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27: Scaffolding Listening Skills
459 Plays1 year ago
Let’s chat all about differentiating and scaffolding listening skills! Here’s how you can make a listening activity easier or more challenging depending on the student.
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Transcript
Introduction to Top Pod
00:00:04
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Top Pod, a podcast to support itinerant teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing, SLPs, and other deaf education professionals.
Scaffolding Listening Skills
00:00:13
Speaker
I'm Deanna Barlow from Listening Fund, and today we're talking about scaffolding listening skills. What I mean by that is ways to make auditory tasks easier or harder depending on the skills you're working on.
00:00:25
Speaker
The different factors that you can adjust are the number of critical elements, set size, sentence length and complexity, time, background noise, and distraction. So you can have a direction with two critical elements such as give me the yellow ball, which is very easy. Or you can have something like I would really like you to pass me the yellow ball when you get a chance please.
00:00:46
Speaker
which is a lot more taxing on your auditory memory for obvious reasons, even if it's still only two critical elements.
Complexity in Auditory Tasks
00:00:54
Speaker
So we're going to go through factor by factor and discuss how you can use it to scaffold a child's listening skills. Alright, the first one is critical elements. So critical elements are the information necessary to complete a direction. So for example,
00:01:08
Speaker
Give me the yellow ball can be one or two critical elements depending on what the options are. If there's only balls, only the color really matters. But if there's a bunch of objects, some of which are yellow, then you really need to hear both words to follow the direction completely. So the first way to make a direction more complicated is to add more critical elements.
00:01:28
Speaker
Lists of objects are harder than other grammatical structures. So if we're playing with toys and I say the dog is running to the blue house, you might have to remember three elements. Dog running blue or blue house, assuming there's only houses.
00:01:45
Speaker
But this is easier than me saying, give me the dog, the cat and the dog. The sentence of the syntax helps your auditory memory by providing a clue and giving some context. So it's not just a list of three random items. The three elements are related to each other in a grammatical way that is predictable.
Enhancing Auditory Memory
00:02:02
Speaker
So if you're working with a child on two or three or four critical elements and they're struggling, a way to make it easier is to practice more with like mixes of nouns and verbs and adjectives and prepositions instead of just a list of nouns over and over again or even a list of attributes that's also just as hard. This works really well in play like the cow jumps over the farm, the pig jumps over the horse, the horse goes under the chicken,
00:02:27
Speaker
You can see how you can practice a lot of different following directions with multiple critical elements without resorting to lists. Once you build their auditory memory through these activities and others, you can try lists again and see how they do. Sequencing also falls under critical elements because the sequencing word itself is a critical element, right? So give me the dog, then the cat has three critical elements because you have to understand the then part.
00:02:53
Speaker
to follow that direction completely. Introducing sequencing is another way to make directions more challenging without making the list longer.
Open vs. Small Sets in Listening Skills
00:03:01
Speaker
All right, let's move on to set size. There's closed sets, which can be small or large, and open sets, which have unlimited possibilities.
00:03:09
Speaker
So obviously small sets are the easiest because seeing all the options, like jogs your memory and gives you less chances to be wrong. It can also be mixed. So for the last example, like the animals are part of a closed set. There's only so many animal toys to pick from. But the verbs could be an open set. I could give any verb in the direction. So if I wanted to make the activity easier,
00:03:30
Speaker
I could just pick two or three verbs so they have an idea of what it could be and they only have to listen for those possibilities. However, I would challenge you to incorporate open set directions as much as possible as early as you can because it really helps develop that active listening skill. Small sets are a good way to scaffold a harder skill, like more critical elements.
Challenges with Complex Sentences and Context
00:03:50
Speaker
But an open set is more likely to carry over into stronger listening skills in the classroom. If a student is doing really well with listening activities with three critical elements, for example,
00:04:00
Speaker
I might try some three critical element directions with an open set or at least a very large set. Drawing activities work really well for this. Movement activities like clap after you touch your nose, something like that, because they have no idea what's about to come out of your mouth and they have to be prepared for anything. All right, next let's talk sentence length and complexity. So sentence length, complexity, and structure can impact how challenging a direction is or a message is.
00:04:27
Speaker
Putting the information at the end of the sentence is acoustically the easiest. So please give me the ball compared to can you get the ball for me please. So it makes sense that more complex sentences with more like quote unquote fluff will be more challenging because the listener has to weed out that extra information. One thing I do to make directions or auditory practice more challenging is to include unfamiliar names of people, places, brands,
00:04:54
Speaker
anything that they have to listen to the actual word to understand instead of relying on the contact that makes it a lot harder so for example if i'm looking at a map and i say circle and article and put a star on canada. That's gonna be a lot more challenging because you really have to hear the exact words i'm saying and your brain can't fill it in based on context if you didn't hear it perfectly.
00:05:16
Speaker
I like doing a lot of listening practice with maps and geography activities for this reason, because it's great listening practice for the actual sounds in words in connected speech. But it also builds background knowledge, which is just like a bonus. When I'm doing like listening for details and sentences or paragraphs, I often ask them to remember the people's names when I want to challenge the
Increasing Difficulty with Time and Noise
00:05:38
Speaker
student.
00:05:38
Speaker
All right, next is time. The longer the amount of time between the verbal direction and them following the direction, the harder it is. So you can artificially create a time delay by counting to like five or 10 in your head and then letting them complete the direction. But I actually prefer it when the time is built into the activity.
00:05:58
Speaker
So maybe the toy, the puzzle, the activity, whatever it is, is across the room. And you give them the direction and they have to walk over to complete it. And while they're walking over, they have to hold that direction in their auditory memory. If you have puzzle pieces or paper pieces or anything that you can turn upside down so that they can't see it, they have to hold that information in their auditory memory while they're flipping them over to find the one they need to finish the direction.
