7 General Listening Centre Ideas for Core French
Have you been wanting to try Centres in your French class, but stuck on what you could do to include the Listening strand within your routines? Let me share with you a number of activities that I've thought of or encountered over the years! Here are seven ideas for a Core French listening centre.
1. Dictée as an audio file
Record a short Dictée text and allow students to listen to (ideally individually) to write down what they hear. This can work with any topic under study. I've recorded a three-sentence example for you that could work when enjoying any of the Super Hakim chapter books in your French class. To assess it, I would consider it worth 8 marks, based on sections shown in the Teacher script also provided.
2. Listening comprehension & sequencing
Find a short script from old, outdated programs - or again, just make your own. Ask students to put the events from the aural text in order. For differentiation or more focus on listening comprehension rather than on writing or reading, use images rather than phrases or sentences.
3. Case study evaluations
Have students listen to a brief "case study." Then students react by discussing whether they believe someone in the story did the right thing or not, and why. Sentence prompts can be provided to further support within such a centre, if necessary.
4. Personal reactions
Students respond to an audio text to convey their personal opinion & support it (through images or a written/verbal response) This audio text might be a short movie clip, a radio ad captured by the teacher online, a song, a legend, or something else.
5. Chanson de dimanche resources
Teachers may use some of the activities (cloze, arrange in order, or grammar-related) that I've put together on one of my Chanson de dimanche posts in the past, or create similar activities themselves for classroom use. Click here to check them out now.
6. Students read aloud following an auditory model
Students practice and eventually record themselves "reading aloud" by repeating after a model. This can also be adapted so that students are using Google Voice Typing. Does what they are saying come across as accurate enough in pronunciation and fluency that the AI can correctly transcribe it?
7. Directed drawings
Students draw what they hear described on audio file. Of course, you could use a video for this as well, for an easier version to boost confidence amongst your second language learners. Check out my list of free French Directed Drawing sources here.
Do you have other "tried and true" listening centre activites that you use routinely that would apply to a variety of topics? Share them with my blog readers by commenting below!
