Student Radio Show #1
Posted by Lois on February 24, 2012
This is the first part of a series of articles in how we manage a weekly live radio show in a primary school.
CONTEXT
Our school has a partnership with the local community radio station, partly due to sponsorship, where we are allocated a weekly hour in the program for the students to write and perform their own show. Students in Grade 5 and 6 (Level 4) each get a turn to work with their peers to write a script, record interviews, choose music and perform.
All grade 5 and 6 students are rostered throughout the year to. A block of weeks is equally shared amongst each grade in the Level 4 team so the whole grade can be working on Radio Show at the same time. The students usually perform in a group with 3 or 4 other students from their home group depending on how many weeks they have been allocated. Typically they will only have one turn in grade 5 and one turn in grade 6.
Our school has its own radio studio with the all the equipment necessary to broadcast, and record interviews, live or on the phone, and to record the weekly show. All it takes each week is the flick of a switch at the Community Radio Station for the broadcast to be sent from our school.
Students in our Radio Studio behind the panel.
OUR JOURNEY
- Originally we traveled, with the 4 students, to the Local Radio Station in Cranbourne. Two or three volunteer teachers from the grade 5 and 6 team took turns each week to drive the students and do the panel work at the studio while someone looked after the rest of their class for the afternoon.
- Once we had our own studio the teachers started to take responsibility for the panel work for their own class though they found this stressful and they required a lot of support. They felt that a five or six week stint each year was not enough to cement their learning and there were usually new teachers in the team each year. This meant it was staff intensive as it often required 2 staff members in the studio and another one to supervise the remainder of the class.
- Now we have students run the panel and the class teacher supports the performing students. The students who provide technical support need a little bit of help to get started but once the show has begun they very capable of switching between microphone, music or advertisements. There is additional teacher support for the group to practise their show and to supervise the class while the show is on which equates to 2 hours.
We’ve come a long way in terms of trusting the students to do most of the work. It has paid off and puts the teachers on the right side of the desk- supporting the performing students. Every year we have a number of students who are waiting for their turn to learn how to panel. They work in pairs and teach each other. It has made the most improvement in students valuing and helping each other and having the studio used more often.
