Editor’s note: While learning at home, children can make progress toward grade-level reading and writing standards. This post is part of an ongoing series designed to help caregivers support children’s and teens’ literacy learning at home.
When planning home literacy learning activities for your children to do during school breaks, on weekends, or any time they need extra practice, make sure not to leave out activities that involve listening. Children who experience difficulties with listening comprehension are at an increased risk for reading difficulties compared to their typically developing peers (Hair et al., 2006). Listening comprehension is the ability to understand information communicated through spoken language. For example, this might be demonstrated by successfully conversing with someone or watching and listening to a movie and understanding the storyline (Catts et al., 2006). Other literacy skills, like identifying the narrative elements of a story, making inferences and drawing conclusions, and recognizing the main idea of a story are components of the broader ability to listen and comprehend (Tompkins et al., 2013). Therefore, students can build and demonstrate listening comprehension skills when they are guided to retell a story after it is read aloud and orally respond to comprehension questions about that story (Spencer et al., 2017).
Listening Comprehension and Guided Play
Caregivers can provide opportunities for children to improve their listening comprehension skills at home. Young children commonly engage in different kinds of play that are linked to literacy development like making up stories and telling them orally, role-playing, and pretending that physical objects represent other things, like a spaceship, for example (Sutton-Smith, 1998). An instructional approach that promotes a playful yet structured learning environment is called “guided play.” It is defined as an adult playing with one child or multiple children while modeling and scaffolding literacy skills (Roskos & Christie, 2011a). Our previous blog post contains more information on how guided play broadly relates to literacy learning. Caregivers can use guided play to promote listening comprehension by creating opportunities to retell and act out stories in a playful setting (Nicolopoulou et al., 2015). Toys commonly found at home (e.g., stuffed animals, baby dolls, and playhouses) can be used as props to help children reenact events in a story (Roskos & Christie, 2011b). The caregivers’ responsibility during guided play is to facilitate the dialogue about characters and events in a story and expand on children’s responses (Roskos & Christie, 2011a).
Let’s examine how caregivers can use guided play to promote children’s listening comprehension skills at home.
1. Read Aloud a Storybook
Storybook read alouds often are coupled with guided play activities for the purpose of providing a narrative that can be retold or reenacted in a playful setting. When choosing a book to read aloud, it is important to consider children’s interests and select books that will motivate them to engage in the read aloud and subsequent guided play activities. During school breaks and year-round, your local library is a great place to find books that will be of interest to your children, and the librarians can help you with specific recommendations. Locate your local library and its online catalog by searching libraries.org.
Typically, fictional storybooks include narrative elements like characters, setting, plot, and sequence of events, which can be portrayed during guided play. For example, adults reading aloud Goldilocks and the Three Bears (Aylesworth, 2003) can draw children’s attention to narrative elements in the story and associated illustrations by asking questions like:
- “Who went to the three bears’ house?”
- “What did Goldilocks eat at the bears’ house?”
- “Where did Goldilocks go after she ate the little bears’ porridge?”
These types of questions also help the adult monitor the child’s listening comprehension during the read aloud. See our previous posts on dialogic reading and caregiver involvement when reading books to children for information about how to ask children questions while reading a book aloud.
