Listenwise is a new service that curates that best stories from public radio and creates classroom lessons built around each episode. They offer free lesson plans that are aligned to the Common Core, and they are a great way to bring authentic, non-fiction, real-world stories into the classroom. Let's check them out!
As I mentioned above, Listenwise offers a large variety of public radio shows, organized by content area, and paired with a classroom lesson. If you're curious about how the organization got started, here is their story:
Listenwise is also completely free to use, although they do also offer a premium version (which we'll be giving away a few memberships to soon!) The premium version allows for more customization, student accounts, graphic organizers, and class reports on student progress. That being said, the free version is absolutely great in and of itself, and offers some an excellent collection of free lessons for teachers.
Plan Options for Listen Current
Now that you have a basic idea of what Listenwise is all about, let's check out the interface and see how the service looks! When you first log in, you'll be presented with your teacher dashboard. From here you can see your lessons, see recent current events, and check out featured lessons. The site's main focus is on lessons for social studies, science, and ELA, but they'll be expanding that as time goes on.
The Teacher Dashboard
Within each lesson, you'll be presented with a short summary, the Soundcloud link to the story, a transcript of the recording (which is an awesome feature), the essential question of the lesson, the objectives, and very well-structured and complete lesson plan. The lessons include all the worksheets and resources a teacher would need, they offer discussion questions, and of course, all the CCSS that the lesson is aligned with.
All Lessons Include Resources, CCSS Alignment and Much More
So those are the basic features, that are offered free to everyone. As I mentioned, it's a wonderful collection of free lessons around a great variety of authentic learning tasks and stories. I highly recommend checking out their database and exploring the lessons they offer.
If you decide to go with the premium version, you'll also have the ability to create your own classes. From here, you can give your students a code to enroll in your class and they can easily submit their assignments online through the site.
You'll also have access to their graphic organizers, have the ability to modify and differentiate assignments, and you'll get class reports on student progress. Plus, as I mentioned at the beginning, we'll have a few premium memberships to give away soon, so stay tuned on details for that!
Each Podcast Comes With a Detailed Lesson Plan
And overall, that's the site! It's a wonderful learning resource that does an outstanding job of bringing current events and real-world situations into the classroom, and the fact that each podcast includes such a detailed and standards-aligned lesson is an added bonus. The features in the free version are more than enough for any teacher to get started, and I absolutely recommend heading over to the site and checking out what they have to offer.
The opinions expressed in this review are my own.
I was not compensated for writing this review.
I was not compensated for writing this review.
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