Increasing ELLs Listening Skills

Has there ever been the situation where you have had to repeat yourself over and over again for your ELLs? There have been times when I have been like “I know have said this 5.5 times, and they still are not listening and understanding. If this is you, my fellow teachers you might have a problem in your students listening comprehension. This can affect the students comprehension skills and assignments if they are struggling in this language domain.

I always thought the listening domain was the easiest for students to achieve high scores and success. I mean all it is students listening and following directions. This is where my thought process was for my students. Oh was I wrong. I was baffled when I got scores back and students were in the 2’s and 3’s. I just knew that they were going to have perfect scores in the listening. I couldn’t help but think to myself “Was it something in my instruction that I missed?” Did I not teach an important concept or skill?I can hear myself screaming…”WHAT HAPPENDED?! After going in circles, I decided to take a moment and reflect and research. First, I reflected on this simple question. “What was I doing in my class activities to improve my students listening skills?” I also reflected on was I being intentional about the activities I was doing with my students to improve and build on their listening skills? If I am being honest and transparent with you, the answer was no to both questions. I wasn’t being intentional in my instruction.

That is when I decided I needed to make a shift in my instruction. I started setting clear expectations with my students about the listening, and that I will not repeat myself when giving directions. I did allow for follow up questions, but this put the students in the position to pay close attention to what I was saying. The students loved taking notes in class, and I thought wouldn’t this be a great opportunity to turn this into a listening activity. I would set the stage by telling students to imagine they are in college (I would show a picture) and they are listening to their professor give a lecture. Students will really get into character, and even acted like future college students in a lecture hall.

Set clear and high expectations with your students about listening.

• Create a listening rubric so students can have clear expectations about what students are expected to do when completing listening activities.
  • I would encourage you to avoid repeating yourself over and over. Set the expectation that you will repeat twice. This forces the students to tune in to what you are you saying about the topic or directions.

Be intentional about the listening activities you are doing in class.

• Cornell note-taking can be turned into a listening activity.
  • Students can watch informational videos about a topic. While they are watching they can fill in the blanks with key terms and definitions. For example, I recently did a lesson about a novel study and the setting was during the Vietnam War. I had the students watch a documentary. I created fill in the blanks and questions that accompanied the video. As the students were watching, they had to complete the blanks and answer the questions. I do stop and pause to let them write and catch up if needed.
  • Create listening questions about a reading or a lesson that you have done in class.

Create a listening data tracker.

• Have listening quizzes for the students. One I way that you can implement this is doing read aloud. When you are reading a text a loud to a student, stop and do a listening comprehension check.
  • At the end of the activity, have the students graph their progress. For example, if they got 6 right the would graph a level 6. If they answered 5 correctly they would graph themselves at a level 5, and so on.
  • This will allow students to see their progress over time and motivate them to improve on their listening skills.

Here are your next steps:

• Brainstorm how you can be intentional in your listening activities.
• Create a simple listening activity for your ELLs
• If you are needing some listening activities ready to print, go to myadventuresinesl.com/closereads

There you will see my close reads that have a listening activities already embedded. What is your favorite listening activity to do with your ELLs?