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Using NPR in the Classroom: A Beginner's Guide
By Kent Willmann
Overview
A Beginner's Guide
A driveway moment. You know what they are. When you are listening to a story on NPR and it is so good that when you get home and the story is not over you just sit there in your car listening. Here is how you can take those moments to your classroom.
NPR is one of those sources that solves problems. It addresses the needs of several groups. Higher performing students can benefit from the serious intellectual level of the reports and those students who struggle with reading can benefit from hearing the stories.
Just about every NPR program is now available online. Some shows have archives that go back to 1996. Many of these can be searched and played today.
If you are technologically challenged, this lesson will provide you with some instructions for how to do this in your classroom. If you are higher on the technology food chain you may benefit from the ideas about how to search and how to use NPR in your classroom.
Curriculum Standards
For a list of standards that this unit addresses, click here.
Time Required
Anywhere from five minutes to a whole class period depending upon the length of the NPR piece and how you would like to use it in the classroom.
Materials
A computer hooked up to the Internet.
- As usual, higher speed is better than slower speed, but it will work non-the-less. WARNING: the slower your connection the more likely you are to have the program interrupted during replay--just be patient and it will start back up. Some schools may restrict access to 'bandwidth hogs" like streaming audio. If that is the case you may wish to contact your technology people and plead your case for this excellent news source.
Good speakers on your computer or a pair of external speakers
- Depending upon your computer, the size of your room, and the noise level you can get away with, playing NPR over the existing speakers on your computer can work. You may wish to get some external speakers that plug into computer or into the headphone jack. If you are a serious audiophile you can connect your computer to a receiver and a really good set of speakers and blow away the teacher next door.
RealAudio Plug-in
- In order to play archive files stored at the NPR site you will need the RealPlayer or RealOne plug-in from RealAudio Archived files will not play on the Microsoft media player that comes with most PCs. NPR and RealAudio make this a breeze.
Tech Kid
- If you run into trouble, ask a knowledgeable student. They usually know what to do and will feel especially proud that you asked them to show their expertise in class. Although I am sure most of them will not have spent much time at the NPR site.
Prepping the Lesson
- There are two basic ways to search NPR.
- If you remember a story on a particular show and the date you can go to that shows page using the pull down menu and then click on previous shows and follow the instructions.
- You can also enter keywords. In this case, "slave" and "abolition" are used. You can get search help by clicking on the Help button next to the Search button.
- As with all search engines, the teacher will need to experiment with various combinations of search terms to get the desired stories. Using various combinations of "slave", "slavery", and "abolition" returned slightly different results. This example uses the combination of "slave" and "abolition." Here are some of the results it returned.
- Just click the name of the desired program and it will start. Note: The RealOne player has a great option which live NPR does not--A PAUSE button. It allows the teacher to stop and comment or allow kids to catch up on their notes. The teacher can also use the controls to increase volume or to fast forward or replay parts.
Listening Activities
Here are some ways you can ask kids to take notes as they listen to the report.
- Draw pictures. As the report goes on ask student to image they are watching this report on the news and to draw pictures of what they see.
- Web the info. Put the title of the report in the middle of the page and then start adding words and lines making connections between the things that are being said.
- Stream of report. As the report goes on ask students to write down any word that they hear. Stop the report from time to time and ask students to use their words to restate what the report did. Ask other students to fill in the wholes with their words.
- Talking Heads. Most reports involve a reporter conducting several interviews or playing parts of speeches by others. Preview the report and before playing it for students ask them to write down the names of those who are heard on the report. As the report plays have student write down a least one quote by each person. Teachers can also jigsaw students and ask them to follow a particular person for the whole report and then trade with other groups.
- KWL. Before the report ask students to make a KWL chart. K=what they KNOW about the topic. W=what they WANT to learn and L=what they LEARNED from the report.
- Taking Sides. Many of the reports will have advocated from both sides of an issue speaking. Ask students to make a chart that has three parts. Background information, Side A and Side B. As they listen then can put information whereever it fits.
- Students can also use NPR for reports in the classroom for either oral presentations or written reports. Here is how to write a citation for NPR according to APA and MLA.
MLA Citation
"Unchained Memories of Slavery" Host. Scott Simon. Weekend Edition Saturday. Washington D.C. 02/08/2003.
APA Citation
Scott Simon (Host). (2003). Unchained Memories of Slavery [Radio Program]. Washington D.C.
(This is from another great resource, an online citation maker, called Citation Machine. http://www.landmark-project.com/citation_machine/cm.php?ctype=13)
Example Lesson
For this sample lesson uses a report that aired on February 8, 2003, on Weekend Edition Saturday with Scott Simon. It was a story about Slave Narratives collected by the WPA in the 30's and read by actors for the HBO special.
Preview or pre-listen to judge the appropriateness of this report for your students. The narratives can be very disturbing.
Anticipatory Set
Put up a picture of a slave on a plantation and ask students to speculate what a slave living and working there may have experienced.
Procedures
- Ask kids to write notes using the NPR Listening Notes
- Run the program. You may stop at intervals and ask questions.
- When the program has ended ask students to share the words and pictures they created as well as any commentary they found enlightening. Some key discussion questions may include:
- What can we learn from studying everyday life; what people eat, how they play, what kind of work they do, etc.
- What relationship existed between slave children and children of the plantation?
- Why did the actors reading the narratives and the producers of the series think it was important to remember these stories?
Assessment
Writing a narrative from the perspective of a slave including real historical information would be well suited to this type of information and the standards. More narratives are available at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html.
This lesson was created by Kent Willmann, a social studies teacher at Silver Creek High in Longmont, Colorado.
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