My Favorite Podcasts for the Classroom

Want to try podcasts in the classroom? I can help! This post lists out my favorite podcasts along with what standards and texts to pair them with. Many teachers prefer seasonal activities so I’m going to break this up by month. However, any of these can be used at any time throughout the year.

*UPDATE! I had the absolute pleasure of talking about podcasts on Betsy Potash’s The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, episode 61, “Using Podcasts Successfully in ELA.”  So if you’re looking for more information about podcasts, check out the podcast about podcasts by clicking here. 

Using Podcasts in the Classroom

Other teachers have asked me how I do podcasts in the classroom, so let me give a quick rundown of your options.

1. Whole class listening: This is similar to reading a text aloud. Students have some sort of worksheet or guiding questions to answer while listening. The teacher pauses occasionally to clarify, have discussions, or just allow students to write down information.
2. Sketch notes or a one-pager: Not sure about either? I’m including a link here from my friend Betsy’s awesome blog about how to implement them.
3. Individual listening: I like to include QR codes right on my worksheets for my students to access. This way they can pace themselves and rewind for clarification whenever they need to. .
4. With printed transcripts: Maybe you just want students to follow along and they’ll apply the information later. I print out the transcripts for my students to follow along or doodle on. Some really need something to do (doodle) or look at during the talk so we’re not all just staring at each other.
5. With improv visuals: Just recently I created my own page of visuals (the person speaking and a few pictures of what was being described in the podcast) and I projected it up front as a focal point during the quick podcast. Students could look at my visuals or the worksheet in front of them.

Now let’s get into the best-of-the-best podcast episodes to use throughout the year.

September: Getting Gritty with Duckworth

Everyone is back to school and ready for a fresh start. Have your students listen to the Ted Radio Hour segment on Angela Duckworth’s talk about grit. The original Ted Talk is only 6 minutes long, so I show that as well as the podcast. The Ted Talk gives the basics of what grit is while the podcast gets into the evidence behind it and how Duckworth implements strategies to improve grit in her own house.

Standards: relevant and valid evidence to support a claim.

Extension: students make a specific plan to follow Duckworth’s strategy to increase their grit. I have mine make a specific goal and action plan for the school year. 

Click here for my lesson resources from TpT.

October: Scary Stories

If there’s ever a time you’re going to try a podcast and really want to hook your students, this is it. My favorite here is the podcast Lore, by Aaron Mahnke. Specifically, it’s episode 16 – “Covered Mirrors.” This episode is all about a serial ax murderer in the early 1900s. Suspects are listed along with the evidence and the students can try to figure out who did it and why.

Standards: relevant and valid evidence to support a claim, characterization, word choice, and so much more. I also pull old newspaper articles about the murder to analyze diction.

The Myths and Legends podcast is also phenomenal. For October I use their “Urban Legends” episode. The host narrates five different urban legends and even extends them to current events and pop culture. Students absolutely love this one, and it is appropriate: no sex, drugs, etc.

Standards: I focus on what elements make a story suspenseful.

Extension: After we identify what makes the stories so scary, I challenge the students to come up with their own urban legends.

I actually devoted an entire post to my Lore and Myths and Legends podcast picks – click here to read more about them. Or click here for my lesson resources from TpT.

November: Listen to Inspire Writing

Happy National Novel Writing Month! Inspire your students with powerful stories via podcasts. Here is a quick list of some podcasts that students love.

• Limetown: a fake documentary about a town that suddenly disappeared a while back and no one knows what happened. First 10 minutes focus on setting up the story and creating mystery and suspense to draw in the listener.
• Blackwood: three teens spend a summer investigating a local urban legend only to find out that it’s real. Very reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project. There is some swearing which sounds about right for this group of teenagers. First 10 minutes focus on characterization of the three main characters.
• The Moth Radio Hour: Powerful, personal stories from any and everyone. Like a spoken memoir but only the best of the best. I’m linking this to one about an awkward high school student attempting to navigate the rocky social scene. It’s clean and it’s relatable to your students. Challenge your students to craft their own memoirs. Everyone has a story.

