Listening Skills: Listen & Draw, E.S.L., Sub Plans, Inside Recess, R.T.I., Parent-Teacher Conferences, & More!

How do you teach promote active listening? Before you can effectively teach procedures and academic skills, your students need to listen and attend to what you are saying.  Do you have a "Listen Larry"?

• After going over the directions of an assignment, you can always count on "Listen Larry" to raise his hand or come to your desk because he has no idea what he is supposed to do.
• "Listen Larry" often turns in assignments that are missing important details, details that you emphasized in your directions.
• "Listen Larry" is usually the last one to line up at recess.  Sometimes you even have to send a student to find him because he doesn't hear the whistle that you use to tell your class to line up.
• At clean up time, "Listen Larry" will continue working in his center.  Often a classmate has to tap him on the shoulder to tell him that it is time to stop.

There are different reasons for poor listening skills.  I have compiled a Pinterest board of blog posts with tips and research about listening skills.  

Click HERE to check out my A+ Listening Skills Pinterest board.

Last year, I wrote a blog post with a listening activity to show what I did at the beginning of the year.  Teachers emailed me asking for more of these listen and draw activities.  I now have a series of Listen and Draw activities that you can use throughout the year.  Plus a FREEBIE for you try. 

I have a new type of Listen & Draw packet that has CVC words for the theme.  This is a great way to work on reading skills and promote active listening at the same time.

You can differentiate the writing assignment of this activity. I recommend doing this as a teacher directed activity in the beginning.  You may want to introduce this in a small group setting if your class has a wide range of abilities.  You can give different groups different expectations for the writing assignment portion of the activity.  There is an extra writing page included for your students who are ready to write a paragraph or story about the picture.

You can add technology to this, too with a listening center. Once your students are comfortable with the format, you can record the directions, ask a parent volunteer, or drama department at your local high school if there is a student who is interested in doing this for you.  Students are often looking for community service opportunities.

After each step, either pause to give students time to do the work or use some type of noise maker like a bell or xylophone.  Tell your students to push the “stop” button when he/she hears the sound.  Push the “go” button after he/she follows the directions and is ready for the next step.  

All of the Listen and Draw packets have a sign with the directions when you use this as a teacher directed activity.  It is helpful to hang it up as a reminder.

I added another sign for directions if you use it this as a listening center in the CVC Word packet.  You can have this a copy of it, too. Click HERE for this FREEBIE.

This can be used many different ways.  

EMERGENCY SUB PLANS:  Great activity for your sub.
R.T.I. DOCUMENTATION:  Shows proof of listening skills and writing skills growth over time for R.T.I.
INSIDE RECESS - FRIDAY FUN DAY:  Students will love the art part of these activities.  You will love the fact that your students are quiet so they can listen to the directions.
E.S.L. / E.L.L. teachers love these activities! 

Great way to teach prepositions, too!

Add these to your seasonal plans.  There are Listen & seasonal Draw packets plus one that can be used at any time of the year and the CVC words themed one.

THE DETAILS:
Go over the directions and then hang the sign as a reminder. This is an easy prep activity. The only supplies your students will need are the assignment, crayons, and a pencil.

Each Listen & Draw packets includes 
12 Listen and Draw activities with a different theme.  For each activity there is:
-Teacher direction page
-Blackline student page

-Colorful page showing what the art portion of the listening activity could look like.  Art work answers may vary.

You can also add these listening skills lessons to your students' portfolios.  They are great documentation and useful at parent-teacher conferences.

These can also be used for RTI.

This is the original packet.  The lessons in this packet can be used at any time of the year.

Original: Listen & Draw.  

Would you like to try a FREE sample?  Click on the picture below.

I have other Listen and Draw packets.

CVC Words theme

Click HERE to check it out.

Fall theme

Click HERE to check this out.

Christmas theme

Click HERE to check this out.

Winter theme

Click HERE to check this out.

Spring theme

Click HERE to check this out.

Summer theme

Click HERE to check it out.

Bundle: includes all except for the Christmas packet. 

Click HERE to check out the bundle.

 I plan to make holiday themed packets this year and will make a bundle of them at the end of the year.

How do you teach listening skills?

Sources to make my blog post graphics can be found HERE.
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Teaching Shy Students

Every class has students who play certain roles.  You have your class clown, your queen bee - the one everyone wants to be friends with, a rebel without a cause, shy students, plus a few other roles.  When I went through my training in undergrad, I was taught strategies to use with discipline problems,  gifted students,  English as a Second Language Learners, but I don't remember having a professor discuss ways to meet the needs of shy children.

Shy students were always a welcome addition to my class.  Probably because I had plenty of Chatty Cathy's in my class, so a few quiet ones help balance out the noise level.  There are a few things I've found through the years that helped my shy students come out of their shell:

*BEGINNING OF THE DAY:  Greet them when they come in the room with a simple, "Good Morning!"  Do not ask them questions, get in their personal space, or push them to talk to you.  For very shy children, it will be baby steps.  They may acknowledge your greeting by shaking their head, smiling at you, making eye contact, and eventually whispering hello.  It is a slow process.  Give them time to warm up to you.

*COOPERATIVE LEARNING: During cooperative learning activities, pair shy students with students who are a little bit more outgoing.  But do not pair them with a student who is over-the-top outgoing.  These students will overwhelm your shy ones.

*FOSTERING FRIENDSHIPS:  Ask shy students to run errands for you at the beginning of the year and send them with a buddy.  These quick trips give them a few minutes to get to know a buddy and hopefully make a new friend.

*LUNCH & RECESS:  With primary grades, the first few weeks of school, we draw names out of the bucket.  I have a bucket of boy names and a bucket of girl names. I draw 2 names out at a time. These 2 students are buddies for 2 days.  They sit by each other at lunch and play together at recess.  They can play with other buddy pairs, but they have to stay together for 2 days.  Every other day I would draw names again.  By the end of two weeks, each student has been a buddy with 5 students.  Hopefully, they will "click" with  one of the five students that they have been paired with.  **Please note:  I draw two names, I do not draw one name and let a student choose a buddy.  We've all had an experience once or twice in our life when we were the last one chosen.  Why give your students that experience?

*INSTRUCTION TIME:  Call on shy students when they either raise their hand or when you know the subject is their strength.  Overtime, they will build confidence by sharing when they have the correct answer and take more risks to share during other lessons.


There is a great article about shy students that you should read.  Click on the book to read it:

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