00;00;00;11 - 00;00;32;24 Alexandria Royal So this opportunity opened up for the children the opportunity to see people who looked like them doing the work, and they can see themselves in that position. And even maybe this planted the seeds of, of broadcast journalism for them. They're doing it as, as second graders. Why can't they further pursue that as an adult? And some of the kids, when they sat down, just sat down like they were experienced veterans and they were so confident, and it's different from how they sometimes present in class. If you ask the kids about second grade, they're going to talk about the podcast. 00;00;32;27 - 00;00;48;11 Molly Buckley-Marudas Welcome to a new episode of Chalk Talk with CLE teaching. I'm Doctor Molly Buckley-Marudas as Chalk Talk co-host, co-founder of the Cleveland Teaching Collaborative and associate professor of Adolescent Young Adult English Education in the Levine College of Public Affairs and Education. 00;00;48;13 - 00;01;16;18 Chris Rennison And I'm Chris Rennison, director of academic technologies in the Office of Instructional Excellence at Cleveland State University. Chalk talk is a production of the Cleveland Teaching Collaborative. Doctor Barkley and Doctor Shelley Rose co-founded the collaborative in May of 2020, and it was my privilege to join them as their technical director the following February of 2021. The CTC is now an award winning working group for research, reflection and support for pre-kindergarten through higher education instructors in Northeast Ohio. 00;01;16;19 - 00;01;39;14 Molly Buckley-Marudas In this episode, podcasting in the classroom, we sit down with Alexandria Royal, Primary Years program coordinator for the Shaker Heights City School District, including Fern Way Elementary School. Ali joins us today to speak about her recent experience guiding second graders through a podcasting project. You're going to love this conversation. 00;01;39;17 - 00;02;00;15 Chris Rennison Ali, thank you so much for joining us today. I know that you've been deeply involved in designing and enacting a podcasting unit in collaboration with the second grade teaching team at Fernway, but before we hear more about some of the details of that project, I'd love to hear about any prior experience you have with podcasting, using podcast, podcasts in the classroom. 00;02;00;18 - 00;02;56;24 Alexandria Royal So this actually was my very first venture with podcasting, so it was completely brand new to me. But luckily the the tools that I've acquired over the years teaching, especially as an International Baccalaureate teacher, really laid a solid foundation for me to start thinking about how I may facilitate this with our second grade students. One of my favorite go to podcasts is Code Switch on NPR. So I just started thinking through, you know, the general format of a podcast and kind of how the interviews flow. You know, you can go online to NPR and read an overview of a lot of their podcasts. So I just kind of took that in as I began to think about how to develop the logistics for, a pretty big undertaking because all of our second graders participated. A whole grade level, my students. 00;02;56;24 - 00;02;59;09 Chris Rennison How many students is that in total? 00;02;59;11 - 00;03;03;08 Alexandria Royal Roughly 75. 00;03;03;10 - 00;03;33;21 Molly Buckley-Marudas It's amazing. Yeah. I've been thankful to be able to catch a few of the interviews and it has been a huge undertaking, but to hear the young kiddos voices, you know, behind the microphone, interacting with the guests, which I would love if you could share with our listeners a little more about the project. You know, the scope of it, what kind of unit it falls into. And some of the details on how you went about designing that podcast project. 00;03;33;23 - 00;07;53;01 Alexandria Royal For sure, so with the International Baccalaureate program, it's important to note that we really think about how to make learning conceptual. So it's not just a scripted curriculum where teachers are disseminating knowledge and kids are receiving. We really try to design learning engagements that are broad, so it's locally and globally significant. And thinking about ways to facilitate skills that are transferable across contexts. So for the second graders, they have a unit. How we express ourselves. The central idea is the arts and literature inspire response and opinions. And so earlier in the year, Doctor Buckley over here approached me about an idea of interviewing artists. So from there, we kind of looked at what artists may be interested in working with the kids. They are all local. Some are adults, some are youth. and then as an IB coordinator, I had to take a step back and think, okay, how do I actually prepare seven and eight year olds to do this task? And so, during my weekly meetings with the second grade team, we kind of developed some lessons to teach the kids questioning, questioning and metacognition is at the heart of everything that we do in IB. And so, that's what we did. I pushed into each second grade classroom for three separate lessons, and we opened up with just a simple questioning game. So my first visit to each second grade room, we sat in a circle and I had a bag with an object hidden inside the bag. And the kids, the game is called 20 questions. They could ask me one question to try to discern what was in the bag. So through that process, you see a lot of things with the kids. just even understanding what a question is because a lot of children will make a statement learning how to ask questions, to get clues