Tips Teaching Listening

How Can I Teach Listening?

Listening skills can be taught explicitly, through direct instruction and in multiple formats. Some skills can be taught explicitly. Below are links to specific examples to activities where the following skills are taught:

• Relating to similar experiences
• Predicting what will happen next
• Retelling a story in order
• Asking relevant questions (KWL activity referenced below)
• Taking notes
• Analyzing and synthesizing what is read
• Figurative language
• Also, distinguishing fact from opinion

Some informal classroom opportunities to teach listening include:

• Play mime games to demonstrate body language through physical and facial expressions.
• Before an assembly, discuss the who, what and why of the presentation.
• Discuss what listening “looks like.” How do their bodies look when they are listening?
• Play games involving listening for following directions (drawing an unseen object), understanding what is said (you mean?), remembering what is said (telephone operator game), etc.
• Listen to, write and share a poem a day.
• Sequence the events of the day or week and have students draw a timeline to post on their desks.