Urban Legend Podcasts

Rachel West
12th Grade/ English

Common Core Standards:

Lesson Summary:

This lesson will introduce the Lore podcast about urban legends. Students will then choose a regional urban
legend to research, write a podcast script and record their podcast to share with the school. Students will
practice research, writing and speaking skills as well as work with technology to record and post their
podcasts.

Estimated Duration:

This project will take approximately 5 50 minute lesson periods or 250 minutes. That is assuming that
students do all the research and podcast creation work at school. The lesson could be modified to use less in
class time and require more homework time if needed to fit into a smaller time frame

Commentary: My approach to get my students excited about this lesson will be by building up the urban
legends and making them feel free to explore a topic they previously may have thought not academic. I will
also try to time it around Halloween so students are already thinking about urban legends, ghost stories and
spooky stories. This combined with sharing the Lore podcast with them will hopefully get them excited to
produce a podcast of their own. The biggest hurdle I see is scheduling enough computer and technology time
during class for my students. I will attempt to do this by scheduling well in advance to have use of the
necessary resources and by adapting portions of the lesson to homework if technology is unavailable or by
allowing students to bring in personal devices to use while I monitor them.

Instructional Procedures:

Day 1:
A pre-assessment discussion will take place as described in pre-assessment below. I will take notes and begin
planning how I will assign students to groups based on their knowledge of podcasting and/or urban legends
going into this assignment.
We will listen to a short Lore podcast clip that I have selected. I will explain to students that this is a
professional podcast by urban legend researchers and that their podcasts won’t be this ‘produced’ but they
will aim to use their research to weave a narrative or story to keep their listener interested while also
providing the information. I will inform students of the overall guidelines and criteria for this project (in the
form of a handout) and assign them to groups.

Any remaining class time the groups can spend generating ideas and deciding what they want to research. At
the end of class students will use a sign up sheet for each group to sign up for their chosen urban legend
story so that I know in advance what students are researching what.

Day 2:
Students will work to do internet research on their urban legend and can begin planning out a script that will
be typed and turned into me by the end of class period 3. The scripts may be stories, mock interviews or any
other idea that presents their research in a creative format and they will also provide a works cited page so
that I can review the websites they used to do their research.

Day 3:
Students will finalize their scripts and works cited pages and turn them into me.
Day 4:
Students will begin recording their podcasts. We will go over a tutorial for the first 20 minutes of class or so
(depending on student questions) where I will show them how to use the recording and editing software and
equipment we will be using for this project. Students will spend the rest of the time recording and editing
their scripts.
Day 5:
Students will finalize their podcast recordings and submit them via dropbox to me by the end of class. I will
also post student's podcasts on my class blog and will share that these are available to listen to with the
school via the school website or newsletter etc.

Pre-Assessment:
Pre-assessment in this case will be a class discussion where I ask students about what they already know
about urban legends and local stories. We will talk about what an urban legend is, what some popular
examples are and why and how they spread. We will also discuss podcasts and podcasting and I will see if any
of my students have experience creating podcasts.

Scoring Guidelines:
Scoring in this case will simply be teacher judgement and a bit of note taking I do regarding student’s answers
and listing what they seem to already understand about the two topics. This scoring will be informal but will
help me break students up into groups based on what they already know thus preventing me from for
example putting three experienced podcasters in the same group while the other groups have no students
who have made podcasts before.
Post-Assessment:
Post assessment for this lesson will be the podcasts themselves which I will grade according to the following
guidelines.

Scoring Guidelines:
Total: 100 points
20 points Research quality and integration into the project
20 points Script is well written and has few major errors
Script contains clear research the links to which are available to me in a sources page
Script can clearly be recorded and turned into a podcast
Script follows a coherent narrative and shows effort and creativity
20 points Podcast follows guidelines:
5 minutes in length (minimum)
Each student turns in a paragraph write up of how they contributed to the project
Podcasts are audible and recording quality is good enough to be listened to and understood
Research is evident in the podcast
The podcast follows the script submitted previously to me (minor changes and deviations are
ok)

Differentiated Instructional Support

Describe how instruction can be differentiated (changed or altered) to meet the needs of gifted or
accelerated students: For gifted or accelerated students I will increase the podcast length from 5 minutes of
content to 8 and will advise them that they should also listen to a full episode of Lore and turn in a write up
on how what they have learned from listening to their chosen podcast can be applied to the podcast their are
producing.
Discuss additional activities you could do to meet the needs of students who might be struggling with the
material: For students who might be struggling I may indicate that they need not worry about recording
their podcast and only ask for a podcast script of a set length along with their works cited. This will give
students an opportunity to record their podcast later if they would like but to not be held to the fast pace of
this project.

Extension

Homework Options and Home Connections

One out of class activity will be to each individually create an urban legend or ghost story and write a short
homework assigned story to turn in. The other individual homework project for this lesson will be to write an
essay that describes what an urban legend is, where the term comes from, how they spread and any other
interesting information you may find on the topic. This homework assignment will require internet research.

Interdisciplinary Connections
Two interdisciplinary connections here are geography, discussing the local region and talking about regional
specific urban legends will lead to learning geographic information about specific areas related to the urban
legends, and history, as urban legend s begin and first show up in a specific time it can offer students the
chance to research what was going on during those times and how it may have led to a rise in a certain type
of fear or anxiety that the urban legend addresses.

Materials and Resources:

For teachers Teachers will need access to a computer lab with recording equipment (at least
microphone headsets) and access to the internet. They will also need a device to play
a podcast one (computer, iphone, etc) so that students can hear the Lore podcast
used as an example in lesson day 1. Finally teachers will require a computer to use to
check student research and verify it.

For students Students will need access to a computer lab and microphone headsets (also listed
above as teachers will be the ones to sign up for computer lab time) and they will
need access to the internet both at the computer lab and away from school (for
homework assignments)

Key Vocabulary
Podcast
Urban Legend
Additional Notes