to guess what's in the bag. And then they got to keep what was inside at the end so that that was phase one. Step two built upon that. And we started to talk about an open ended question versus a closed question. And what would be better to ask somebody to learn about them? And we did a strategy called the question formulation technique. So one of the artists that we interviewed was, Julius Hanna, the husband of one of our teachers, and he's a visual artist that does acrylic paintings. and I just posted a picture for the children to look at of of Mr. Hanna and one of his paintings, and they each had a sticky note. Right. As many questions as you can. Within two minutes. From there we did a concept sort. So we kind of took turns reading through the questions and the kids evaluated. Is this an open question? Is it a closed question? How can we make this better? You know, and you're prompting throughout to check in with the kids to see, are we getting the information that we want to learn about this artist? And then the final lesson was within open questions. There's levels of questioning. So are we asking for basic facts? Are you asking a question that would give an opinion? Are you asking a question comparing? So we dug into that with a fun game called a snowball fight. So they, they got stickies again. We looked at a picture of another artist. We were fortunate enough in Shaker Heights a few weeks ago to have the children's author Angela Dominguez visit. And so we, we did the question formulation technique again with one of her book covers. And then the children, crumpled up their post-its into snowballs, tossed them around the room, and then you end up with a question that's not yours. And we did another concept sort, but this time a deeper level of questioning. So do you think this questioner was asking for an opinion? Was it asking for facts? And the teachers were phenomenal. All three of them had follow up lessons to really dig deep into questioning. And then from there we talked about who the artists were, gave a little bio, and the, the children wrote their questions. 00;07;53;02 - 00;07;54;09 Chris Rennison How long did all of that take? 00;07;54;12 - 00;07;54;26 Molly Buckley-Marudas I know right? 00;07;54;26 - 00;08;30;26 Alexandria Royal It, it took I mean, just developing the lessons. It took it took time. And then connecting with the artists and just kind of figuring out the scheduling and the logistics. One thing that we came up with as a team, myself and the second grade teachers, was to put the children in groups. So they all were, for the most part in groups of three. And each of them had one big question to ask the artists. so it was it was pretty easy finding the artists. Everybody was excited to participate. The only tricky thing was the logistics. 00;08;30;28 - 00;08;58;01 Molly Buckley-Marudas It's amazing. All from that first conversation. Yeah. Just but and the other piece I'll add in terms of the logistics was I know that Ali was able to turn her office into a recording studio. And therefore the kids could come out of the classroom. And so it didn't necessarily disrupt what I know is really important for scheduling for teachers to imagine every kid having to have a 20 to 30 minute interview. 00;08;58;04 - 00;09;03;05 Chris Rennison And what did you do to convert the office to a studio? 00;09;03;08 - 00;09;54;04 Alexandria Royal Just close the door and told people miss Royal is recording. Please don't interrupt. But I actually did use some district funds to purchase our own microphones. So after Doctor Buckley and I finished compiling, we are making a Google site to kind of replicate, a podcast site so that we can push it out to families, and the children can hear all the interviews. Once we have all of the editing done and the Google site done and pushing the site out to family, we have a very generous Shaker Schools foundation. So my hope is to share the finished website with them so that they can see what we were able to do with the equipment, and hopefully be funded through a grant to purchase our own road cast system and build upon this next year. Some teachers have already shared some ideas of what they would like to see for a podcast in different grade levels. 00;09;54;05 - 00;10;03;16 Chris Rennison Wonderful. If we had all the time in the world, I would ask you, how do you get eight year olds to engage in metacognition. 00;10;03;18 - 00;11;43;02 Alexandria Royal Thinking about their thinking? Well, it's actually I can speak to it briefly. Growth mindset. So a lot of our staff, we launched the year teaching about growth mindset and how those neurological pathways are built. You know, the power of perseverance and grit. And through that, metacognition really ties up nicely because you're thinking about your thinking, by asking deep questions. And that's something you can reinforce during your language arts blog when you're with small reading groups, when you're doing writing, solving math problems, it's a skill that's transferable and used all throughout the school day for your entire life. So just giving a name to it. And once the children really start to make those connections, that the more they practice something, the more questions they ask, they're solidifying things into their schema. So we teach them all of these really high academic vocabulary words schema, metacognition, perseverance, grit. And if it's one thing that I think sets an IB student apart, it is the questions they ask. I it's very apparent. And when I think to the first ten years of my teaching career or just teaching in Cleveland public schools, mostly, great things have been, great things learned. But my first experience in IB was at Oberlin, and it was immediate, immediate. I saw a difference in the children, the questions they asked, their level of engagement, the student agency that is really facilitated. And it just makes for a completely different learning experience. 