Classroom Activities: The Hidden Phrase

An interactive classroom activity to help improve students’ listening skills is to pair students together to listen for a hidden phrase. The way this activity works is students must work with their partner to create a dialog using a secret phrase. Once they have created a short dialog using the phrase, they must present it to their classmates to see which group can find the hidden phrase. Prepare the hidden phrase before class and make sure that you have enough for each group to have a different one. The phrase can be anything that you want from “I saw a dinosaur in my backyard” to “I like to bake cookies.” Each group’s challenge is to use the hidden phrase in their dialog, while their classmates’ goal is to listen intently to try and figure out the hidden phrase within the dialog. Each group that guesses correctly gets one point. If no one can guess the hidden phrase correctly, then the group that writes the dialog gets a point.

Describe the Photo

Another fun classroom activity is to pair students together to listen to their partner describe a photograph. Have students sit back to back, and give one student a simple photograph and the other a blank piece of paper. The challenge is for the first student to describe in detail the photograph, while the second student tries to draw it on their paper. Make sure the photos you choose are simple, such as a photo of a house, cat, dog, or simple shapes. The group with the most similar drawings to their photograph wins.

Stand Up and Listen

A fun, active, whole-group activity is to play ‘stand up and listen.’ For this activity, the challenge is for students to listen for a repeated sound. For example, you would say a phrase like “A saw my cat, eat a bat, then a rat, before he ran away.” As soon as students think they hear the repeated sound, they must stand up next to their seat. Once students get the hang of it, pair them up and have them create their phases. Once they’ve created their phrase each group must come up and take a turn playing stand up and listen.

Locating the Square

This activity is similar to the describing the photo activity, but with this activity, students must listen for where to locate the square and draw the shape. Pair students together and have them sit back to back. Give one student a blank grid that looks like a Tic-Tac-Toe board with nine squares and the other the same grid but with simple shapes in each of the nine squares. The challenge is for the student with the filled in grid to describe each shape and its placement to the student with the blank grid. The goal is for the student to actively listen in order to fill in their grid correctly. For example, the student may say, “The picture with the heart goes in the first top left square, and the picture of a circle goes right next to it.” The activity will force students to listen intently in order to complete the challenge.

Listening With Lyrics

Using music lyrics is a great way to keep students engaged while honing their listening skills. Have students listen to a song that they have never heard before. First, challenge them to listen for a specific word, then once they’ve mastered that, have them listen for a specific phrase. Next, play a popular song where all the students know the majority of the words and repeat the activity. Have students compare how they did on the first song to how they did on the second, popular song. This is a great activity for students to practice unfamiliar words.

It’s important for students to continually develop their listening skills. Listening is the activity of paying attention and getting meaning from something that you hear. By having students engage in a variety of classroom activities like the ones mentioned above, you will help them develop and build their skills.

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Early childhood and elementary classrooms require constant decision-making and intense structure to employ effective teaching strategies. Strategies that help students listen are imperative in the lower grades. Middle school students often require different strategies for active and effective listening skills. High school students are motivated by their interests in relation to listening and being involved in the learning process.

Early Childhood and Elementary

Teachers employ “Call & Response” strategies in their daily instruction. There are a myriad of call and response ideas, and teachers introduce these ideas to their students at the beginning of the year. This idea is effective in that students are called to attention without teachers raising their voices, and their attention is directed to the teacher. Students enjoy this method because they are usually very fun ideas, and they do not realize they are being called to attention.

An example of call and response would be for the teacher to clap a specific way and have the students clap back to them when attention is needed. Other ideas include the teachers saying a “captivating” phrase, and the students respond back. E.g. The teacher says, “Alright, Stop,” and the students say, “Collaborate and listen!” This is a lyric from the song, “Ice, Ice Baby,” by Vanilla Ice. Students love this and will listen immediately when called in this manner. Call and response strategies are popular in the lower grades and work well with promoting listening in class, in the hallways, and in various other settings. Repetition is so important for younger children, and call and response encourages this skill.

Using signals is a helpful approach to active listening in the classroom. Some teachers use sign language as a way for students to notify the teacher of a need without disrupting the entire class. E.g. students use the sign language symbol for restroom, drink of water, or sharpen pencil instead of the traditional raising of hand to ask a question. This allows the classroom to flow better while the teacher is teaching. It is inevitable that there will be needs in any classroom while the teacher is teaching. Using signals is an effective way to encourage listening and engaging in instruction simultaneously. These must also be changed periodically throughout the year to retain students’ attention.

Using cues are another effective way to promote listening and deeper understanding. An example of this would be the teacher saying, “Alright Go,” when they are ready to allow students to begin working or writing their assignment. This helps students not to begin working too early and listening to the teacher instead of beginning their assignment. If students know their teacher will provide a cue for them, they will be more suitable to wait to begin working when it is time.

Tone of voice is imperative to activating listening and retaining students’ attention when teaching small children. Teachers often use animated voices to engage students, and they enjoy this type of tone because they are captivated. Teachers often say, “The quieter I talk, the more the students have to listen.” There are times all teachers must project their tone of voice to allow students to understand the importance of what is being taught.

Middle School

Students in middle school are beginning to develop interests, and they will engage at a higher-level when listening to information that they enjoy. Examples of these listening strategies would be to assign students to listen to specific podcasts or other online recorded stories. Students enjoy listening to assignments with headphones on. An idea would be to have students bring their own headphones from home, and they will already be more invested in the assignment. Listening to audible books is another assignment that middle school students would enjoy.

A great listening strategy for this age group would be to allow students to research and record an audio or video of themselves presenting information. The sky is the limit with this type of assignment and can be adapted to most any subject area. As students present their research, all students are listening and engaged at a high level since they are listening to their peers’ present information that is interesting to them. These types of assignments allow students to be continually exposed to vocabulary and experiences that add to their schema.

Lastly, students in middle school can utilize various listening strategies while answering questions regarding listening for the main idea, making predictions, and drawing conclusions. As students engage in these higher-level thinking skills, they are employing higher-level listening techniques to know the material.

High School

When students are in high school, they are taking specific classes in their course of study. Oftentimes, these courses are related to what they want to pursue after high school. In these courses, teachers may invite guest speakers to speak to students about the specific classwork they are taking. An example of this would be inviting a mechanic to speak to students in an automotive class. Students’ listening strategies are increased when participating in these classroom activities because they are executing many skills while participating in this activity.

Another example would be to assign students to interview someone outside of school for an English, history, or related course. Listening is essential in this type of assignment and is memorable for all involved.

Lastly, an assignment that involves social media in a positive way would be an opportunity for higher-level listening skills. In today’s classrooms, there are many ideas for debate, and social media can be a source of information on these topics. Students in high school spend a lot of time on social media, and they can use this as an effective listening strategy.

*Updated August 2021

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