Listening

Teaching Listening to Kids

Listening involves making sense of the meaningful sounds of language by using context and our knowledge of language and the world. Children have to be able to understand the main idea of what is said as well as specific details. 

The listening activities contain three main stages:

• Warm-up: This introduces the learners to the topic and focuses their attention, either by provoking them to make suggestions, or by pre-teaching some new vocabulary. 

•  Listen and respond: This is the main part of the activity. The Ss listen to a text and respond to what they hear in a variety of ways.

•  Fallow-up: This stage gives the kids the opportunity to practice what they have learned using the other language skills. 

Here are some techniques to teach listening to children: 

1) Listen and complete: The children listen and use the information to complete a picture, a map, etc. 

2) Listen and correct: The children listen to a text, which contains a number of factual mistakes and they will try to correct them. 

3) Listen and do: The children listen to a series of instructions or actions and do them as they hear them. /Ex. Simon says, Polite robots, Your nose is a pencil –some of these games were demonstrated.) 

4) Listen and draw: The children listen to a description of a person, a place or an object and draw it as they listen. /Draw a tree, draw a box under the tree, draw a cat in the box, etc. 

5) Listen and guess: The children listen to a description of a person, a place, an object and try to guess who or what it is? /Ex. I’m thing of a person. The kids ask questions-Is it a boy or a girl? Has he got black hair? What color are his/her eyes? 

6) Listen and match: The children listen to a description and match it to people, pictures, objects, places. 

So how do we help kids become better listeners? Check out these tactics for encouraging a deeper level of listening that also include student accountability:

Strategy #1: Say it Once

Repeating ourselves in the classroom will produce lazy listening in our students. If kids are accustomed to hearing instructions twice, three times, and even four times, listening the first time around becomes unnecessary. Begin the year by establishing that you are a teacher who rarely repeats instructions and this will surely perk up ears.

Of course you don't want to leave distracted students in the dust so for those few who forgot to listen, you can advise them to, "ask three, then ask me."

Strategy #2: Turn and Talk

One way to inspire active listening in your students is to give them a listening task. It might look like this, "I'm going to describe the process of _________. I will pause along the way and ask you to turn to a partner and explain to them what you heard." You can ask students to take turns talking each time you pause, and meanwhile, walk around observing their conversations (also allowing you to check for understanding).

Strategy #3: Student Hand Signals

Asking students to pay full attention and indicating that they will follow this with a non-verbal signal is a wonderful tool for sharpening those listening skills. It can look like this: "I'm going to read a former president's statement about why he believes war is sometimes necessary. When I'm finished, you will share your opinion by holding up one finger if you agree, two fingers if you disagree, and three fingers if you are undecided or if you have a question." This strategy allows whole-class participation and response. It's also a favorite for kids who are more on the shy side, giving them a "voice."

Watch how hand signals encourage active listening in a fifth-grade classroom.

Strategy #4: Pay Attention, Pause, Paraphrase

Children need structured opportunities to restrain themselves from speaking in order to keep their attention on listening, especially when working in groups. Try this strategy:

When students talk in pairs or small groups, assign one speaker at a time only (they can number off).

Ask all others to listen fully to whoever is speaking and to avoid formulating a response while the other person talks. Tell them to simply listen that is all. (This is a difficult task even for adults!)

When the person stops talking, the other takes a breath before she speaks and then paraphrases something her partner just said: "You believe that...." "You aren't sure if....".

After paraphrasing her partner, she can then follow that with an "I" statement: "I see what you mean...", "I'm not sure I agree...".

Discussion sentence starters are a helpful tool for students as they learn this new way of having a conversation. It's also incredibly helpful for students to see this in action. Ask a couple of students to model it for the whole class or have an adult visit to partner with you.

Strategy #5: Creating Questions

If your students are listening to a speech, watching a documentary clip, or hearing a story read aloud, break it up by stopping a few times and having students write a question or two about what they just heard. This way, students actively listen for any confusion or wonderings they may have -- this takes a high-level of concentration. It's important to provide models for this since we are typically trained in school to look for the answers and information rather than to focus on what is not understood or is still a mystery.

Motivating Words

Good listeners are both rare and valued. It's important to share this with students, and to also share the fact that people who really listen -- make eye contact, show interest, and restrain from cutting others off in a conversation -- are easy to like and respect.

Listening Activities

1. Listening with flashcards 

Scatter a lot of flashcards that students have already leaned around the room and have the students sit on floor. Make up a story and incorporate all of the flashcard pictures … as you say the flashcard word the student nearest that card must touch it. For example, if students have learned lots of animal vocab the story could start “Once upon a time there was a farmer who had some cows (touch), sheep (touch) and pigs (touch). One day he was surprised to see lots of new animals on his farm. 

2. Adjectives draw 

After teaching various adjectives (big, small, long, short, tall, high, low, etc.) give each children a piece of paper. The teacher says an adjective / noun combination and the students have to draw it (e.g. draw a long snake; draw a big house, etc.). 

3. Put in order 

Put your students in teams and have them sit together. Give each group around 10 objects or picture flashcards each team must have the same things. The teacher now says all the words for items in front of the students … the students listen but mustn’t touch the objects. Finally, the teacher says “Put the objects in the correct order” and the teams have to put in order the objects in the order that the teacher said them. 

4. Number / Word bingo 

Playing bingo requires students to listen carefully. You can use either numbers or words that they have been learning. Creating the bingo sheets and words takes a bit of time but once done can be used with other classes, time and time again. 

5. Red Light, Green Light 

Another classic game, this is a great game to work on following directions. 

•Once your child gets the hang of the concepts of green-means-go and red-means-stop, you can add other colors with different meanings; for example, purple Light means “you jump like a bunny!”, yellow Light for crawling, Orange light for turning around, Blue light for clapping, and so on. 

•A tip to help him understand the directions at first: Make signs with the colors you will use in the game with pictures of the motor movements on them. So if you did purple-is-hop-like-a-bunny you can make a round purple “light” and put a picture of a bunny on it as a visual reminder. Then slowly take the signs away and have your child play JUST by listening.

6. Describe the... 

Place students into pairs and have them sit back to back. Give one student in the pair a unique picture with a drawing of a specific category. Put these pictures in different places. Give the second student in the pair a blank piece of paper. The student with the picture must describe to his/her partner what is in the picture. Make sure to emphasize no cheating! When finished, change the pictures around the groups and have the partners switch roles. When everyone has drawn once, the team with the most similar pictures wins! 

7. Listen for information 

Children will listen to a paragraph containing vocabulary of one specific topic or category; for example classroom objects. The students will have some pictures with the vocabulary of the paragraph, and when the kids listen to the name of the object, they have to show the picture of the correct one that they listen to. 

8. Do 3 things 

Tell a child 3 things to do. For example, I told Aiden: Let’s play a game called Do 3 Things. I’m going to tell you three things to do. Then, you are going to do them. Ready? One. Touch your nose. Two. Pick up two crayons. Three. Jump up and down. 

9. Songs 

The children will listen to a song and after that, the teacher will give them the song cut. So, that the kids have to order the song in the correct way. Then they have to listen to the song again to check if it is correct. 

10. Freeze Dance. 

All you need is a song and a pause button. Invite children to dance freely to the music. After a short time press pause and wait for everyone to freeze. After a second of stillness start the music up again. Be prepared for giggles and some really fun poses!