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There's More Than One Way to Engage with Primary Sources!

4. Levels of Listening

Listening is the active process of receiving, interpreting, and responding to messages.

It is necessary to explicitly teach listening skills. Break students into groups. Give each group a different level to listen for. Listen to the recording 2-3 times, sharing out as a class discussion each time. Levels of Listening - Questions.

There are 5 levels of listening:

  1. Discriminative
  2. Precise
  3. Strategic
  4. Critical
  5. Appreciative

For this strategy, have students listen to a short speech, poem, etc.  

Listen to Tanya Winder read her poem 5 times, each time focusing on a level of listening. Tanya's poem is entitled:  like any good indian woman

Tanya WinderTanya Winder 

Part of Living Nations, Living Words Project by the Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/item/2020785246/






The levels of listening in further detail: See this slide deck for types of questions aligned with each level of listening.

Discriminative:

    • Identifying individual sounds or sources  
    • Phonological awareness  
    • Vocal expression  
    • Onomatopoeia  
    • Nonverbal clues

Precise:

    • Associating words and meanings
    • Deducing the meaning of words from context 
    • Understanding grammatical structures 
    • Recalling details 
    • Recalling sequences 
    • Recognizing multiple characters 
    • Following directions

Strategic:

    • Connecting ideas/information 
    • Distinguishing between inferences and factual information 
    • Accommodating new information 
    • Assimilating new information 
    • Summarizing 
    • Predicting 
    • Questioning 
    • Synthesizing

Critical:

    • Recognizes bias 
    • Recognizes speaker's inferences 
    • Distinguishes between fact and opinion 
    • Evaluates sources
    • Understands power dynamics, privilege, and marginalization

Appreciative:

    • Gains experience listening in a variety of forms 
    • Recognizes the pleasure that listening can bring 
    • Recognizes feeling or mood that is evoked 
    • Recognize the power of language 
    • Appreciates how words flow from a speaker
Reflect:
  1. How might this strategy encourage student engagement with primary sources other than texts and images?
  2. How could you bring more diverse types of primary sources into your classroom?