In the week of February 23, Ms. Spiker’s honors English class prepared and presented podcasts that they made themselves. They had the option to do a podcast about books that they had read in class. Books included: “Coraline” by Neil Gaiman, “Allies” by Alan Gratz, “The Outsiders” by S. E. Hinton, and some short stories they read throughout the year.

“I wanted to do the podcasts because I feel that they help students with public speaking, classroom presentation, and also just finding student favorites,” Ms. Nicole Spiker, eighth grade ELA teacher, said.

Podcasts were presented at the front of the class at a podium. They had to talk in front of the class at a podium. Students took time for a whole week to write and brainstorm their podcasts.

“I think that the students took the project overall seriously, and they had insightful podcasts,” Ms. Spiker said.

A podcast presentation can be a challenging project to work on, even for an honors class. Sometimes it’s hard to focus and be serious about a project. But, as Ms. Spiker said, the class tried their best and presented good quality work.

“Some students do not appropriately use their time, so from a student’s perspective, they need to figure out how to be responsible to make a good project,” Ms. Spiker explained.

Sometimes, there are a few challenging variables that alter the project’s quality. If students are procrastinating, not doing it at all, or doing something else, that could really put rushed, low quality work in a presentation.

“It takes a lot of class time to get ready and prepare, and to do the presentations themselves,” Ms. Spiker said.

A presentation can be a very challenging and time consuming project. But it has the capability of teaching a valuable lesson.