Developing listening skills - part 1

Exercise

Activity

Passive listening

• Everyone closes their eyes, sits quietly and listens.   Identify as many sounds as possible.

• Everyone closes their eyes, sits quietly and listens.   The teacher plays a variety of musical instruments to be identified.

• Everyone closes their eyes, sits quietly and listens.   Teacher creates a variety of sounds on or with items around the classroom to be identified.   Can be developed by getting the class to point in the direction from which the sound comes.

Active listening

• Everyone stands in a circle. A nominated person makes a sound to be passed around the circle (either way but must be decided first) as quickly as possible.   See how long it takes, then try with eyes closed and see if there is a difference.
  Can be developed by using groups of sounds to be repeated, and /or two different sounds going in different directions.

• Choose a small selection of different sounding instruments – eg triangle, woodblock, shaker – and get pupils to choose an action for when they hear each sound (e.g. left hand up, stand or hop on one leg, turn head to side etc.).   Get them to close their eyes and face away and then play randomly.   Add more sounds and actions to increase difficulty.   Further develop by having different actions for the same sound to be used depending on the rhythm played.

• Divide the group into two halves.  Give each member of the first half a specific sound to make and give the same instructions to the second group so that there are two pupils for each sound.  Spread the group around a suitable space and then, making only their specific sounds, they have to find their partner.  Develop by allowing each pupil to make the sound only three times / twice / once.

Listening with recall

• Clap a simple rhythm to be repeated exactly by the class.   Can be made into a game by getting individuals to clap back, anyone getting it wrong being “out”.  The same thing can be done with sung phrases as well as just rhythms.

• As above but  identify a particular rhythm to represent “Simon says” which should not be repeated if heard

• Arrange some instruments in the middle of a circle.   Play a few sounds in a particular order to make a “chain”.  Then one by one pupils try to repeat the chain exactly.   Difficulty can be increased by using longer chains and /or eyes closed.