You could play 5-10 minutes of each at the start of each day, do a podcast tasting, or maybe first chapter Friday using a podcast clip instead of a chapter.

December: A Very Sedaris Christmas

David Sedaris is one of my favorite authors. In fact, the only thing better than reading his books is listening to Sedaris read them to me. His tone and inflections are immaculate;  the creator of a work often knows best how to deliver the lines.

I’ve found a clean and shortened version of “The Santaland Diaries” that my students love. It’s hysterical, candid, and very relatable to students since it’s all about a crummy mall job Sedaris once had.

Standards: irony and how it helps develop the theme.

The second podcast by Sedaris is also from NPR and it’s a short story about Christmas on a farm. The title, “An Animal Farm Christmas,” absolutely is a reference to Animal Farm; Sedaris’s story is dark and deadly.  But it’s also funny, and in my classes dark yet humorous is always a crowd-pleaser.

Standards: More irony with a bit of characterization and theme.

Click here for another post that goes into more detail about Sedaris’s NPR episodes and how to use them in classroom.

January: Inspire Your Students to Build Something

Encourage students to make this their year to start working towards their dreams with a little inspiration from NPR’s podcast, How I Built This. The host interviews successful people from various industries about how they built their empires. Most came from average upbringings – probably similar to your students – and with hard work and perseverance they were able to build some sort of successful business. Looking to give your students choice and help them find something they are interested in and passionate about? This is it. Episodes focus on fashion, music, hospitality, etc. There’s something for everyone. 

*There is an occasional swear word here and there depending on the episode you listen to. No F-bombs that I’m aware of, but I wanted to mention it in case you are in a conservative school.

Standards: theme – growth mindset

Extension: have students hang up their sketchnotes and gallery walk in order to determine a theme for the entire podcast.

Pair it with: a memoir, biography, or autobiography unit

Click here to get my FREE graphic organizer

February – Celebrating Founding Fathers? 

Happy Presidents’ Day – or not…A current issue right now is how we memorialize and talk about the leaders of the past.  This podcast episode is from NPR’s Hidden Brain. The host interviews the incomparable Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello. The episode is all about how our minds justify our actions. In order to illustrate an example, the podcast explores the ways in which Jefferson justified having slaves even though he admitted slavery was deplorable. Slavery is an important yet sometimes difficult topic to discuss in classrooms. This podcast is perfectly laid out to allow students to engage in respectful conversation and to get a better understanding of the time period.

Standards: identifying and using valid and relevant claims; speaking and listening skills; counterargument.

Extension: the podcast connects to the present with a quote from Trump about taking down Washington’s and Jefferson’s monuments since Confederate monuments are coming down as well. Gordon-Reed’s response is awesome and it’s a great topic for a current and relevant argumentative essay.

Pair it with: This is perfect to pair with Kindred by Octavia Butler.

Click here to get my lesson resources from TpT.

March: A Thanksgiving Lesson, Of Course

*This podcast focuses on Thanksgiving. However, this lesson is even more impactful if it’s done during a different time of the year. We can, and should, teach about Native Americans outside of November.

The Memory Palace is everything I look for in a podcast: professional, unbiased, and well-researched. My favorite episode is “On the Shores of Assawompset.” This podcast, just over 10 minutes long, is all about the celebration commemorating 300 years since the first Thanksgiving between the Wampanoag tribe and the pilgrims. However, this podcast focuses on the perspective of Charlotte Mitchell, Massasoit’s only living heir, who reluctantly took part in the celebration. She found the festival to be very offensive and regretted having ever taken part in it. DiMeo, the podcast host, delivers a wonderful narrative of the events full of biting irony in order to reinforce the purpose of the episode.

