Hierarchy of Listening Skills Activity Suggestions

Detection: “Was there a sound?” Presence/Absence of sound. Learning to respond, pay attention, and respond to no sound. (attention to name)

• Hear a sound-put a piece in or on: Colorforms, puzzles, game pieces, ball or bean bag in box, tower blocks, Mr. Potato Head
• Use different musical instruments, clapping, and environmental sounds (indoor and outdoor): if heard, put a piece in or on.
• Do an action: rolling hands at the beginning of sound, stop when sound stops
• Crayon: draw a continuous line or spiral until sound stops, can be done with a dotted line for syllables
• “Go”: drop or throw a ball in a box when you hear the teacher say “go,” change the sound to vowel or consonants, can do with “jump,” or “up.”
• Make things that you can bang or shake (containers with beans or rice inside). Put three containers out, two empty, one filled-teacher shakes and the child says if there is a sound or no sound (introduce “noisy” and “quiet”)
• Jack-in-the-box: have child squat down in a box or just on the floor, when the “noise” stops the child pops up.
• Ball: pass the ball in a circle in a group, stop when the sound stops, that child is out.

Discrimination: “Was this sound different from that sound?” Ability to perceive differences and similarities. (respond to their name in a group)

• Memory Game: put two cards out that are the same and two that are different, when sound presented have the child point to the pair that matches –ball/ball or ball/umbrella.
• Block tower: put one on if the sounds were the same, take one off if they are different.
• Strips of paper of varying length: short for ba, longer for mooooo, can be done with words also, point to which you heard.
• Objects: put out two objects like a sheep and a hen, baaaaa moves the sheep, cluck/cluck/cluck moves the hen. Manipulate the objects: phrase and sentence level-Put out a cow and car “The cow goes to sleep.” or “Stop!”
• Sentence strips: choose a sentence, repeat it to the child, then have same and different cards out, read that sentence or a different one and the child has to point to the same or different cards.

Identification: “What was the sound?” Ability to label by pointing, repeating, or writing the stimuli heard.

• Bingo using numbers, names, words, letters, sounds, categories of objects
• Puzzles: give the sound the animal makes-Moo and put in cow, name the animal, name the color, shape…
• Memory Game: use pieces to play game and as cards to name or choose when said, can be put in a bucket or box.
• Books: When familiar after multiple readings. Read two or more sentences, then say, “Listen, I will read a sentence you tell me which one.” Have the child point to the sentence that was read.
• Having a group of objects and putting one by one in the box.
• Mr. Potato Head
• Objects/Box: “Put the cow in the box.” “Give me the red square.”
• Song cards: Put out two or three different cards and sing a song, have the child point to which was sung.
• Wind-up toys: label, “give me the_____”, line them up and attach sentences to the animals “The worm is crawling.” Have the child make it move or just hand it to you.

Comprehension: “Why was the sound made? What does the sound mean?” Ability to understand

• Puzzles: basic- “Show me the pig.” difficult-describe the animal (This animal likes mud.-pig.), hide a piece, “which is missing?”
• Mr. Potato Head: basic- “Put on the eyes.” difficult-describe the object, “You use these to see.” answer questions: “Where are the eyes?”
• Block tower: write or tape questions on the side of the blocks, student responds to that prompt when they build it up, or when they take one out. For example, “What is your favorite color?”, “What month comes after January?”, “ Name a food, something you wear, color.”
• Book, books, books: asking questions, reading, filling in missing words, on and on.
• Comprehension happens during all lessons!

Have the child be the teacher during these activities. Give the child a turn which creates an expressive goal and shows a greater understanding as well as creating motivation and interest during group or individual therapy times.