on-fun-kids/id551974120
There are many more Fun Kids podcasts available.
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