2. Implementing Guided Play
After reading aloud a storybook, the adult will implement guided play with the child. During guided play, the adult’s role is to support retelling skills by using household items and toys to represent the characters, setting, and sequence of events from the story. Below is an example scripted dialogue between an adult caregiver and child (applicable for children from pre-kindergarten to Grade 2) implementing guided play after reading aloud Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
| Scripted dialogue between caregiver and child during guided play | Helpful tips |
|---|---|
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Caregiver: Let’s tell the story of Goldilocks and the three bears using your toys. What is the name of the character that went to the three bears’ house? |
The caregiver prompts the child to identify the toys that represent the characters in the story. |
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Caregiver: Do you remember the setting of the story? The setting is where the story takes place. |
The caregiver prompts the child to identify the setting of the story. |
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Caregiver: That is a great idea. Now that we have identified our characters and setting, let’s act out the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. What happens at the beginning of the story? |
The caregiver prompts the child to retell the sequence of events of the story, using words such as “beginning,” “next,” “then,” and “end.” |
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Caregiver: You have a good memory. The three bears were outside walking in the woods while their porridge was cooling. Porridge is like oatmeal. You eat oatmeal for breakfast sometimes. What is the first thing Goldilocks does inside the bears’ cottage (This is an example of how to teach a new vocabulary word during conversation and then relate the word to the child’s life.) |
This is an example of how to teach a new vocabulary word during conversation and then relate the new word to the child’s real life. |
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Caregiver: That’s right. Goldilocks ate the little bear’s porridge. What does Goldilocks do next? |
The caregiver repeats the child’s response. Then, the caregiver asks the child what happens in the story using the word “next.” |
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Caregiver: Goldilocks is so tired that she sits in the little bear’s chair. Then what does Goldilocks do? |
The caregiver expands on the child’s response to provide a complete response to the prompt. The caregiver asks the child to describe what happens after Goldilocks sits in the bear’s chair. The sequencing word used for this prompt is “then.” |
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Caregiver: The three bears do come home at the end of the story, but Goldilocks does one more thing before the bears return from their walk in the woods. You said that Goldilocks was tired, so what does she do to rest from the day? |
This is an example of prompting the child to make a correction. The caregiver provides a hint for the correct response to the question but allows the child an opportunity to self-correct. |
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Caregiver: Good idea. What happens at the end of the story? |
The caregiver prompts the child to describe what happens last in the story. The sequencing word in this prompt is “end.” |
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Caregiver: That’s right. You did a great job retelling the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Do you think you could retell me the story all by yourself? Give it a try, I think you can do it! I will be here to help you if you need me. |
The caregiver praises the child for retelling the story and then encourages the child to retell the story independently. |
| Child: I think I can do it! |
The child resets the toys and playhouse and then retells the story independently. |
Adult caregivers can support the development of children’s listening comprehension through read alouds and guided play activities using common household items and toys to represent characters and objects in the story. Caregivers can facilitate intentional conversations by asking comprehension questions about characters, settings, and events from the story and prompting the child to retell or reenact the story during guided play. Guided play is a feasible instructional approach for caregivers to implement with their children at home.
References
Aylesworth, J. (2003). Goldilocks and the three bears. Scholastic Press.
Catts, H. W., Fey, M. E., Zhang, X., & Tomblin, J. B. (2002). A longitudinal investigation of reading outcomes in children with language impairments. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 45, 1142–1157. https://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2002/093)
Catts, H. W., Adlof, S. M., & Weismer, S. E. (2006). Language deficits in poor comprehenders: A case for the simple view of reading. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49, 278–293. https://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2006/023)
Hair, E., Halle, T., Terry-Humen, E., Lavelle, B., & Calkins, J. (2006). Children's school readiness in the ECLS-K: Predictions to academic, health, and social outcomes in first grade. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 21, 431–4534. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2006.09.005
Nicolopoulou, A., Cortina, K. S., Ilgaz, H., Cates, C. B., & de Sá, A. B. (2015). Using a narrative-and play-based activity to promote low-income preschoolers’ oral language, emergent literacy, and social competence. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 31, 147–162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2015.01.006
Roskos, K. A., & Christie, J. F. (2011a). Mindbrain and play-literacy connections. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 11, 73–94. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1468798410390889
Roskos, K. A., & Christie, J. F. (2011b). The pre-literacy nexas and the importance of evidence-based techniques in the classroom. American Journal of Play, 4, 204–224. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ985588.pdf
Spencer, T. D., Weddle, S. A., Peterson, D. B., & Adams, J. L. (2017). Multi-tiered narrative intervention for preschoolers: A head start implementation study. National Head Start Association Dialog, 20, 1–28.
Sutton-Smith, B. (1998). The ambiguity of play. Harvard University Press.
Tompkins, V., Guo, Y., & Justice, L. M. (2013). Inference generation, story comprehension, and language skills in the preschool years. Reading and Writing, 26, 403–429. https://doi.org/10.1007/s1114 5-012-9374-7
