Editor’s Note: Ms. Juster asked The Lancer Spirit to withhold the names of the students who were quoted or photographed for this article. To make it easier to follow which student is being quoted, the reporter changed the names of the students.
Lexi, a student in Ms. Juster’s fifth grade class at Matthew Thornton, sat down in the LHS radio studio with a folded piece of paper in her hand. She took a deep breath, scooted up close to the mic and unfolded the paper. Radio assistant producer junior Abi Whitcomb hit record and Lexi began to read the book promos she wrote for the Shiloh Trilogy by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, a collection of stories about a boy named Marty Preston and an abused beagle he finds near his home.
Ms. Juster’s class has been listening to the audiobook from audible.com when they got the idea to create their own version. The class is well into the third and final book Shiloh Season and were asked to create a summary of their favorite moment from any of the books.
The students got to select a favorite passage from the book and then recite it to be aired on LEO 103.
“It was hard to pick one part of the book,” Lexi said. “It was all awesome.”
Shiloh Season is full of intense moments, according to these fifth graders. After participating in this project, the students said these recordings provide a clear picture of each scene.
“That [referring to a particularly intense scene] made me so sad,” Lexi said. “It went silent in the room, and then we all gasped.”
The students compared the scary music playing along with the recording to the music in the thriller Jaws.
“The sounds we hear while listening to the audible make me want to crawl in the corner with a friend and hold our stuffed animals,” Michaela, another student in Juster’s class, said.
As for being on the radio, they couldn’t have been more excited.
“They buzzed about getting to speak into real microphones and seeing their voices being recorded,” Ms. Juster said in an email to Mrs. Robinson, the adviser to the school’s Radio Club.
Since they practiced so much beforehand, going into the radio station was a breeze for these kids. The students learned they had to speak clearly and slowly, because that’s the only way for it to sound right on the radio.
Students like Michaela weren’t very nervous at all going into the studio.
“I like to talk. I could talk all day,” Michaela said. “I was feeling like I’m going to be famous.”
To listen to the recordings, click here.