00;11;43;04 - 00;12;07;11 Molly Buckley-Marudas And we'll definitely link to the IB program and some of the concepts you're talking about in the show notes, like the attributes you know, of an IB learner, which are deeply embedded into the framework. As you're saying, even the concept. I think you mentioned it's a unit of inquiry. So each it's not just, oh, here's our next unit. You know, every students are able to articulate that as well. Yeah. 00;12;07;13 - 00;13;01;01 Alexandria Royal And just for the listeners to know, the primary year's program, it is global. So wherever you are in the world, if you are in a primary year's program school, you are doing the same six units. So how we express ourselves is taught in all of the schools around the globe. The central idea and themes may vary, but you know, it's something anywhere that you would find. And there's six units for the year. and Doctor Buckley was referencing the learner profile attributes. There are ten of those. And think of those almost as character traits knowledgeable, caring, thinker. Those are some. And the, the end goal is if we can facilitate learning to help children really model and live those learner attributes, then we have successfully helped a child become a true IB learner. 00;13;01;03 - 00;13;52;26 Molly Buckley-Marudas It's a great and I can assure you, Chris, that my son, my eight year old, came home and at the dinner table, evaluated the level of open or closed questions that were happening. so it does, you know, it was very clear that that this was being taken outside of the building. And it makes dinner better when they're open ended questions. So when he's on board with that, everyone's happy. So I'm curious, it sounds like there have been a lot of elements of this project that have been exciting for you professionally as well. You mentioned it's your first time really diving in. but I'd be curious if you could share if there's one aspect that has been particularly maybe eye opening or exciting, whether on a professional level or from what new things are seeing for kids, for teaching and learning. 00;13;52;28 - 00;16;40;29 Alexandria Royal So a few things, stood out to me. The level of student agency and engagement is definitely something that comes to mind, in thinking about our work as a district surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion and our IB program in particular, research clearly shows the improved academic performance and engagement that results when students are given agency over their learning. and what I have learned, what the students have learned about asking good questions will transfer into different academic contexts and just real world context as as we see asking open ended questions at at dinner, and then just the excitement in the kids. So, we were fortunate, very, very fortunate to have a poet in residence in March, Isaiah Hunt, he's a professor at John Carroll. He teaches a creative writing class focused on Afrofuturism and Isaiah is dynamic and engaging, and the children just love him. And one of the students interviewing him was a young African-American male. He had his hair the same way as Isaiah and it was he was star struck. You know, after the interview, he stopped in the hallway when I was walking him back to his class, and he said, I've never interviewed anybody famous before. So you know that this child, he will remember that moment forever. And the beautiful thing about the interview Isaiah spoke to why he became a writer. It was because he loved science fiction, science fiction. He loves thrillers. But the books that he had growing up never had characters that look like him. So it touches upon something in Shaker we call windows and mirrors. So this opportunity opened up for the children, the opportunity to see people who looked like them, you know, doing the work and they can see themselves in that position. And even maybe this planted the seeds of, of broadcast journalism for them. They're doing it as, as second graders. Why can't they further pursue that as an adult? And some of the kids, when they sat down, just sat down like they were experienced veterans and they were so confident, and it's different from how they sometimes present in class. I'm thinking of a child in particular, she and in class. I have to probe a little bit more when I'm teaching lessons, and for this she would never have known. She was cool, calm, collected, confident, and it just this is learning. That's real. It's learning. That's it's meaningful. And it will stand the test of time. If you ask the kids about second grade, they're going to talk about the podcast. They're not going to talk about a math equation they learned, but they will remember this podcast. 