Learning from old-time radio plays in Science

As I wrote last week, we are working on our wrap-up to our Sound unit in Science, which is going to be where the students (in groups) record a Reader's Theatre performance, and design and create their own sound effects for the performance. Today, we talked about how 'in the days before TV' (their were many gasps!), people were entertained by listening to radio plays, and how sound effects played a big part in creating images of the story in the listeners' minds. Below is a short film from 1938 featuring a radio play, which shows how they made some of the sound effects in the studio. The class first listened to the video (without seeing the images), and then guessed/discussed how they thought the sound effects were made. After, I played it for them again (this time also showing them the images), so they could see the difference. It was very interesting - some of their guesses were right on, and some were way off. Watch it for yourself, and see if you can guess in the first part of the video (where they don't show you how they made the sound effects) how they created the soundscape for the radio play - enjoy!