Activities to develop auditory discrimination skills

Pupils who have difficulties in this area may have:

• problems identifying speech sounds
• poor listening skills, especially when there is background noise
• difficulty discriminating between similar words
• difficulty with rhyming activities
• poor articulation of sounds and words
• kinaesthetic strengths (and learn better through using concrete materials and practical experiences)
• visual strengths (and enjoy learning through using visual materials such as charts, maps, videos, demonstrations
• good motor skills (and have strengths in design and technology, art, PE and games.

Order the book: A-Z of Special Needs for Every Teacher for lots more activities and help

Activities to develop auditory discrimination skills:

1. Listening 1 – listen to sounds on CD, then ask the pupils to:
   • point to a picture of the object making the sound and name it
   • point to a real object that makes the sound and then try it out.
2. Listening 2 – listen to the sound of real objects with eyes closed. Children guess and name.
3. Sound bingo – listening to sounds on tape and covering the correct picture.
4. Sound walk – pupils drawing pictures or writing down the names of the sounds they hear on the walk.
5. Grouping sounds – animals, musical instruments, vehicles, etc.
6. Odd one out – ask the pupils to identify the sound that is not part of a group of sounds, eg. dogs barking, pig grunting, cow mooing, musical instrument playing.
7. Musical discrimination – discriminating between loud/quiet, high/low, fast/slow notes. This should be part of a music lesson – ask a TA to observe.
8. Clapping or tapping rhythms – you can use pupils' names and polysyllable words. This activity can be linked with picture-noun recognition. Pupils can work in pairs, using picture-noun cards – take turns to clap syllable beats and choose the picture-noun card to match the number of beats.
9. Same/different 1 – ask the pupils to listen to sets of two everyday sounds and identify those that are the same and those that are different.
10. Same/different 2 – ask the pupils to listen to sets of two words and identify those that are the same and those that are different, eg. bat/bat, bat/bet.
11. Same/different 3 – ask the pupils to listen to sets of two words and identify those that rhyme and those that don't, eg. cat/mat, bed/bud.
12. Hands up 1 – ask the pupils to put up their hands when they hear a particular sound (sounds given one at a time).
13. Hands up 2 – ask the pupils to put up their hands when they hear a particular sound against a background of other sounds (figure/ground auditory discrimination).
14. Who is it? – choose a pupil to be blindfolded, then ask another pupil to say a short sentence. Ask the blindfolded pupil to identify the other pupil by name,
15. Sound bingo – discriminating between initial sounds.
16. Rhyme time – ask the pupils to listen to a word. If it rhymes with the word that they have in their hand then they can keep it. The winner is the first person to collect five rhyming words.

From A-Z of Special Needs for Every Teacher by Jacquie Buttriss and Ann Callander