TEACH YOUR STUDENTS TO MAKE RADIO STORIES

Our curriculum “Radio Rookies: The Basics of Audio Journalism” covers interviews, audio commentaries, montages, and narrated features. To receive a PDF and editable Word document of the curriculum, please let us know a bit more about yourself: http://www.wnyc.org/crowdsourcing/educators-survey/ and we will email you.

You should feel free to use this guide as a template from which to base your own lesson plans tailored to the specific needs of your classrooms and subject areas.

If you are thinking about using the curriculum or already using it, please join our “Radio Rookies Educators” Facebook group to give and get feedback on the process and share what your students produce!

Here are some Radio Rookies resources that are accessible online:

• Interviewing Skills
• Choosing a Topic
• DIY Toolkit- A comic book, collection of videos, and worksheet handouts that teens can use themselves to make radio stories or educators can use to supplement the lessons they teaching.

* Additional resources:

• StoryCorps Education: Helps teach students basic interviewing and storytelling skills
• Generation PRX: Resources to help you teach and learn radio
• Teen Reporter Handbook: Radio Diaries DIY Handbook
• A Kid’s Guide to Recording Stories: Helpful for kids of all ages, from Transom
• Teach Youth Radio: Storytelling Resources for Educators: Lessons with a journalism and data focus

USE RADIO ROOKIES STORIES AS A TEACHING TOOL

Youth produced radio documentaries are valuable curriculum resources because youth voices are too often excluded from mainstream teaching materials.  The Radio Rookies approach places youth voice at the center of issues-oriented instructional programs. Radio documentaries foster academic engagement by capturing the interest of students and inspiring them to question and share their beliefs and perspectives about contemporary issues.

To give you a sense of the kind of stories that may be useful resources in your teaching or work with youth, here are some pieces other educators have used in their classrooms to spark conversation:

The N-Word: It Represents Hatred

Coming Out in The Age of Lady Gaga

Speaking for Islam

Guns

Half My Family Is Illegal

Seven Schools Later: One Student’s View of Segregation

Nine People, One Bedroom: A Teen’s Take on Life in Poverty

Level Up: Girl Gamers

Students are pushed to ask themselves:

• What do I think about this issue?
• What has been my personal experience with this issue?
• What about my experience leads me to agree or disagree?

Integrating Radio Rookies documentaries into educational programs allows youth to do more than simply hear the opinions and viewpoints of other teens. Through listening, discussion and debate, and writing about the issues presented in these stories, students learn to share opinions and articulate their own perspectives. Ultimately teen listeners learn to validate the power of their own voices and stories to influence other people’s ideas about the important issues affecting our local, national, and global communities.

Our site organizes stories by topic, so you can easily search existing stories to see if there's something that fits with upcoming lessons:

Arts

Civic Engagement

Community

Culture

Dreams

Education

Family

Girls

Health and Mental Health

Loss

Race

Sexuality

Teen Issues

Violence

Check out our DIY Toolkit to learn more about journalism.

Radio Rookies is WNYC’s Peabody Award-winning initiative that gives New York City teenagers and young adults the tools and training to create radio stories about themselves, their communities and their world.
Since 1999, the Radio Rookies program has conducted workshops across the city, training young people to use words and sounds to tell true stories. Radio Rookies documentaries give our listeners and readers a glimpse into what young people are truly facing, thinking and saying.
Rookie reporters learn everything about radio journalism: From how to develop a story and conduct an interview, to how to craft a script and edit audio. Participants receive recording equipment for the duration of the program and a monthly stipend.
The Rookies’ stories air on WNYC’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Some are broadcast on NPR and the BBC and on shows like This American Life. Radio Rookies stories have won many awards over the years, including the Peabody Award, Dupont Award, the RFK Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Society of Professional Journalists Award, and several Murrow Awards. Rookies go on to use their media arts skills in school and in their future careers.
Sign up for an info session here or email radiorookies@wnyc.org for more information.
Radio Rookies is supported in part by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Epstein Teicher Philanthropies, the Margaret Neubart Foundation, and The Pinkerton Foundation.