Check out this Google Form listening center activity designed for primary-aged students!
Why use digital listening centers? Here are a few reasons:
- Students get opportunities to practice listening skills while hearing a wide variety of literature read aloud by fluent models.
- Forms work on most any device and don't require login.
- Little learners get watch YouTube videos without actually having to navigate through the YouTube website and all of its (sometimes questionable) distractions.
- This can be an independent, yet still meaningful learning activity during your Literacy Centers - allowing you time to work with other small groups.
In this example using the story Halloween Mice, by Bethany Roberts, even very young students can offer a quick "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" opinion of the story.
After the students listen to the story and vote, the class can examine and discuss the results:
Here is another sample using the story "Yoko" by Rosemary Wells. It goes a little further by adding some questions about the story to the end. The use of images as answer options keeps the activity accessible to early or non-readers.
Want to learn how to do this yourself? Here's a quick YouTube tutorial:
Tips for little learners:
- Keep it simple! Use just 1-3 response questions!
- Use the shorter videos - 5 to 7 minutes.
- Use images as your answer options.
- Deliver the form in Google Classroom or with a QR Code.
- Including a short-answer question/prompt allows for authentic writing opportunities and practice at the keyboard.
- The website JustBooksReadAloud.com has curated over 700 YouTube read-aloud videos, which can be sorted by author, length, reading level, and topic.
- Using a headphone splitter, multiple students can listen, even if you have just one device!
