Episode 46: Zooming In on Podcasting with Students-Part Two

Hi, this is Melissa Milner. Welcome to The Teacher As... podcast. The goal of this weekly podcast is to help you explore your passions and learn from others in education and beyond to better your teaching. The Teacher As... podcast will highlight innovative practices and uncommon parallels in education.

I have a new simple way for you to reach out to me. You can go to my website, www.theteacheras.com. And you will see a prompt that says Send Voicemail. It's a simple, quick process, and I would love to hear from you. I might even share the audio of your voicemail in an episode.

Please let me know in your voicemail if you're okay with me sharing your message. You can share your name or go incognito. Thank you in advance for taking the time to leave a voicemail. It means a lot to me. Hope to hear from you soon.

Gary Cole from Office Space 01:03

Yeah, if you could just go ahead and make sure you do that from now on that would be great. Mkay?

Melissa Milner 01:11

This is part two of Zooming In on Podcasting with Students. You may not know this about me, but I was a theater minor in college and have a lot of experience acting on stage, working behind the scenes, as well as directing. For many years, I had a drama club with fifth through eighth graders at a private school and then with an after school club for a couple of years at my current school. I also did class plays when I taught in California and with my third graders in Massachusetts for two years before the pandemic stopped me from doing it a third year.

So what does this have to do with podcasting with students? Our fourth grade students worked really hard and sounded great. But while recording them for The Birch Meadow Way podcast this past spring, we realized much too late that we had not done a good job preparing them for this kind of vocal performance. We ended up coaching them in the moment while recording and not directly teaching them the lifelong skills of speaking clearly and effectively.

In other words, I'll take personal responsibility. I didn't do what I naturally did when directing the play, which was doing vocal warmups, rehearsing, providing feedback, and then rehearsing some more. Lesson learned. The more rehearsal and feedback students receive, the less editing necessary on the back end and the more they will keep those skills for life. In this episode, I'll share what I've curated about vocal performance and public speaking. This is by no way an exhaustive list of practices and resources.

For this research, I focused on vocal performance and public speaking skills as they relate specifically to working with students to record podcast episodes. I'll also share my own reflections, as well as audio clips of fourth graders to demonstrate issues that your students may encounter with speaking clearly and effectively. In addition, I will share tips about how students should position themselves with a microphone, which is an added layer to vocal performance.

Other equipment and logistics regarding recording will be discussed in Zooming In on Podcasting with Students Part Three. Links to all the resources I mention in this episode will be on The Teacher As... website in the podcast section, and it's the Episode 46 page.

Miss Dinsmore 03:35

Tah-tay-tee-toe-too.

Lina 03:45

Tah-tay-tee-toe-too.

Miss Dinsmore 03:46

No, no, Miss Lamont, round tones, round tones. Now let me hear you read your line.

Lina 03:50

And I can't stand’em.

Melissa Milner 03:56

One great resource I found was the Ford’s Theatre Approach to Oratory. They list what they call podium points. They have both verbal and physical points listed. For podcasting purposes, my focus is on their list of verbal points.

But make sure to check out their physical points as well. Even though they're not being seen, the physical points might help them, like hand gestures and things like that. The physical points are also helpful if you require students to give speeches in the classroom or debate and so on.

The verbal podium points are pace, emphasis, diction, tone, and volume. They created the acronym PEDTV. I will share links on the episode page for the Ford’s Theater website and for a great video you can show your students about the podium points. I want to share some audio clips of our fourth graders with you.

I want you to pretend that you were listening with a student right with you. And what would you say to that student afterwards as glow and grow feedback? I hope this is a helpful way for you to get used to listening to audio tracks of students and hearing what sounds great and what could get better. Remember, be thinking about pace, emphasis, diction, tone, and volume. Here's the first one.

Male Student 05:27

Hello. I will be teaching you about how people predict and stay safe from tsunamis. When scientists tell building companies a tsunami is near, they have to prepare.

Melissa Milner 05:37

So what do you think? I think a glow for this student is that he knows what he's reading. His diction is pretty decent. You can hear the words. And I think only because of the grow, which is the pace, his diction gets affected towards the end.

But overall, this student knows what he's reading. He knows the words. And he seems pretty confident. He's just really rushing. I think I would focus on pace, whole class exercises about pace, but maybe pulling a small group of students that really kind of rush when they talk, whether it's nerves or whatever, getting them more confident and having them slow down, knowing when to breathe, which also brings in emphasis. Because sometimes breathing and pausing can emphasize certain words or certain concepts that you're trying to share. So that's the first clip.

