Listening Comprehension {freebie}

Hi friends!  My little youngsters take weekly ELA Skill Checks and weekly Math Skill Checks.  I love the weekly assessments so I can address any friends that are not quite getting the weekly lessons. They are also great in order to prepare the students for our quarterly district assessments.  I also LOVE that the students must use their listening comprehension skills.  So many people don’t realize when a teacher says, “Circle the number 3.”  The student has to first comprehend what the teacher is asking and then follow through with the given task.  Students especially struggle with this task when it has multi-step directions.  For example the question might be, circle the number 3’s in red and circle the number 5’s in yellow. 

Building listening comprehension is essential, but can be quite difficult to achieve!  One of my sessions in Las Vegas at I Teach K mentioned reading aloud a story book without showing the students the pictures/pages.  The students then draw using a clipboard what they think the pictures in the story would be as the teacher read aloud the story book…then the teacher reads the book again showing the pictures.  The students can then see similarities/differences with their pictures.

This is a fabulous idea… but I wanted to get something even more interesting…so I found this website called Goodnight Stories.  The website has a selection of story books that are read aloud.  If using this website click the story you want to listen to, then click this button:

Another great website is Storyline Online.  They also have a great selection of read alouds.  I try to stick with a short stories …or just do a portion of the book.  Yes, this is quite a difficult task for some students.  A lot of students struggle listening to you read aloud a book- when they have pictures to look at….so taking away the pictures can be hard. 

It’s so important that our students build a foundation of mental images.  During writing I will say “put your idea in your head” or “think about what a dog would look like.”  Well to adults this task is simple, but for youngsters they need practice and guidance!

I have put together a few listening comprehension recording sheets!  I have included 5 versions so you can choose the one that works best for your students. Click below for the freebie!