The Four Listening Competencies to Support Phonics

At Morris & Simmons we passionately believe that the sooner children can develop really proficient listening skills the stronger foundations they will have from which to develop the phonic strategies that they need for Literacy. 

Hearing and listening are often seen as one skill but in fact they are distinctly different. 

Hearing is the physical act of receiving sound through the ears and sending it to the brain. It is a very passive act. 

Listening on the other hand is an active process of tuning into sound, recognising its importance, then interpreting the information in the brain and responding appropriately. 

It is these crucial listening skills that we need to equip our children with. 

They can be broken down into 4 listening competencies:

  • Auditory Discrimination 
  • Auditory Sequencing & Memory
  • Rhythm & Beat
  • Rhyme

Children need to develop skills in all these areas to help them become competent and confident readers, writers and spellers. 

Let’s outline these four competencies in more detail and consider some ideas to help you quickly get started.

AUDITORY DISCRIMINATION

The ability to identify and discriminate between sounds.

Children are now growing up in a very visual and noisy world and rarely have to listen without also watching! In this noisy and busy environment it is increasingly difficult for children to identify, isolate and spot differences between sounds. However, this is crucial in preparing them for reading and spelling.

Think about when you ask a child to spell a word without any visual prompts they have to rely heavily on their ability to listen and discriminate between different sounds.

Ideas to get you started… Secret Sounds

Explain that we are going to play you 3 different sounds and for each sound we want you to perform an action. Do it first insight of the children first and then repeat the task outside of their vision so that they really have to engage their listening skills which are not supported by their visual skills.

  • Tamborine – bounce up and down on your chair
  • Triangle – stand up
  • Shaker – hands on your head

AUDITORY MEMORY & SEQUENCING

These are complex skills that children need to practise together regularly. They involve children being able to retain and recall information in sequence that they have been given orally. 

In order to read and spell children must be able to remember sequences of sounds that form words, words and whole sentences. If when a child is reading they can often forget what they have decoded by the time they have reached the end of a sentence, which can result in difficulty reading for meaning and will just simply be decoding.

Ideas to get you started… Sound Sequence

Display a set of musical instruments e.g. Tamborine, triangle, drum or a set of objects that make sounds e.g. newspaper, a pen that clicks, a box of leaves. Ask the children to listen to the sounds that they make. Tell them that you are now going to play them in sequence. Ask  the children to listen carefully and tell you e.g. the last sound/first sound/middle sound. This can also be done with voice/body sounds.

RHYTHM & BEAT

In the past it was second nature for parents to sing rhymes, chants and songs to their babies, dangling them on their knee, bouncing them up and down and inventing actions and silly games to accompany them. But according to research, many children are no longer hearing these rhymes and songs as often (or if they do, just a very few) and therefore not benefiting in the same way as they once were. 

It is well known that children who are able to keep a steady beat and have a good sense of rhythm and timing will be better prepared to learn phonic strategies and apply them in their reading, writing and spelling.

Ideas to get you started… 

  • When singing or saying nursery rhymes and songs encourage the children to clap, stamp, tap to the beat
  • Clap a rhythm and ask the children to repeat

RHYME

Rhyme is about pattern and it is just as important to recognise pattern in sound as it is to recognise pattern in numbers. When children are familiar with rhyme it helps them makes connections between words that rhyme and that are spelt similarly. Children often find rhyming difficult so it is useful to recognise the stages that children go through in developing this skill:

Stage 1: Hearing rhyme – starts to join in and repeat

Stage 2: Recognising rhyme – when a child can find two things that rhyme out of a group

Stage 3: Producing rhyme – can give a rhyming word

Note: stage 2 must be mastered before children can produce rhyme

Ideas to get you started… 

  • Create a rhyming shelf and ask children to add items to the shelf if they rhyme
  • Go on a rhyming walk. Children can add items to the bag if they can think of a word that rhymes

If you are interested in finding out more about Listening Competencies and would like some staff training then get in touch to discuss the options.