And you might have had a different takeaway, which is-- that's what's great is you can assess. And whatever you feel that student needs to work on, you can work with them one on one. You could work with a small group that have the same issues with the same skill. Or you could do whole class.

I'm wondering whether PEDTV should all be taught at the same time. So is it going to help a student's pace to understand emphasis and understand pausing or emphasizing certain words. In order to emphasize a word, you have to slow down. And that would help with pace.

This actually reminds me of a discussion I had with reading specialist Jan Rhein. She and I have always had sort of the same philosophy. If you're concerned about a student's accuracy and fluency, where do you start? We both agree, if you work on accuracy, it's certainly going to help the fluency. And working on the fluency without addressing the accuracy, I don't know if that's effective. My opinion.

But it's something to think about when you're thinking about PEDTV. This student has issues with pace. They also have issues with diction. Which do you teach first? And honestly, if you work on a student's diction, they are automatically going to slow down. So I would say that pace is fluency, and diction is that accuracy piece. And I'm going to stick with that philosophy that I would start with the diction.

And if I have students speaking clearly, they are automatically going to slow down. Then I can work with them, in addition, on when to breathe, when to pause, and that whole fluency piece of reading. Because that's really what they're doing, unless they're doing an unscripted segment.

So that was a whole lot of my opinion. But anyway, that's what a podcast is about. And take it with a grain of salt, use or lose as we say in the ed biz. Let's listen to another clip.

Student 08:49

I have soccer tryouts tonight for the travel team. I want to play the position, striker. As soon as I get home, I dart upstairs to get my soccer stuff on. I grab my water bottle and get my cleats on. I get in the car, and Mom drives off. We get to the field five minutes early, but nobody's there.

Melissa Milner 09:08

What do you think about this one? The student had written this story, and she knew where she wanted her emphasis to be and clearly did that in the recording. So I was happy to hear the expression and emphasis. And as a grow, definitely pace and also pronunciation.

I might work with the class, doing warm ups and exercises on pronouncing S's. And that might help this student a lot along with slowing down that little bit, that pace. When you slow down, a lot of the times your pronunciation is better. Your diction is better. Here's another clip.

Student 09:53

He was the first overall pick in the 2010 NHL Entry Draft selected by the Edmonton Oilers.

Melissa Milner 10:01

What do you think? This is a perfect example of what happens when you don't provide time for students to practice. The students finished writing this segment moments before they recorded it due to my poor planning and our overall lack of time. Rehearsing his part, especially tricky sections like Edmonton Oilers, would most likely have helped the student feel more confident and be more successful when performing it for a recording.

Most of the students had diction and pacing issues. This student, once he gets the pauses and pronunciation down, could also use some practice in tone and emphasis. This work, getting your students' podcast recording to sound great, is going to help their reading fluency.

As I've been researching this episode, it's just making me more excited. And I think it's a way, if you have-- I have very supportive administration. But if you have administration that's really not supporting this and thinks it's just something extra and something fluffy, you can come back and show them how it's improving your students' reading expression and their overall fluency.

Reading fluency games and exercises in turn can help the students become more expressive when they are recording. Paying attention to punctuation, which is a huge part of fluency, helps with their pacing.

This next clip is an example of a student who wrote the piece that she's reading. And I would bet money that she practiced reading it. And the difference is pretty clear. She was very familiar with it. However, listening to it, I can still pinpoint areas that I would continue to work on with this student to make her vocal performance even better.

Student 11:59

Seth the sloth was the fastest of the slots in the jungle. Though the jaguar, elephant, and the leopard had all teased him about it, Seth was entering in the 14th annual race of the jungle run by Lucy the lemur herself. Seth was usually a big sleeper. And although his bed in the canopy of the trees was perfectly comfortable, he couldn't sleep at all the night before the race.

"What was I thinking?" Seth now thought, "All the other competitors are big and strong and fast. I'm just a sloth." Although the three toed sloth felt like he would be better off just to stay in his bed, he knew that Lucy the lemur would be upset if he didn't show up to the race, which was now in two hours.

Melissa Milner 12:41

Pretty terrific, right? The glow here is pretty much PEDTV is strong. Her pace is good. Her emphasis is good. The tone, the diction, her volume. For this student, the one thing I maybe would work on is maybe giving each character a different voice. When she's reading the dialogue for Seth, it should sound maybe different from the dialogue for one of the other animals. And it's sort of nitpicking, right?

The one thing I'm mad at myself about is-- I don't know if you noticed it. You might want to play it again. Did you hear her voice getting tired at some points? It's sort of that vocal fry. I've seen videos about vocal issues. They mentioned Kim Kardashian where the talk sort of gets this kind of a voice.

