What Materials Are in a Children's Listening Center?
Listening centers can help students of any age improve reading skills. Though many educators and parents think only of children in lower elementary grades using a listening center, educators in upper grades have also found them useful. Improvements in technology have helped to bring many new and engaging elements to listening centers, making them more appealing to older students.
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Seating and Shelving
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Provide your students with comfortable seating in the form of small chairs, beanbags, floor cushions or a small couch. Create space for no more than the four or five students that should use the listening center at one time. Place a small table or shelves in the center to hold the books and listening center electronics. Be sure that an electrical outlet is nearby. Add a small lamp to the center for additional lighting and atmosphere.
Electronics
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Give your students a variety of ways to hear the text. Purchase several inexpensive, personal CD players, headphones and blank CDs. Mkae recordings of any book by using a computer with a microphone and CD burner. You may be fortunate enough to have or locate funds for the purchase of several iPods for your listening center. These allow you to download a playlist of audio books that students can choose from and you can update regularly. If you have access to laptop computers, students can listen to audio books on the laptops, using headphones.
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Recordings
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Choose recordings based on student interest and ability level. Take a survey to find out what types of books your students like to read and locate recordings and online audio files of these books. Allow students access to books slightly above their current reading level so that they remain challenged and interested. Some websites offer audio recordings of celebrities reading books to children. Locate recordings made by celebrities that are of interest to your students, and then find a copy of the book so that students can follow along with the celebrity recording.
Activities
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Provide activities so that students interact with the text to practice comprehension skills after listening to the audio book recording. Devise short, independent activities relevant to any story. Include tasks such as describing the characters or setting, listing important plot developments or writing a reflective paragraph with thoughts about the story. Have younger students draw pictures showing their interpretation of characters or settings as a post-listening activity. Supply the listening center with activity copies, pencils and clipboards since the listening center probably does not have a writing surface such as a table. Designate a place for students to turn in post-reading activity papers.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit boy listens to the music image by Daria Miroshnikova from Fotolia.com
