Teaching Children to Listen: A practical approach to developing children's listening skills

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When children are using their bodies to move, they are concentrating better, learning more and developing better listening skills. Topic Guides – Explore our topic guides and discover teaching ideas, resources, facts, videos and books that will help you to teach your children about a wide range of topics and themes.

You can go ‘round the circle’. In this, the adult makes the noise to the first person in the circle. They copy and pass it on to the next person, and keep going like this all the way round. Then everyone tries to guess what it is. Teaching your child to listen is a process that relies heavily on communication and consistency. Here are some tips to help you successfully teach your child the importance of listening, the first time: Oh boy, I was as guilty of this as anyone. Parents, and especially moms, tend to turn a five-second answer into a five-minute dissertation!Practise breaking up words by listening to their sounds and substituting letters. This is an excellent activity to help with phonics and reading.

In the 1970s, psychologist Joan Reynell defined the different stages of attention a child will move through from birth to the age of about five as follows: Understanding the process and developmental steps can help us to nurture these skills and plan appropriate activities. Sound foundations A great listening activity for preschoolers is to tell them an action rhymewhere they follow the instructions such as the one below. Increase it to two instructions. Please fetch the book next to my bed. Open it and take out the recipe cut-out from the front cover. For example, say a list of vegetables and insert one fruit, or say a list of negative emotions and add in a positive emotion. 6. What Sound is That?

If your students are listening to a speech, watching a documentary clip, or hearing a story read aloud, break it up by stopping a few times and having students write a question or two about what they just heard. This way, students actively listen for any confusion or wonderings they may have -- this takes a high-level of concentration. It's important to provide models for this since we are typically trained in school to look for the answers and information rather than to focus on what is not understood or is still a mystery. Motivating Words Start off like this. You can either say the instructions verbally, or a slightly harder version is you have three markers – one green, one red, and one amber. You hold these up now and again. Start by simply showing children the difference between hearing something and listening to it. Tell them the same story but in two different scenarios. First, let them walk around the room, play with their toys, or look out the window to explore the outdoors. Then sit them down and make sure they look at you to truly listen to the story. They'll instantly see the difference between the two.

Blindfold your child or ask them to turn around. Walk around the room and make noises with various everyday items. Ask your child what they are. Five‘True or False?’ Audio Activities– Look at the images and listen to the statements in the audio recordings. Which are true and which are false? Poorly developed listening skills may also have an impact on a child’s language and communication development. When you say “do this” your child must do the action, but when you say “do that” they must stand still. As a child grows they learn to listen to different sounds and discriminate between them, and to recognise voices and sounds from the world around them.By choosing NOT to listen, children can assert their power. This behavior is simply a way children express their need for more control and decision-making ability in their lives.