In this case, I don't think that was her intent. It seems to me that she needed a vocal warmup before recording and maybe some coaching on how to end her sentences with a strong voice. The quality of her voice, her breathing could have been better with some exercises and vocal warmup.

I am no expert in this area of vocal performance and vocal fry or any of those other things. But these are the things that I'm learning as I'm going through this process of podcasting with students. It inspires me to look into these topics more. Wouldn't it be great in fourth grade to be teaching students public speaking skills and strong vocal performance skills to use for the rest of their lives? It's pretty exciting.

I am sure I missed opportunities throughout this process to improve students' vocal performance. All students have room for improvement in this area. And we can provide support by being aware, assessing the needs, providing fun skills practice that ideally feels more like a game, and most importantly, prioritizing time for vocal warmup and rehearsal before recording. There are a lot of verbal skills to work on.

Included in this work would be skills such as slowing down, pausing, saying each word clearly,doing vocal warm ups, assessing and targeting sounds that specific students struggle with, and having them practice those sounds. As I was researching, I thought, what a great way to involve your school's speech and language team. Although there were resources for these types of drills online, you have experts in your school that may be able to help you work with your students on pronunciation and diction.

So all of this was about PEDTV, which was straight from the Ford’s Theater Approach to Oratory podium points resource.

Dwight Schrute 15:44

Salesmen of northeastern Pennsylvania, I ask you once more, rise and be worthy of this historical hour!

Melissa Milner 15:54

Another great resource was from the podcast Communication Snacks, hosted by Blythe and Marc Musteric. The one I focused on is an episode called How to Stop Mumbling and Start Speaking Clearly. It is a five minute episode and completely worth the time. Just like all these resources that I'm mentioning, the link to this podcast episode will be available on The Teacher As... website.

There were three main tips on this episode of the Communication Snacks podcast. The first one was to slow down. But that doesn't mean to talk like this. Blythe recommended recording a passage reading at three different speeds.

I thought this was a cool idea and might need to be repeated more than once with your students who consistently rush their words. This will help students get used to changing their speed, and it will help them know what you mean when you say slow down.

The second tip was to move your mouth more. Blythe recommends imagining that you have a golf ball in your mouth. Your mouth has to move in a larger way. I could see this maybe being a whole class exercise somehow. Act like you have a marble in your mouth and recite The Birch Meadow Way or something all the students know well in your class. And then pretend you have a golf ball in your mouth and do the same thing.

The third tip is a little more tricky. Although, in the video, she says that it is about working on pronunciation of specific letters, that's actually really enunciation. Pronunciation is focused on pronouncing entire words, whereas enunciation is focused on the letters, enunciating your S's.

I listened again to earlier in this recording. And I definitely use pronunciation when I should have been saying enunciation. So another lesson learned. In fourth grade, you have students with palate expanders and braces. I am finding it challenging to speak clearly, because I wear Invisalign now. And I'm noticing some of my letters are not sounding right.

And I am now even more aware after doing this episode that I need to work on my S's. Because with an Invisalign tray, or now an Invisalign retainer in, it's hard-- you've got to move your mouth more to get that 'ss' sound. And then of course, you have students that have speech and language goals that they're working on.

So yes, there are YouTube videos like I've mentioned before, but some of it is really specific of how to position the mouth, how to position the tongue, etc. Again, this is when chatting with your speech and language colleagues might be a big help to get possible pointers for doing this work. All of this voice work while still trying to sound natural, it's not easy.

It reminds me of something I struggled with when I was at Salem State. I was playing Agnes in Agnes of God. If you look at the script for that play, there was a word that is repeated a lot. The word is room. You know, I went to my room. I guess for my whole life up to that point. I pronounced it 'rum.'

I can still hear my director, the great Thomas Luddy, yelling from the audience during rehearsals while I was in the middle of a sentence, “Room! The word is room!”

Needless to say, I practiced that word over and over again. I realize now the vast difference in mouth movement needed to pronounce 'rum' compared to room. It's so interesting.

So one of my takeaways is move your mouth more. And it will be one of my go to reminders for students, especially those who tend to mumble.

Male Speaker 20:19

[INCOHERENT MUMBLING]

Male Speaker 2 20:20

Right. What did he say?

Male Speaker 20:23

[INCOHERENT MUMBLING]

Male Speaker 2 20:27

What did he say?

Male Speaker 3 20:27

He said a hedge is a hedge. He only chopped it down because it spoiled his view. What's Reaper moaning about?

