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Use Audiobooks for Comprehension Practice

Tags

ELA: ^Other ELA: Reading Study Skills & Tools All Ages Strategy

Skills

Verbal Reasoning Visual Discrimination Processing Speed

Use Audiobooks for Comprehension Practice

If your student is below grade level on reading fluency but needs age-appropriate reading comprehension practice

Teach It!

  1. Objective: Audio books offer the opportunity to increase the amount of time students spend on reading comprehension, without the pressure of decoding.
  2. Teacher Takeaways: While audio books and podcasts should not be a replacement for reading, they can be an important supplement, enabling students to improve their comprehension and appreciate stories that might otherwise be above their reading level. Adults should oversee the proper mix of audio books and independent reading for all students. Students with weaker attention, processing speed, visual skills, and other learning disabilities often benefit most from deliberate use of audio books.
  3. When to Use Them: Audiobooks can be an option in the classroom, along with other reading options, during free reading time. Students can listen to audio books while on the way to school, running errands with a parent, or cleaning up. Parents can listen with students and enjoy and discuss the story, effectively develop reasoning and abstraction skills.

Why It Works (the Science Of Learning)!

As children listen enraptured in a book or a movie’s story, they benefit from the opportunity to listen, comprehend, and analyze without the challenge of decoding. While audio books and movies can be a wonderful supplement for many students, they should not become a reading substitute.

Best-suited for students with weaker: Attention, Inhibition, Self-Regulation, Long-term Memory, Short-Term Memory, Processing Speed, Visual Processing, Working Memory (Source: Digital Promise Learner Variability Project)