Standards: author’s purpose, irony, diction

Extension: Have students look at the current celebration being planned for the 400th anniversary coming up this fall. Are any aspects of the celebration offensive based on their new understanding of Thanksgiving from the Wampanoag perspective?

Click here to check out my resources for this podcast at my TpT store.

April: Fool Students with a Satire of Serial

To coincide with April Fools’ Day, this month’s focus is on true crime podcasts. While Serial is not in any way funny, the parody of Serial, A Very Fatal Murder, is fabulously humorous.

I start with episode one of Serial. If you haven’t already heard, it’s a podcast investigating the murder of a teenage girl just outside of Baltimore in 1999. The first episode gives a great introduction to the basic facts of the murder and introduces most of the main people involved.  

Standards: For Serial I focus on author’s purpose and how the podcast and narrative are laid out. For example, “How are the victim and murderer described?”

This leads into the parody podcast from The Onion – A Very Fatal Murder. I only play the first episode of this podcast as well. Surprisingly, it’s pretty clean and tame even though it’s from The Onion. The host details how he finds the perfect murder victim – must be a hot girl who dies in some horrible way – and it starts his journey to interview the townspeople. One of my favorite moments is when interviewing the girls’ parents he refuses the mother a tissue because he likes how her crying is coming through on the audio. *There is an F-bomb at the very end of the first episode when they are previewing clips from upcoming episodes. 

Standards: I focus on why this is labeled a satire and what the creators are trying to achieve in making it. 

Extension: I have the students talk about if this changes the way they see Serial or other true crime shows and podcasts.

Paired it with: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Click here to get my lesson plans from TpT.

Bonus: Speaking of True Crime, Have you tried In the Dark?

In the Dark podcast is the perfect informational text to pair with an op-ed writing assignment because students always have such strong opinions about the topics discussed on the podcast. The podcast focuses on the trials of Curtis Flowers, the alleged murderer of four Tardy Furniture employees in July 1996. Even though the murders happened in 1996, the trials have been ongoing from 1997 to present day. Six trials so far, and always with Curtis Flowers as the defendant and DA Doug Evans as the prosecutor pushing for the death penalty. *Update: Doug Evans just recused himself from the case January 2020.*

The first four episodes of the podcast cover the following topics:

• Episode 1: a general summary of all the important people and what happened the day of the murders.
• Episode 2: the route Curtis allegedly took the day of the murders and the eyewitnesses who saw him.
• Episode 3: details about the gun Curtis allegedly stole to kill the Tardy employees
• Episode 4: details about the jailhouse informants who claim Flowers confessed to them while in prison. 

However, each episode is packed with issues and red flags that show more and more that something is not right with this investigation. After listening to these first four episodes, students get pretty fired up about the injustice happening with this trial and want to do something about it.

I only use the first four episodes. Each is an hour long with so much to unpack. Doing the four episodes and the writing assignment covers a month for me. Unfortunately, that’s all the time I have.

If you want more information on this, check read my latest post detailing how I use the podcast and teach each episode: Using In the Dark Podcast in the Classroom

May: Social Media Shaming

Warm temperatures tend to bring hot tempers. What a perfect time to remind students about the negative effects of social media shaming. I again turn to Ted Radio Hour: How Can Our Real Lives Be Ruined By Our Digital Ones? I actually love the Ted Talk given by Jon Ronson, but there are so many bad words said aloud and printed all over the screen that I can’t use it in class. Ted Radio Hour to rescue with their censoring bleeps. Don’t worry, I’m sure your students can figure out what was said.

Ronson shows our hypocrisy as a society when someone missteps online and society completely destroys the person with insults and threats that go well beyond whatever misstep the original person made. It’s a good reminder to everyone that what we say online may seem innocuous or even warranted, but in actuality it may be powerful enough to destroy a life.

Standards: valid and relevant evidence, counter arguments, fact versus opion

Pair it with: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Click here to get my lesson resources from TpT.

What did I miss? What are your favorites? I’d love to hear back from you about how you use podcasts in the classroom.

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