Listening Comprehension Activities for Speech Therapy

When a student has difficulty with listening comprehension, it can have such an impact on their school life. If you are looking for some listening comprehension activities to use in speech therapy, then I’ve got some ideas for you!

Listening Comprehension Activities for Speech Therapy

Following Quick 1 & 2-Step Directions for Actions

A great place to start is basic one-step directions for actions or body movements.

Examples of One-Step Directions for Actions:

Touch your nose.
Put your hands on your head.
Wiggle your fingers.
Jump two times.
Stand on one leg.

For students who are working on auditory processing, but can’t combine that with holding the direction in their short term memory for long, one-step directions are a place to start! Once the student has mastered that, you can move on to two-step directions.

Examples of Two-Step Directions for Actions:

Touch your head, then touch your knees.
Reach to the sky, then touch your toes.
First point to the door, then jump two times.
Before you touch your nose, stomp your foot.

You can also start introducing temporal concepts such as first/then or “before you x, do y.” If these concepts are new to your student, be sure to teach the concepts first by modeling the correct actions.

Following Directions Coloring Activities for Speech Therapy

The next level could be working on a paper task such as following directions with coloring. This requires the student to hold the information in their memory a bit longer and to maintain focus – especially with two-step directions. I like to use the visual picture below to help my students with using the visualizing technique. (Psst. . . you can get the free visual here along with a sample of the following directions coloring activity!)

Following Directions Craft Activities

If your students love doing crafts, get on Pinterest and find some simple crafts they can work on. I like to doing a “mystery craft,” which means I don’t show/tell the students what we are making (unless they need it). It just adds an extra layer of fun and the desire to really focus on the directions!

I also made a line of print-and-go crafts that can be use for following directions (and for articulation and language)!

Listening Comprehension Activities with Short Stories & WH Questions

To target listening comprehension even further – by working on increasing sustained attention and remembering details – you can read short stories or passages to your students and then ask simple follow-up questions. (Here is a set of short stories with WH Questions you can use.) You can teach your students to use the visualization technique for short stories as well!