Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
The Read Charlotte Listening Comprehension Resource Center is designed to help educators and practitioners learn about listening about, teach, and assess listening comprehension.
The materials directory is a curated set of materials that can be used to target listening comprehension in the classroom. This comprehensive set of materials includes quick activities, practices, teaching strategies, student platforms, supplemental curricula, interventions, and assessments. Note: some of these resources require modifications to target listening comprehension.
The knowledge base is intended to help educators and practitioners understand the science behind listening comprehension, its importance, its relationship to reading comprehension, and how to target listening comprehension in settings such as the classroom and home.
Read Charlotte is a community literacy initiative that unites educators, community partners, and families to improve children’s reading from birth to third grade.
We don’t run programs. We are a capacity-building intermediary that supports local partners to apply evidence-based knowledge about effective reading instruction and interventions, high-quality execution, continuous improvement, and data analysis to improve reading outcomes.
Read Charlotte is a public-private partnership administered by the Foundation For The Carolinas.
The Listening Comprehension Resource Center is a collection of quality resources for PreK- 12th grade practitioners. If you have a resource, or resources, that you think are a good fit, email charlotte@readcharlotte.org.
The LCRC is informed by recent advancements in reading science, which have significantly improved our understanding of how children learn to read. One key area of research that has gained prominence is the role of listening comprehension in reading development. Early studies, like the 2000 National Reading Panel report, identified a lack of research on the relationship between listening comprehension and reading comprehension in K-2 students. Today, however, we have much more insight into how listening comprehension contributes to reading success.
Several studies have shown that strong listening comprehension skills are essential for
developing proficient reading comprehension, especially as children progress through school. For example, while word reading is the strongest predictor of reading comprehension in early grades, listening comprehension becomes the leading factor by second grade. Research also highlights that deficits in early language skills are a major predictor of later reading difficulties. By third grade, listening comprehension explains 60% of the variation in reading comprehension.
The LCRC draws from these findings, emphasizing the simultaneous development of both decoding and listening comprehension skills, as both are necessary for children to achieve strong reading comprehension. The research underscores the importance of targeting listening comprehension to support diverse learners, including multilingual students.
The Read Charlotte team curated and developed content featured in the Read Charlotte Listening Comprehension Resource Center. However, Read Charlotte is not directly affiliated with the research behind listening comprehension.
Yes, the LCRC was created with local educators and practitioners in mind. The materials are indexed to the North Carolina Foundations Skills Progressions and North Carolina English Language Arts Anchor Standards. However, any educator or practitioner can utilize the tools and learning resources as they see fit within their context.
The knowledge base and materials directory are applicable to PK-12 grade.
“Listening comprehension” is the ability to comprehend spoken language at the discourse level – including conversations, stories (i.e., narratives), and informational oral texts – that involves the processes of extracting, constructing, and integrating meaning (Kim, 2020). The major difference between listening comprehension and reading comprehension is the presence of oral or written text (Kim, 2023). What we think of as “comprehension skills” are fundamentally language skills.
Popular models of reading such as the Simple View of Reading, Scarborough’s Rope, and the Active View of Reading recognize the importance of language skills to reading comprehension. Sometimes these skills are referred to as listening comprehension and other times as language comprehension. Whether you prefer “listening” or “language” the key is comprehension. Comprehension – extracting, constructing, and integrating meaning – is a continuum that first develops in oral language contexts and continues to develop in written language contexts (Kim, 2023). We use the term “listening comprehension” to clearly focus on student comprehension of oral text using their ears. Examples of oral text include read-alouds, podcasts, and audiobooks. Activities, such as peer-to-peer conversations, that students can engage with through listening and speaking are also examples of oral text. This distinction is important for assessment and instruction.
While many components contribute to reading proficiency, word reading and listening comprehension are the two primary processes that contribute to successful reading comprehension. Word reading skills are constrained and can generally be learned by typically developing students with three years of effective instruction. Its effect on reading comprehension is completely mediated by text reading fluency as early as second grade. By contrast, listening comprehension is a broad, unconstrained skill that takes much more time to develop. The higher-order skills subsume the impact of vocabulary and grammar. There is an interaction with knowledge. As early as second grade it is the greatest predictor of reading comprehension.
There are many ways to use the Read Charlotte Listening Comprehension Resource Center. If you are interested in learning more about listening comprehension, visit the knowledge base (link). If you are interested in viewing instructional resources/assessments, we recommend using the Materials Directory (link).
There are several pathways to locate resources on the LCRC site. To quickly locate a resource select, ‘Explore Resources’. There, you can search by Grade Level, Resource Type, Component Skill, Standard, Prep time, and Delivery Time to find the resources you need. You can also save resources that fit what you are looking for by creating a free account.
No, you do not have to make an account to view or use the resources available through the Read Charlotte Listening Comprehension Center. However, creating a free account allows you to save your favorite resources, allowing you to easily access them in the future.
If you have registered for an account, you can visit the My Bookmarks page while logged in at any time to access your saved resources.
Reach out to charlotte@readcharlotte.org for assistance if you experience any technical problems with the LCRC.
Advances in reading science since 2000 offer important contributions to our understanding of how children learn to read and how adults teach children to read. We now know that listening comprehension plays a crucial role in students’ listening comprehension.
The Knowledge Base offers a curated set of recent evidence-based research findings intended to help practitioners better understand listening comprehension and its connection to other literacy skills (such as word reading, reading fluency, background knowledge, and reading comprehension).
Search the directory for instructional resources such as activities, strategies, practices, student platforms, supplemental curricula, and interventions as well as assessments to target listening comprehension in the classroom.
Sign up and we’ll update you as we add new resources to support your classroom listening comprehension instruction.
Read Charlotte is a community initiative that unites educators, community partners, and families to improve children’s reading from birth to third grade. We don’t run programs. We are a capacity-building intermediary that supports local partners to apply evidence-based knowledge about effective reading instruction and interventions, high-quality execution, continuous improvement, and data analysis to improve reading outcomes.
Read Charlotte is a civic initiative of Foundation For The Carolinas.
Reference in this website to any specific commercial products, processes, or services, or the use of any trade, firm, or corporation name is for the information and convenience of the public and does not constitute endorsement or recommendation by Read Charlotte or the Foundation For The Carolinas. Our office is not responsible for and does not in any way guarantee the accuracy of information in other sites accessible through links herein. Read Charlotte and/or the Foundation For The Carolinas may supplement this list with other services and products that meet the specified criteria. For more information contact: charlotte@readcharlotte.org.