Kids are often surprised when adults don’t remember what they learned in school. 

“This one group was talking about the ocean, and they're like, ‘Yeah, everybody knows this about the Ring of Fire’ and I was like, ‘What's the Ring of Fire?’” elementary school music teacher Oliva Murphy said. “And then they went off for 20 minutes talking about the Ring of Fire and I was like, ‘I don't know any of this.’”

The ocean (and the millions of volcanos in it that form the Ring of Fire) is one of the topics Majestic Elementary Arts Academy’s Broadcast Club has covered in their podcast “Facts You Forgot.”

“The entire focus is, here are things that we learned in elementary school that as adults or as listeners you probably forgot all about,” club adviser and sixth grade teacher Angus Douglas said. “Whatever the kids are learning about in their classes is what we try to show on the podcast.”

The fifth and sixth grade students are excited to share what they know. During a recent episode, sixth graders discussed “The Odyssey,” the epic Greek story they were reading in class. In another episode, they featured facts they’ve learned about the solar system. (Warning to adults: The planet line-up is different from what you learned in school.)

“Our hope is adults will just listen in—they're short episodes—and learn something about a random topic from a sixth grader,” Murphy said.

“Facts You Forgot” is streaming on Apple Music and Spotify. Episodes are published once a month. The club’s twelve members choose the topics, write the scripts, record and edit the episodes with equipment purchased last year through a grant from Utah STEM Action Center.

“We were able to buy professional, top-tier equipment,” Douglas said. “The kids use all of it. We teach them how to use the equipment and they do pretty good with it.”

Murphy said with access to professional audiovisual equipment and software, students are learning some pretty advanced skills.

“A lot of them will have their phone or computer that they mess around with, but we have a mixing board, and they're learning how to adjust the levels and learning more advanced terminology,” Murphy said. “I can say ‘Turn up the gain’ and they know what that is and why we have to turn it up, and so they get pretty proud of their newfound skills.”

Students apply the skills and techniques they learn to create how-to videos, book reviews and “people on the street” interviews. The Broadcast Club is also responsible for the yearbook and the student news broadcast for the school.

For the student news broadcasts, students share school announcements, give a weather report, talk about upcoming events, give reminders of school rules, give messages of encouragement and interview teachers and students—often with a random dance party clip thrown in.

With an audience of 5-12-year-olds, silliness is always a hit.

“The younger grades love it when we're silly and funny on camera,” Douglas said.

Weather reports are often where the students get creative and silly. They film it outdoors and often include props, puppets or flying objects.

“I really like coming up with different ideas to film,” sixth grader Amelia Sharp said. She and a friend had the idea to throw objects around in the background while filming a news segment in order to make it more entertaining.

For a video reminding students of appropriate hallway behavior, Alyssa Krauth and Katelyn Wright wrote a skit in which one of them followed the rules and the other did not. They exaggerated the examples for comedic effect.

“We want it to be more funny for the little kids so they would want to pay attention and not get distracted or get bored,” Alyssa said.

 Knowing their videos will be shown in their classrooms, the students create content that they enjoy watching.

“I just love filming all the fun stuff and then getting to watch and re-watch all the little videos that we take,” sixth grader Karen Lewis said.

Club Adviser and STEM teacher Meredith Llewellyn said the club provides an opportunity for the older students to be a good example and positive influence on their peers.

“They always have a unique way of presenting things to the kids—the serious things, like working hard in school,” she said. “A teacher can tell you that and it doesn't matter as much as when it comes from a peer.”

Students interested in joining the Broadcasting Club must audition by submitting a self-recorded short video of themselves talking about a piece of artwork.

“I think a lot of them were interested because they already knew how to make videos, but then we just take it a level deeper,” Douglas said. “None of them knew how to use iMovie, none of them knew how to edit clips and split them and do the audio enhancements. We've taught them all of that. So we're just taking their superficial skills and deepening them, just making them a little more proficient at what they're doing.”

Students are learning more than just technical skills, Murphy said.

“They're learning a lot of 21st century skills, like how to work together as a team, communicate with each other, but also to an audience,” she said. “That's a difficult skill for kids to learn. Also, creativity—they have to come up with the topics all by themselves, and they're learning how to write scripts and tell stories, which is another advanced skill. So it's really an all-encompassing process.” λ