LISTEN WISE

Teach Students to Be

Better Listeners

Monica Brady-Myerov
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Introduction

My students don’t listen!

That’s what almost every teacher says when I tell them that,
after a career as an NPR reporter, I have started an education
company focused on listening. They tell me they must repeat
themselves when explaining how the Civil War got started. Or
demonstrate a math concept over and over. They give simple
homework directions in multiple ways. They call out to students
many times before they have their attention. They lament that
their students are poor listeners.
Might every student struggle with this most basic skill? Lis-
tening. If you were to stop a hundred teachers at an education
conference and ask them this question, as I have, you will find
that yes, listening is something that teachers report most stu-
dents don’t know how to do well. And teachers are at a loss for
what to do about it. This book will help.

1
 Listening is a skill that can be modeled, taught, and improved.
I have learned this on my journey from an award-winning public
radio reporter to the founder of an education technology start-up
called Listenwise, a website for K–12 teachers that uses the power of
audio stories to advance listening and literacy skills in all students.

HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED

I organized this book to build the case for teaching listening, but
also as a practical guide for K–12 teachers interested in using
audio in their teaching, with class activities sprinkled through-
out the book. The strategies and activities include suggestions for
elementary students and middle/high school students. Readers
should start from the beginning and work through to the end
for the most comprehensive understanding of how and why to
teach listening comprehension. However, you can also jump to
the chapter on English learners or listening and reading, if that’s
where your interest lies. I structured the book to start with and
build on academic research and my personal experience in the
field as a reporter, because I’ve learned many people need to be
convinced that listening can and should be taught because it will
help their students’ overall academic performance. That’s why
I’ve now devoted my career to it as the founder of Listenwise.com.
Throughout the book, I mention specific audio stories and
podcasts that demonstrate a concept or could be used in a class
activity. The original source of the audio is referenced in the end-
notes, but you can also hear the audio and use fully developed les-
sons by going to https://listenwise.com/book, where you will have
free access to Listenwise Premium for a period of time. Listenwise.
com should be considered a digital companion to this book, so
I encourage you to engage your ears as well as your eyes as you read.
In the opening chapter, “My Love of Audio Storytelling,”
I share my experiences as a journalist and how it shaped my love
of audio. It explains how my passion turned into a desire to help
students learn through listening and become better listeners.

2 Listen Wise
 In Chapter 2, “Listening Is a Skill,” I show you that listening is
a skill that can be taught, practiced, improved, and successfully
demonstrated on standardized tests. It’s a skill that needs to be
taught because it’s critical to success in college, career, and life.
Curriculum standards in all 50 states include listening as a com-
ponent for K–12 students. Listening skills rose to prominence
with the adoption of the Common Core by many states in 2009.
The standards across the states require teachers to include pur-
poseful listening in their instruction. And, of course, listening is
required in teaching students to speak English.
Chapter 3, “This Is Your Brain on Listening,” looks at how lis-
tening is a complex neurological construct that involves multi-
ple areas of the brain. Listening requires more from your brain
than many other skills. You will learn from the latest neuroscien-
tists, cognitive scientists, and communications and psychology
experts. Hearing isn’t all that is involved in listening, but it is a
critical part. One neuroscientist explains that “sounds are among
the most common and powerful stimuli for emotions.”1 Listen-
ing triggers a variety of parts of the brain to create a “movie in
your mind.”
You can dig into Chapter 4, “How to Teach Listening,” to learn
actionable techniques for teaching your students. I will share
some proven strategies to improve listening. Whether you are
a third-grade teacher using listening strategies to improve read-
ing, or an 11th-grade teacher aiming to improve your students’
listening skills for the workforce, this chapter gives you practical
ways to start incorporating more listening into your teaching. It
shows you how including listening in your instruction can teach
academic vocabulary and curriculum content and help students
practice reading.
You might not be a reading teacher, so you might not have
considered how listening can help your students read. But Chap-
ter 5 may change your thinking. In “The Intersection Between
Listening and Reading,” you learn why I believe listening is
the missing piece of the literacy puzzle. Despite dozens of new

Introduction 3
 approaches, techniques, and programs, the average national
fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores are stagnant. There is
an interdependency between listening comprehension and read-
ing comprehension. In general, the poor reader is also likely to
be a poor listener. Listening is a foundational part of teaching
students how to read, yet by the middle grades it virtually disap-
pears from our classrooms. In this chapter, you learn how using
listening regularly in your classroom at any grade level can help
improve reading.
Listening is a critically important skill to learning a new lan-
guage. Chapter  6, “English Learners and Listening,” explores
how listening is critical to second language acquisition. Many of
you have English language learners (ELs) in your classrooms. As
the population of ELs continues to grow in our schools, every
teacher needs to know how to help these learners use their lis-
tening skills to acquire knowledge and language. Listening is an
important way to do that. I’ll share with you some ways to dif-
ferentiate instruction for ELs.
In Chapter 7, “Assessing Listening,” which was co-written with
Alistair Van Moere, the Chief Product Officer at MetaMetrics,
we look at how even though the majority of our time is spent
listening there’s been very little research on how to track and
improve listening as a skill. Up until recently, listening skills have
been self-reported. Despite the correlation between listening and
reading, there hasn’t been a reliable way to break down and assess
listening. This chapter reveals the new ways that listening is being
measured in the classroom with the new Lexile® Framework for
Listening.
Once you’ve learned how to improve your students’ listening
skills, you can learn how to help them create their own audio sto-
ries. Chapter 8, “Creating Podcasts,” gives you tools to put your
students in the driver’s seat of the hottest trend in education,
podcasting. It also shares expert tips on making podcasts with
your students, which can put their listening skills to work as they
create their own audio stories for a wide audience.

4 Listen Wise
 This book focuses on the types of listening skills needed in
our classrooms. It provides concrete examples and tools for
K–12 teachers. While mindful, active, interpersonal listening is
an important skill to build, my experience and the focus of this
book is on academic listening—in other words, listening to learn.
It will give you the confidence and tools you need to use audio
resources to support reading, content, and language learning.
There has never been a better time for you to focus on improv-
ing your students’ listening skills. Many are concerned that tech-
nology has fractured our attention and shortened our attention
spans. Students need help building their listening stamina. You
might think, as do many of the teachers I’ve met, that listening
is a lost art. No one knows how to listen anymore, they say. But I
argue that listening is the most fundamental and critical skill to
learning, and it’s in your power to help your students become the
best listeners they can be.

Reference
1. Horowitz, S.S. (2013). In the beginning was the boom. In The
universal sense: How hearing shapes the mind (pp. 126–128).
New York, NY: Bloomsbury.

Introduction 5