NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge is back – with a fourth-grade edition!

This 12 months, we’ve acquired a large new change: Since the start, the competition has been open for college students in grades 5 by means of 12. But every year, we’ve heard from elementary lecturers asking, what about my youthful children?

This 12 months, in response to that standard demand, from elementary lecturers, we’re introducing our first-ever fourth grade contest! So if you happen to train or work with fourth graders – please think about podcasting with your college students and getting into our contest!

The sixth annual Student Podcast Challenge is now open for entries beginning Feb. 2, 2024 and can shut on May 3, 2024. Our judges will select winners in three classes: grade 4, grades 5 by means of eight, and grades 9 by means of 12.

As up to now, entries have to be submitted by a instructor, educator, or mentor who is 18 years or older. And don’t neglect all of the tips, recommendation and lesson plans we’ve compiled over time – extra on that beneath. Especially the foundations across the most size of eight minutes, and about the usage of music. (You can find the contest rules here.) After years of listening to scholar podcasts, we’ve discovered that shorter is higher.

And, for our faculty podcasters, we’ll be asserting finalists and the winner of the 2023 College Podcast Challenge within the subsequent month. So please preserve an eye fixed out! The faculty version will return this fall with a $5,000 grand prize and $500 prizes for finalists.

The contest guidelines stay just about the identical: Students can create a podcast about any subject they want to discover. To offer you an thought, we’ve listened to tales on the whole lot from social media, tattoos to even fictional tales. Some themes we’ve seen again and again embrace questions on race and identity and the way younger individuals do, or don’t, fit in. Your podcast may also be in many various codecs: an interview, narrative story and even investigative reporting. You can do it by your self or with your total class.

To allow you to get started, we’ve acquired a slew of podcasting assets on how to tell a good story, how to warm up your voice and how to use music in your podcast, amongst different matters. Even, and we’re severe about this: how making a pillow fort could make you sound higher!

You can discover extra tips and tips on The Students’ Podcast, our podcast on the way to make a good podcast. We additionally encourage you to get a really feel for what we’re searching for by listening to final 12 months’s high school winner and middle school winners. And earlier years’ winners’ here.

For extra tips, recommendation and the newest updates on this 12 months’s contest, be sure to sign up for our newsletter. Students, we will’t wait to listen to your tales. Good luck!