00;16;41;02 - 00;17;17;02 Molly Buckley-Marudas That's great. It reminds me too, of the digital literacies, which is something Chris and I both teach in different ways here at Cleveland State. But even the way you describe the one boy showing up and his posture and the way he moved, you know, the way he used his voice, the inflection, but are there other digital literacies? I mean, which is another benefit of this practice that kids tried something so much of the world is audio right now. So much of the content they'll need to be able to interpret and create is audio. So I'd love any of your reflections on digital literacies for them. 00;17;17;04 - 00;18;35;29 Alexandria Royal You know, some of the teachers. So after these interviews, I emailed some of the audio to staff. So we also had, in addition to adult artists, youth artists. So we had some Shaker Heights High School art students come over, but also some Fern Way artists. So we had three third grade students that are artists be interviewed by the second graders and a fourth grader. And with those we have a platform called Seesaw. So the teacher can, post the audio to Seesaw for families to view. But the teacher, the students can also use it to, you know, just create like a portfolio artifact, so to speak. So through Seesaw, they're able to take videos of themselves, they're able to create content, they can post pictures, they can draw pictures. We are a Google district. So the kids are very proficient at creating slide decks, Google docs, we use technology to support children who need a little bit more. So if you are still grasping, reading and writing skills, we show the kids how to use text, voice to text typing. So there's lots of different ways that we integrate technology into the classroom. 00;18;36;01 - 00;18;37;19 Molly Buckley-Marudas That's great. Thank you. 00;18;37;21 - 00;18;40;29 Chris Rennison Total number of episodes when everything was said and done? 00;18;41;01 - 00;19;04;00 Alexandria Royal Oh my goodness. Probably at least 20, maybe more. So most of the artists were interviewed by three different groups of children. The only artists that we didn't was the children's author. We were only able to snag her for about 15 minutes, but yeah, there's a lot. I have a whole folder of resources. 00;19;04;03 - 00;19;06;12 Molly Buckley-Marudas What's the launch party going to look like? 00;19;06;15 - 00;19;23;26 Alexandria Royal You know, we have to think through that. I think that'll be really fun to do. I definitely want to send the, the finished website out and our Fern Way forum, which is our PTO newsletter, so that families can experience this wonderful project that we did. 00;19;23;29 - 00;19;27;28 Chris Rennison So what kind of outcomes do you expect for your students? 00;19;28;00 - 00;20;26;16 Alexandria Royal Definitely one thing we've seen already, they're just really good at asking questions. Now, it has sparked their interest to want to do other podcasts. So one thing that we're considering is something called the Authors Chair. So maybe reflecting and doing book talks, the idea has been brought up, maybe to have the children share like best tips and practices for learning different things. But the confidence to it really this just engaged all of the children. So just continuing to build on that for them to see I can do this. And as a teacher, it's a good check to see rather than a test. Right. Questions. This, this is conceptual. It's, it's real world. And it's, it's a way to measure what they've learned. If we look at the questions they wrote from the very first lesson to the interview, you can see the growth. Yeah. 00;20;26;19 - 00;20;37;10 Chris Rennison I have a million and one questions I want to ask you for that. Have the 20 episodes been released to parents yet or like are that where are they in the, the process? Where would you say? 00;20;37;13 - 00;21;47;12 Alexandria Royal I would say post-production. So I'm very fortunate to have in the library our librarian assistant, Claudia McCord. I have to give her a shout out. She had a previous background in media production, and so her and I, she really was instrumental in helping me figure out how do we pull the audio off this machine using our software, because there's parameters we have to follow from the district. I cannot just download something to my computer. So she kind of did the investigating on that. and we do. Since Covid, the district has acquired Screencastify. So we were able to figure out that if we plug my laptop into the RODECaster and sync it with Screencastify, we were able to export all the audio as an MP3. So right now, all those audio files are stored in a folder on Google Drive waiting to be edited and compiled into a website. So that's where we are. I have shared audio with the artists and, with the teachers, but not with any families yet. Just the, just the bare audio file. 00;21;47;15 - 00;21;51;20 Molly Buckley-Marudas It's very exciting. It might launch at the same time as Chalk Talk, you know. 00;21;51;23 - 00;21;52;09 Alexandria Royal Probably so. 00;21;52;09 - 00;22;00;29 Molly Buckley-Marudas Joint projects. So what do you think. Well first of all before we chalk and roll do you have a couple more, more questions. Yeah. Go Chris. Yes I love it. 00;22;01;00 - 00;22;12;29 Chris Rennison You're doing this next year right. What's going to get added on. And what would be taken away where you just went and said I'm glad that I did this. But having done it I now know. probably not next year. 00;22;12;29 - 00;24;03;25 Alexandria Royal So that's, that's to come. part of the framework for the primary year's program, if you are an IB district is reflect. So as an IB coordinator I meet with every single grade level weekly for what we call CPT. Common planning time. And it's on our agenda to reflect on this experience. What went well? What would we do differently? Do we want to interview artists next year? Do we want to have a different focus? Thinking ahead to some big buckets more broadly, as a building, we we've got to rein in Mr. Hayward, our principal. But we would