Melissa Milner 20:33

There's a series of videos by Lady Tina Leder on diction, emphasis, and more, as well as videos by Drama Club Mama. Her videos include a group game for diction and a group game for inflection. Coming soon, I am interviewing the creator of Drama Club Mama, Donna K. Park.

There is one part of PEDTV I didn't really focus on much, and that's volume. You will have students who normally speak with a quiet voice. So helping them become louder before putting them in front of a microphone is going to be key. Once the students are in front of a microphone, they need to understand that even though there's a microphone there, they still need to speak at a pretty decent volume level to be heard well.

Students also need to be directly in front of the mic when they're speaking. So if you have three students sharing a script, take the time for each student to get in front of the mic when it's their time to talk. Because it's easier to edit out pauses while the new person moves to the mic rather than having to edit volume. It's more steps than just getting rid of a long pause.

Definitely directly in front of the mic when they're speaking. They shouldn't be to the side of the mic. Their body should be facing the mic. And to have a pop filter, which helps with your P and S sounds.

In Podcasting With Students: Part Three, I'll be talking more about the equipment, what's needed, what I recommend, and so on. But for now, just understand that there might need to be some time, some direct instruction and rehearsal with just how to talk into a mic.

You might try having them do it the wrong way and recording it, and then have them do it the right way and record it. It might be a really, really useful exercise to save you time at the back end when you're editing. Because to have to adjust the volume for every single vocal track is added time. And the idea is to get your students' vocal performance so strong that your editing process is minimal or maybe even non-existent. That's my goal at least.

[ZOOMING IN SOUNDBITE]

Melissa Milner 23:16

So here are the things I still want to explore that I just didn't have time to talk about and research. The first is how podcasting could really help English language learners. So working on reading fluency and accuracy skills translates to podcasting skills. This would be a wonderful way to work with ELL students on pronunciation, as well as expression. So I'd like to do more research on that.

I would love, if you are an ESL, ELL, sheltered instruction, bilingual educator, please go to www.theteacheras.com, and leave me a voicemail. You can also email me from the website in the Contact section. I would love to hear from you and maybe have you on the podcast.

The other thing that I was thinking of as I was editing this episode is something, again, back from when I was doing the acting in high school and college. I would always mark up my script. What a great thing that you could have students do before they start rehearsing. Where do they think they will take their pauses? Where do they think they will have emphasis on certain words.

And then when you're giving feedback, they can have their pencils with their scripts. And they can be marking down ideas and feedback that you're giving them onto their scripts. If it's an unscripted chat, that's a different thing altogether.

And I'm also going to be hopefully coming up with some ideas about how to help students with the unscripted chat and still have PEDTV really strong when they're just speaking off the cuff. I think they naturally will emphasize and have a tone that works for the topic, because they'll know a lot about the topic. And they'll be confident, and they'll have a lot to say.

Those are the two things that really came out as I was editing that I wanted to share with you. Leave me a voicemail. Do you have questions about any of the things that I've talked about in this episode? Or honestly, for me, I would also love to hear if you are a speech and language person, could you come on? Or if you're a vocal performer, if you're a singer, do you have some great tips to share with The Teacher As... listeners?

And I just want to say that when you do leave that voicemail, you do not need to leave any personal information. You don't have to give an email. You literally just record your voice. You can give your name or not. I hope you enjoyed part two of Podcasting With Students.

And Part Three is going to be more focused on the equipment. And how do I get the podcast on to Apple Podcasts, for instance. Do I need to buy a microphone? How do we do the recordings? So more of the logistics are in part three. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you enjoyed it.

If you enjoyed this episode, and have not done so already, please hit the subscribe button for The Teacher As... podcast so you can get future episodes. I would love for you to leave a review and a rating, as well, if you have time. For my blog, transcripts of this episode and links to any resources mentioned, visit my website at www.theteacheras.com. You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram @melissabmilner. And I hope you check out The Teacher As... Facebook page for episode updates.

I am sending a special thanks to Linda and Lester Fleishman, my mom and dad, for being so supportive. They are the voices you hear in the Zooming In soundbite. And my dad composed and performed the background music you are listening to right now. My intro music was "Upbeat Party" by Scott Holmes.

So what are you zooming in on? I would love to hear from you. My hope is that we all share what we are doing in the classroom in order to teach, remind, affirm and inspire each other. Thanks for listening. And that's a wrap!

Melissa Milner

Episode 46: Zooming In on Podcasting with Students-Part Two

Episode 47: Zooming In on Podcasting with Students-Part Three

Episode 45: Zooming In on Podcasting with Students-Part One