00:06:23
Speaker
So I have farm animal magnets, for example, if you flip all the magnets upside down and they can't see the picture. And I say, put the cow on top of the whiteboard and the pig at the bottom of the whiteboard. And they have to go through and flip over every individual magnet. It takes a lot of auditory memory skill to hold that four critical element direction in their head.
00:06:43
Speaker
and finish it. So even once they find the piece, what was I supposed to do with it? So it's really good at making those directions more challenging, but in a way that still makes sense and is functional. Putting a bunch of objects in a bag can also work the same way. They have to look through the bag to find the objects that are part of the direction and then remember what you're supposed to do with them.
00:07:04
Speaker
So if you have a student succeeding with three critical elements but struggling with four, you can help them build their auditory memory by giving them directions with three critical elements and a time delay. It's a way to practice and improve without moving up to the next number.
00:07:20
Speaker
And you can imagine that if you do a lot of practice of three critical elements with a time delay, your auditory memory is going to get stronger because you have to be really solid to be able to remember three elements with a time delay. And eventually that practice will carry over into being able to do four.
00:07:35
Speaker
All right, next is background noise. This makes it harder because the student has to use more cognitive energy in hearing the word and might not have as much cognitive energy left over for actually remembering or comprehending the direction. And there's different levels of background noise. It can be quiet or loud.
00:07:51
Speaker
It can be music without lyrics, music with lyrics, or a conversation background noise, like a coffee shop sound. I just get these on YouTube. There's an app I used to have called Noisily. I haven't used it in a while. I usually just get little background noise things off YouTube, but obviously that's harder than music without lyrics, right? So I had a student who was doing amazing.
00:08:12
Speaker
with auditory memory, like seven plus critical elements, like wow, blowing my mind. So we practice in background noise more. And we started with instrumental Taylor Swift music quietly in the background. It was lovely. Me and the student both very much enjoyed it. And that was pretty doable for them.
00:08:28
Speaker
Yeah, it was more challenging than quiet, but it allowed them to build up their confidence listening in background noise instead of going straight to loud coffee shop sounds. And I know that this student had trouble listening in background noise, and they knew they had trouble listening in background noise. So not only does it scaffold the skill, but it also builds their confidence with a more challenging skill, especially for older students. So start with the easy background noise, the instrumental quiet music, and work your way up to the loud coffee shop
00:08:58
Speaker
the sounds once they are really successful. And if I do that, I might also bring down the number of critical elements so that they can feel successful and work their way back up.
Multitasking and Real-Life Listening
00:09:07
Speaker
It's like you can pull any of these levers at any time to make it easier or harder. And the last one is distraction.
00:09:13
Speaker
So last week we had Lynn Wood talk about this a little bit in that guest interview. And it's such a great way to increase the challenge. Basically, you have to have a student work on something while they listen. So they have to think and listen at the same time. It's great practice for real life because that's how real life works. People talk to you while you're busy and sometimes you need to be able to do both. And that can be really challenging for students who are using listening through hearing aids or cochlear implants.
00:09:40
Speaker
So it's really applicable to note-taking as well. And even though we hopefully have accommodations in place for note-taking, it's still a useful skill to be able to jot down notes while someone's talking to you. If you go to the doctor's office and you want to jot down notes or you go to Home Depot and someone's explaining something to you and you want to jot down notes, not at all a real example from my life. But it's a helpful skill to have.
00:10:03
Speaker
A few things that I like to do for that are a really challenging puzzle, like a jigsaw puzzle, something where they really have to like think while they're doing it. A difficult game. There's like some like brainy games, depending on how old the students are. Anything that's like kind of distracting. I've also used an iPad. This is like probably not the best example, but it does work.
00:10:23
Speaker
Um, it's that game where the ball and it like bounces and it hits the bricks and it makes them disappear. Do you know what I'm talking about? Um, they have to really focus on that ball to like not drop it and we'll do listening practice while they're playing that game. And let me tell you that is a distraction. And then another thing you could do is I've used like an eye spy book, you know, like the ones with the really hard eye spy pictures where they're like, sometimes the pictures are small and sometimes like
00:10:49
Speaker
there was one it was like looking for a duck and like the lake was in the shape of a duck like it's not even just like like it's hard they really have to like
00:10:57
Speaker
look for it. So I felt that was really good, like really got their attention so that they were really thinking like they were thinking about the duck everywhere they were looking and I was talking about something else and they had to hold both in their auditory memory and that is very challenging. Really just keeping their brains actively engaged while they're listening at the same time is very challenging listening practice and an awesome way to scaffold it up to make it harder. I guess I shouldn't say scaffold to differentiate it up and challenge those students with a strong auditory memory.
Review and Differentiation of Listening Skills
00:11:26
Speaker
So just like with my other examples before, like let's say you have a student who's doing really well with five critical elements, but it's having a hard time with six, maybe do five with a distraction, or five with a time delay, or five with more challenging vocabulary, and you'll be able to build up their auditory memory where then they might be able to do six with some practice.
00:11:45
Speaker
So that's everything you can adjust to differentiate listening skills. Just a quick review for you. It's the number of critical elements, the set size, the sentence length and complexity, time, background noise, and distraction. If you're looking for something to use while practicing these skills, you can check out my auditory processing made simple binders. You can use that as like a base and then adjust the level using all the things that we've talked about today. But I'll often use that as like my base
00:12:13
Speaker
of what I'm saying and then I can adjust it depending on what the student needs. So you can check that out in the show notes if you want along with the transcript for today's episode. Thank you so much for being here and I'll see you next week. Bye!