Listening Comprehension... The POWER of the Play Button!

Listening.... an action we ask students to participate in throughout their entire school day, especially now that we are 100% online. Between the verbal directions, educational songs, and weekly wonders stories- our students should be rocking it in listening, right? If only that were the case. After my first year, it dawned on me that my students scored higher in Research than Listening. I didn't understand why. Listening comprehension is being provided with an audio passage and then having to answer questions about it. I understand that it is a difficult task for even my auditory learners, but after having provided countless activities throughout the year- why were students still struggling? It was a simple realization that the problem wasn't what I was doing but how I presented it. With this simple tweak, I changed students mentality of how they perceived their listening abilities, but also helped them realize a very valuable test taking strategy. Here's how the power of the play button changed everything. 

Behind the Scenes:

When my grade level first introduced Listening Wednesdays -as we liked to call it- to students . We would play the weekly wonders audio passage for the students a few times through, take notes and then have students answer questions on the passage. It went great, but students weren't internalizing that it was necessary to replay the audio passage because as educators we had control of the play button. When students finally did get the chance they didn't know how. I realized my role in this had to be more a facilitator and allow students to take that play button power. 

1. Selecting a Passage & Questions 

When I think of selecting a passage- I always lean towards a passage that is grade level and that has questions that will assess a skill or strategy they have worked on, however, feel free to pick a passage that you think is best. For the first one, I pick something very simple and engaging. A good resource to utilize is the weekly Listening Comprehension story in the Wonders Curriculum since it connects to the skill and strategy being taught that week or even finding a passage on Readworks.org.  

2. Audio  File & Questions 

Voice Memos Ios App

Once you have a passage- you then want to think about the questions to ask and how it will be heard.  If you use the week Listening Comprehension story in Wonders- you will have to create your own questions. I like to frame them based on the comprehension skill, context clues, and or comprehension strategy. Due to time, I like majority of them to be multiple choice and then I may add in a short constructed response at the end depending on grade level. I make add these questions to a google form for easy grading. Even though the curriculum already has an audio file I like to read the story with my "Voice Memos" app on my phone and upload to the drive. I like this because students internalize the importance of expression and prosody when reading.  

If you use a passage from Readworks.org you can filter to find "Human Voice Audio" and select which comprehension questions you would like your students to answer. The only downside to using this option is you have to monitor students and teach them how to set it so they can see the audio file and questions side by side and not be tempted to go back in the text for the answer since it is listening. 

3. Introducing students to their Assignment

When I ask students to get ready to take a listening quiz I always go through the following steps:

•  Have students open up their notebooks and write the title of the passage on top to take notes
• Read each question and the answer options aloud. I ask for clarification  the questions. I will not define any vocabulary if it is eludes to the answer or define comprehension skill/strategies, but will allow students to use their anchor chart notes. 
• Play the audio file once time through without stopping. I ask students to not write anything down but visualize the story in their heads. Once it is done they can take notes on how much they remember. 
• I will revisit the questions again and ask students to look at their notes to determine if they have all the answers to the questions. This answer will 99.9% of the time be NO. This is important because it allows them to see that replaying is important. I will let them know they will be re-listening and trying to fill in any gaps of notes during the first round. 
• I play the audio file again and I pause approximately every 30ish seconds or at the start of new headings. During the pauses I ask students to take notes. I continue this until the entire audio passage has been played. 
• I remind students that their notes will be referenced and that when answering the questions their notes should match their answers. 

4. Assigning  the Listening Quiz

Once I have previewed the questions with students and I know that they have at least listened to the audio two times with me then I will post the assignment for them on google classroom with both the google form and audio file. This is so they can continue at their own pace. If they are using Readworks then I will post the link in google form. I wait until after we have gone over it together so I don't have students trying to rush through the activity. 

5. Monitor and Hold Students Accountable

Once I have released the assignments I open up Lanschool to see which students are choosing to revisit the audio file and/or who are using appropriate test taking strategies. I also ask that if students have questions that they chat me on zoom or on Lanschool as to not interfere with other students who are revisiting the audio file and to give them quiet time during the quiz.  To ensure students aren't just 

blindly answering I ask that students grab a highlighter and highlight their notes that support the answer they selected. I will either collect these notes if in class or ask students to submit on Class Dojo. 

                                                                 Lively Teaching,

                                                                  Jessica Magana