Culturetopia

It's a bit embarrassing to admit but it has only been recently that I have started listening to NPR on a consistent basis. As soon as I saw the podcast assignment I knew I would end up on the NPR Podcast Directory in order to find my podcast.  I really enjoy listening to the Culturetopia series and I think the possibilities are endless for its use in the English Language Arts classroom.  Each Culturetopia podcast covers the best arts, movies, books and culture events from that week and combines news coverage with interviews and commentary.

The NPR Culturetopia podcast that aired on March 10, 2010 was one I already had bookmarked to hopefully use in my eventual classroom.  Among other topics, they talk with a first time novelist, Heidi Durrow, who writes the story of a biracial girl and the things she goes through in the book The Girl Who Fell from the Sky. I would love to have the opportunity to teach that book and then give the students the opportunity to hear from the author what she was thinking and/or feeling when she wrote this story.  Since the book is based on a true story, the students would then have the opportunity to write their own personal narratives and present them in any form that they feel best expresses their story.  They could create their own podcast, a digital video, scrapbook/collage, song or poem, traditional paper, etc. Student choice is so important if we truly want to receive meaningful work from our students, it has to mean more to them then simply a grade on a paper.