Creating a Persuasive Podcast

Overview

Featured Resources

From Theory to Practice

 

OVERVIEW

This lesson is intended to expand upon students' basic persuasive speaking and research skills. First, students research a local, state, national, or international issue of personal interest. During five class sessions, students use multiple online news sources to research up-to-date information that helps them form and communicate their opinions about the issue; practice working with podcasting tools; and create and share a two-minute persuasive podcast in class. Note that, depending on your classroom plans, this lesson may have cross-curricular applications (e.g., in the areas of social studies, science, and economics).

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FEATURED RESOURCES

• Persuasion Map: As students plan out their persuasive podcasts, they can use this online, interactive tool to map out their opinions and arguments.
  
  
• Podcasting in Plain English video: This video explains the concept of podcasting and how podcasts are generally produced and accessed by others. It would be helpful for students to watch this video before creating a podcast of their own. This lesson also provides additional resources that explain the how-to's of creating a podcast (see Resources & Preparation tab, Podcasting Resources).

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FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

Zwiers, J. (2004). Developing academic thinking skills in grades 6–12: A handbook of multiple intelligence activities. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Persuasion is important because it helps children develop other key skills, including problem solving,communicating, comparing, analyzing, and evaluating. Middle school is a good time to start developing these  skill-at this age, kids begin forming their own opinions about the world and deciding what's important to them.

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