166: How to Add an Audiobook Listening Station to your ELA Classroom

Want to help the independent readers in your ELA classroom enjoy audiobooks? Whether you want to use Audible, Libro FM (do you know about their free educator advance listening program?), Libby, or Sora, in this episode I'll walk you through the process of creating easy access for your students at your own classroom listening station.

The bookstores of Bratislava, where I live now, are quite dazzling.

In one, an entire wall is made of the open pages of books. A moving portrait – Harry Potter style – sits in the center, occasionally turning its head to watch you read on the pillows below.

There’s a cozy book nook in one that sits in the center of an enormous circular bookcase – you actually get to read inside a nest of books.

I’ve walked into a bookstore filled with fluttering book page mobiles hanging from the ceiling, and I’ve walked into a bookstore with an enormous white tree, apparently made of modge podge and pages, holding up the ceiling of the children’s section.

I love it all.

And today I want to share an idea I got from one such inspiring Slovak bookstore. In my favorite one, Martinus – where I sometimes go to drink chai latte and write curriculum for you – there’s a large green velvet chair in a little corner. Above it hang fifty or so fluttering bookmarks, and beside it there’s an ipad waiting for passersby to plug in their headphones or connect their airpods. On the screen? A couple dozen audiobooks, always ready for a listener. It’s an audiobook listening station, and today I want to show you how to add one to your classroom.

Related episode: 141 - How to Set up your Classroom Library

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