Did You Hear About Worksheets

Related ELA Standard: Speaking & Listening

Core Standard
Answer Keys Here

This is a series of great listening activities that are teacher or peer lead. I would encourage teachers to discuss the qualities of good active listeners before engaging in this series of exercises. Possessing the cognitive ability and self-awareness to become an active listener is something that escapes most students due to the lack of maturity or realization. When you bring this to their attention and review the communication process with them, you will often find that it is a skill that they can quickly build upon. One of the most essential steps in effectively communicating with one another is listening. Many people often have an agenda when in comes to communicating with others. Their focus is on getting their point across and they attempt to lead the transfer of information. Once they understand that in order to be effective leader you need to accept feedback and make adjustments based on it. Once students understand that in order to craft a powerful message that with resonate with your audience you actively listen, they language skills grow quickly. This is a crucial skill for students to learn to help them build positive social relationships throughout the course of their lives.

Did You Hear About Worksheets:

Incident at the Slide - Pass out questions to the students. Question sheets should remain face-down on their desks while you read the text aloud to students. When you are finished, ask students to turn their questions sheets over and answer the questions.
Listening Passage
Question Sheet

A Day with Grandma - Sometimes Jacob found it hard to be around his Grandma. Grandma could not hear very well, so she yelled when she talked. She liked everything in her house to be a certain way, and she lost her temper easily when anything got out of place.
Listening Passage
Question Sheet

Snow Days - Laura lived in Florida. Since it is always warm in Florida, Laura had never seen any snow. As the winter holidays drew near, Laura started her yearly complaint: "I wish we lived somewhere where it snowed!"
Listening Passage
Question Sheet

A Special Pet - When Albert got home from school and stepped into his front yard, he stopped and looked down. There, in the grass next to the sidewalk, was an egg. It wasn't an ordinary egg. It was a blue egg with brown speckles, and it was almost as big as a football.
Listening Passage
Question Sheet

Loud-mouthed Monkeys - The howler monkey is the loudest animal in in Central and South America and in parts of Mexico. Male howler monkeys are so loud because they have big throats and special vocal chambers that increase the volume of the sounds that they make.
Listening Passage
Question Sheet

The Naughty Bunny - This silly bunny really gets after causing trouble.
Listening Passage
Question Sheet
Answers

Lucky - In Rachel's neighborhood, there was a stray cat. He was black, with shaggy hair. Sometimes he slept under Rachel's family's porch. Sometimes he slept in the treehouse in one of Rachel's neighbor's back yards. Sometimes he disappeared for day at a time and nobody knew where he was. Everyone in the neighborhood was in the habit of putting food out for him.
Listening Passage
Question Sheet
Answers

The Ostrich - Ostriches are the biggest bird in the word. As a bird, an ostrich has wings, of course, but it can't fly. Instead of flying, and ostrich runs really fast—up to forty miles per hour. When running at full pace, the stride of an ostrich can reach sixteen feet. Ostriches found in the wild in Africa.
Listening Passage
Question Sheet
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Extinction - If an animal or organism is extinct, it means that there are no more of them left alive. If an animal or organism is classified as "endangered," it means that there is a risk that they will become extinct. If an animal is known as "extinct in the wild," it means that the only known surviving animals of that kind currently live in captivity, for example, in a zoo. There are many reasons why animals become extinct. Here are some of them.
Listening Passage
Question Sheet
Answers

The Modern Zoo - Zoos can be great places to learn about animals. A visit to the zoo is a good chance to see wild animals up close and to learn about where they live and what they eat in the wild. The word zoo is short for zoological garden. The word zoological means relating to animals. So a zoo is like a garden full of animals!
Listening Passage
Question Sheet
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Tiny House - One day when she was outside playing in the woods at the edge of her back yard, Penny saw a fairy. She wasn't sure at first that is was a fairy; it could have been a dragonfly or a butterfly. But then it landed on her shoulder and cried, "Can you please help me?" in the general direction of Penny's ear.
Listening Passage
Question Sheet
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The Book of Magic Words - Tony got a book of magic words for his birthday. It was a big book, old and dusty. "I found it in a used book store," his mother told him. "I thought you might be able to have some fun with it."
Listening Passage
Question Sheet
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The Clownfish - The Clownfish is a bright orange fish that has three vertical white stripes on its sides. If you have seen the movie Finding Nemo, then you have seen a Clownfish.
Listening Passage
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So You Want a Pet Snake - Many people keep reptiles as pets. There are a lot of advantages to having a pet reptile. Most of them are small, so you don't need a house or a back yard to have a pet reptile. You also don't need to take them for walks or to the park.
Listening Passage
Question Sheet
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The Story of Arachne - Arachne was a girl in ancient Greece who was famous for her weaving and embroidery. All of the women in Greece admired her work. They all said that Minerva, the goddess of weaving, must have taught Arachne her craft.
Listening Passage
Question Sheet
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Habits of Good Listeners

There are many different reasons that we yearn to be proactive listeners. Sometimes it is just to gain a bit of insight into something that is new to us. We also listen to all types of media for entertainment purposes. The end goal is often to simply learn so that we can make rock solid decisions. When someone provides you feedback, you should value that. There are people from all different walks of life that see things another way from us and this is fabulous. Corporate America rises and falls based on listening to their customers. Companies that do not listen often crash and burn. The same is true, on a much smaller scale, of personal relationships. If someone is telling you something is not appropriate and you continue on, that person will begin to value you less. There are a variety of tools we can use to help us grasp feedback and make appropriate adjustments.


The first thing that you can do, which is also the easiest, is minimize any distractions that may contort your ability to listen. This begins often with putting away your phone. The minute you have a device in front of you, your body language is implying that you have little interest in hearing what others have to say. That goes the same for other distractions like watching a show or blasting your music.


The most salinity habit that good listeners have is being able to focus. This means that you are active in the discussion. You need to stress to the person you are communicating that you are involved and taking in their message. You should not be looking for a point to interject in the conversation until they have got their full message out. Do not talk when they are talking. This instills a sense of empathetic body language and the other party is more apt to share with you. As this message is being transferred do not pass judgement on what they are saying with your posture or body language. Just let them speak. You may have to listen until it hurts, but when it is your turn to speak your message will definitely be well received.


Once they are done speaking take a few seconds to compose quality questions, if anything is unclear. Maintain good eye contact with anyone you are speaking to when you are listening or speaking. Throughout this entire process you need to be patient. Patience is often the breakdown of most forms of communication.