Listening to Reading

We finally began Listening to Reading before Thanksgiving.  I was waiting for the students to have the "Daily 3" (Read to Self, Read to Someone and Word Work) down before I added anything else.

I have 5 CD players.  I have tried individual tape players and group "listening centers", but they have always been a mess - kids not are not at all familiar with tapes, so the idea that it has be rewound, or turned over, was far beyond them, and it made a lot of work for me.  CDs are instantly ready each day.

We don't have a huge supply of stories with CDs.  We get what we can from Scholastic.  Our kinder and first grade classes share, so it helps to provide some variety.  One teacher made copies of CDs, so that a listening center pack of 5 books would each have a CD, and each class could keep their own.  I am working on collecting more books, but as it is, I only change them every 5-6 weeks, since each child only gets to do listening about once a week.

I set them up by putting each CD player and headphones in a canvas bag I bought at the dollar store last year.  The bags are different colors to help them remember what they have already done. 

Each bag gets one book; I put the CD in and they are told not to open it.  I colored the buttons with permanent markers to help them remember which to push - green for "play", red for "stop". 

I modeled listening with the whole class.  We listened to the story together, practicing when to turn pages.  I ended up having to show them about the skip buttons, since several of my CDs have more than one version of the story (some have songs, and they all have with and without page-turn signals.)  This is tricky for them, so I still end up helping with buttons sometimes.

Last year, I had the problem of the stories not being long enough - students would finish before the end of our 10-15 minute cycle was over, and then need something to do.  Last year, I gave them white boards.  This year, I thought I would introduce a response page for the stories they read to increase their engagement with the books.  The page I created has them write the title, 6 words they know from the book (sight words or other) draw a picture of a character and of their favorite part.  It is still difficult for most of them after one or two tries, but I am hoping that over time, they will be able to handle this easily, and perhaps an even more complex response page for some.

Two responses from "The Pirate's Tale"