3,2,1 Action! Radio shows with Mrs. Rice

Eighth-graders in Mrs. Rice’s English class have the opportunity to participate in radio shows for a book that they have read.  They read parts of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. Then they listened to the radio show. Mrs. Rice said “We talk about verisimilitude, which is the literary quality of seeming real. Then we research apocalyptic events and make our own apocalyptic radio shows. We write scripts, select sound effects, table read, and then record the shows.”

These radio shows took place in the teacher's lounge. According to Mrs. Rice she likes to do them in the third term because usually by then the students are comfortable with each other.     Abby Mangum and Lauren Baxter, eighth graders at SJHS, added “We really enjoyed the radio shows! They were fun and you get to make sound effects and make up stuff!”

Mrs. Rice added, “I do them to talk about setting shifts in fiction and how setting builds verisimilitude. I also do it to promote multi-modal literacy, provide an authentic circumstance to practice reading fluency, and capitalize on the strengths of my students.”

In the end the radio shows were fun and everyone enjoyed them.