love to thinking about the authors chair. There are ten learner profile attributes. So if we can if we can figure out with Mr. Hayward schedule to have him pop in each classroom to do, a read aloud. So maybe the month of August is open minded and he visits every classroom to read the same book. And then we also record daily announcements and have wow words. So he would highlight those, wow words, which is just academic tier two vocabulary. Have have the authors chair so have some kids talk about the book that Mr. Hayward read or maybe the anchor text for their unit. So in grades three and above, oftentimes, a chapter book that's being used as a read aloud, as the anchor text for the unit that ties in with the concepts in the central idea. So that's, that's one thought. So they can think about it. It's not just an interview. It could be to as, as we talked about earlier, it can be an avenue to share your ideas, to share different perspectives on a topic that's important to you. So that's, that's a hope. Something along those lines for next year. 00;24;03;27 - 00;24;12;03 Molly Buckley-Marudas That's so awesome. Well, we hope to have a second series too. So we may have we may need to have around two. We'll get Chris as a guest as well as you. 00;24;12;09 - 00;24;13;28 Alexandria Royal Oh he would love to come down. 00;24;13;28 - 00;24;32;01 Molly Buckley-Marudas Would be fun. So is there anything that you haven't shared with us that you'd like to share as it relates to, for example, most of our audience members, we hope our educators so is there something you'd want to tell another teacher or thinking about this that you haven't shared yet? 00;24;32;03 - 00;25;25;13 Alexandria Royal Yes, it seems overwhelming, but just know you can do it if you break, if you break it down into, you know, what are you going to do before to prepare, lay out the logistics for actually recording and have a plan to edit and somehow share the podcast. It's manageable. You know, I it took some time and some reflection, but I think with the help and support of my colleagues, we were able to figure out a plan to execute it. And at the end of the day, what you see that the light in the children that you see and that that spark and that excitement makes it completely worth it. Every single one of those kids, as I was picking them up and taking them up to the IB office, which was where the studio, they were just so excited. I mean, and that's, that's what school should be for kids. 00;25;25;16 - 00;25;26;05 Chris Rennison Yes. 00;25;26;07 - 00;25;42;10 Molly Buckley-Marudas Absolutely. All right. Well, thank you so much, Ali, for sharing your experience and your expertise with us on podcasting. We are now going to transition to our rapid question portion of the show that we're calling Chalk and Roll. So are you ready to Chalk and Roll? 00;25;42;15 - 00;25;43;17 Alexandria Royal I am. 00;25;43;20 - 00;25;49;17 Molly Buckley-Marudas All right. So what's your favorite spot in Cleveland or Northeast Ohio? 00;25;49;19 - 00;26;15;29 Alexandria Royal So this is tough. I can't pick one, but I love to be outside. so I actually lived in Shaker Heights for a while. I would definitely have to say Shaker Lakes. My son and I would ride bikes and go walking there all the time. I also am a foodie. I love going out to restaurants. If there's a new restaurant you know of, I've probably been there. And I would say Lakewood is probably one of like my favorite go to cities to find those restaurants. 00;26;16;02 - 00;26;17;00 Molly Buckley-Marudas Nice. 00;26;17;02 - 00;26;23;24 Chris Rennison So we were talking about this earlier. What's one podcast, book or other media that you're loving right now? 00;26;23;26 - 00;26;52;22 Alexandria Royal probably Code Switch. It's just fascinating to me. NPR has I probably discovered it two years ago. They just talk about anything and everything related to culture and different groups of people. And I've learned a lot about a lot of groups that you just maybe don't necessarily think about or, you know, how things came to be within certain segments of our society. So it's, that's probably my go to. 00;26;52;24 - 00;26;59;20 Molly Buckley-Marudas And finally, what is one of your go to resources for podcasting in the classroom? 00;26;59;23 - 00;27;24;10 Alexandria Royal I would have to say probably my coworker Claudia and I, she helped me a lot. That was the first thing I thought. She knows tech, she knows broadcasting. I need to pick her brain and see what she thinks. And it was tremendously helpful. So leaning on that would be my other piece of advice. Going back to that last question for teachers, lean on your colleagues. Build on everybody's different strengths and that'll help to make it possible. 00;27;24;13 - 00;27;29;06 Molly Buckley-Marudas That's so great. Thank you, Ali, for joining us today and sharing your experience. 00;27;29;06 - 00;27;30;10 Alexandria Royal Thank you for having me. 00;27;30;14 - 00;27;33;10 Molly Buckley-Marudas And thank you. Chalk Talk listeners for tuning in. 00;27;33;10 - 00;27;41;07 Chris Rennison For links related to this episode and guest bios, visit the show notes at podcast.cleteaching.org. 00;27;41;09 - 00;27;46;12 Molly Buckley-Marudas We hope you'll join us for our next episode. YPAR, I can make change. 00;27;46;15 - 00;27;58;28 Chris Rennison The Chalk Talk Podcast is made possible through a grant funded by the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation. If you want to learn more about the Jennings Foundation or the Cleveland Teaching Collaborative, please visit cleteaching.org.