How to Check Understanding of Math Concepts with These Fun Listening Activities for Students

Are your little learners listening to you when you are teaching math concepts? If not, or if you’re not sure, try using listening activities for students in your classroom. These fun and engaging activities will help students focus on what you are saying and check their understanding of key concepts. In this blog post, we will discuss how to make students listen to you and provide a listening activity that tests for shape, positional language, numbers, counting and colours.

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Why Listening is Important

Listening is a critical skill for students to develop. Not only does listening help with comprehension, but it also allows students to build relationships, show empathy and effectively communicate. In the classroom, listening is essential for following instructions, participating in discussions and completing tasks. Listening activities are a great way to cater for those students who struggle with reading but you really want them to show you what they know!

What Listening Can Show You that Reading Can’t

When completing listening tasks with students, all they need to think about is what you are saying and follow the directions. They can show you their understanding of shape, number, positional language and colours, without having to try and read what is being asked in instructions. Just because a student struggles with reading, does not mean they don’t math concepts. So remove that reading element out of the equation!

Listening Activities for Students

Before beginning any listening task with your students, it is important that you explicitly model what listening looks and feels like. Have students remove anything they don’t need from their table so they don’t get distracted. Tell them to only concentrate on what you are asking them to do. Open their ears and calm their body ready to follow the instructions. I use these FREE posters to demonstate the 5L’s of Listening and Learning to my students.

When you model listening for your students, make sure to use exaggerated movements and expressions so they understand what is expected of them.

Why Check to See if Students are Listening

If you don’t check to see if your students are listening, then how will you know they are understanding the task? By checking for understanding, you can quickly identify any misconceptions students may have about the concept being taught. You can also give immediate feedback so that students can correct their mistakes. By using my Maths Listening Activities, I have even identified kids who are colour blind!

My Math Listening Activities

To check to see if my students can listen, comprehend and show me their understanding, I have created listening activities that test for understanding of math concepts: shape, positional language, numbers, counting and colours.

Included are 15 sets of Listening Activities. Each set contains a student page, teacher instruction page and an asessment sheet for teachers to score student’s listening ability. Each set progressively gets harder and tests students on harder concepts.

Topics students are asked to show their understanding include:

Colors
Shapes
Numbers
Positional Language (between, top, above, below, next to, around, opposite, under)

Skills are listed on the bottom of the worksheet.

How it works…

You will need to print off 3 pages for each Listening Activity.

Copy a picture page for each child in your class.

Copy assessment sheets for each student – there are 4 on each page.

Hand out a copy of the picture page to each student. Tell them not to put their name on the paper until they are directed to do so. Students should have crayons or pencils easily accessible. Students will require the same colour pencil at the same time, so if students are sharing resources, take that into account.

Read through the instructions step by step. Giving students time to complete the task after each instruction. While asking the question, walk around the classroom, making sure students are staying on task and not looking at other students work.