Introduction

The following two lessons reinforce what they children did in the previous lessons but require them to apply it to a bigger project of an audiobook story or play. 

 

What is an audiobook?

To begin the lesson, discuss different types of storytelling and how they have changed over the years, what kinds of storytelling can you think of from any time in history?

• People verbally telling and passing on tales/myths
• Theatre
• Reading from books aloud
• Radio broadcasts - e.g. War of the Worlds 1938, The Archers, 
• Silent movies
• Television
• Modern cinema
• Animations
• Audiobooks, podcasts
• Digital books
• Online videos
• Video games

What differences are there between these mediums? What can each offer? Get to the fact that some allow the story to be told with images as well as (or instead of) words, radio and audiobooks allow the use of music and sound effects to add to the mood and atmosphere of a story. Some audiobooks are just someone reading a book, others are enhanced with music and sound effects and are ‘performed’. This is also the case for radio dramas which are still popular today, like The Archers, the world’s longest running radio drama which started in 1950 and has had more than 19,000 episodes.

Introduce the task to the children, they are going to produce their own audiobook or radio play of a story that they have written. They will need to record the story being read (or acted) and add music and sound effects to enhance the story.

 

The effects of music

Have a look at this video with your students, it shows how much of an effect music has on the mood and atmosphere of a film, in this case a clip from the Lion King. The principle is just the same, and perhaps even more important for radio and audio books as listeners don’t have images to help them know what is happening and how they should be feeling, so music and sound effects are really important.

Find a selection of tracks (see suggested sites for royalty free music below) that create very different moods. Play the tracks with your projector muted so they cannot see the track titles, ask what sort of mood does the music create?

 

Writing or sourcing the story

Ideally this will link with your current literacy work and a story or play script that the children have written. There are some fantastic resources to stimulate writing at the Literacy Shed. 

If this unit doesn't fit with your current literacy work, then you can always find and supply them with a selection of atmospheric story openings from age-appropriate texts or play scripts that you have in school.

 

Planning their story’s sounds - where and why?

When you have chosen the piece of writing they are going to convert into an audiobook, they should then begin planning the sounds that they are going to add to their stories. Photocopying the writing onto larger sheets to give them space to add notes around the text is really helpful. This planning really helps when it comes to searching for their sound clips and adding them to the project later.

Ask them to read through their story, then annotate on the page (perhaps with colours) any sounds they can imagine might be heard at different points in the story. This could be specific sound effects like car engines or swords clashing, or background ambient sounds to represent a setting, such as ocean sounds (beach) or traffic noises (a city).  

Next ask them to consider character voices and if any should have a particular style (high, fast, slow, low etc). 

Finally, ask them to think about music and what that could add, do they need some slow spooky music to add suspense, or some faster music to go with an action sequence? Add notes regarding this to their story.

Try and get them to be as specific as possible as to what goes where and why. 

 

Sourcing the sounds

Royalty free music 

There are a number of sites out there that offer royalty free music for use in education projects. With all these sites please exercise caution when using and searching with students. We haven’t found anything inappropriate when searching them, but we cannot accept responsibility for any content on these sites. Search them in advance of the lesson and in some cases you may wish to download a selection of tracks from the sites yourself, before the lesson. Save these to your shared area and ask the students to choose from them. 

 

Purple Planet Sounds - www.purple-planet.com

Their free download collection is exactly that, just credit the website with the full URL somewhere in your work as the source of the music. 

 

Ben Sounds - www.bensound.com

Their full collection is free to download, just credit the website with the full URL somewhere in your work as the source of the music. 

 

Before they do any editing they should collect together all the sounds and music they need based on the planning they have done. 

 

Sound effects

As described in lesson 4, the best source of free sound effects are sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk from the BBC and Findsounds.com.

 

 

Plenary

Finish off the lesson by asking them to go back to their plan and check through to ensure they have everything they need for editing together their story next week. 

Ask a few students to share the name of a music track they have chosen from one of the websites mentioned. Find the track yourself and play a clip of it to the class. Why did you chose that track? How are you going to use it in your story? (what mood are they going for?) and ask the class Do you think it was a good choice? Why?