Ages: 6-12
Grades: 1-7

Different communication situations have different goals, whether it's obtaining information, securing directions, or solving a problem. This series teaches students to know what they are listening for and match their listening strategy to the communication situation. Written in the proven format of the Spotlight series, these activities help students develop listening skills with:

• picture-supported lessons that shift to listening-only activities
• carefully controlled vocabulary
• a wide variety of curricular content as well as daily life experiences
• minimal demands for writing
• pretest/posttest

The books are listed below in order of difficulty. The 6-book set consists of:

• Details—Listen for details with tasks progressing from matching clues to pictures, to following verbal directions and answering questions about details in a passage.
• Main Idea—Learn to listen for the "big picture." Start by differentiating the main idea from details in pictures and progress to labeling groups of items. Finally, identify the main idea of articles, messages, fables, and more.
• Sequencing—Begin by listening for numerical/alphabetical order and word order. Progress to learning the vocabulary of sequencing (e.g., first and last, before and after) and following multi-step directions. Then, sequence multi-step picture stories and events heard in reading passages.
• Story Comprehension—Students listen to pictured-supported dialogs and stories and answer questions about them. They listen as more complex passages are read and answer questions about absurdities, missing events, and conflict and resolution.
• Reasoning and Problem Solving—Listen and practice these core skills: association, categorization, and exclusion; comparing/contrasting and true/false; determining cause and effect; predicting and preventing problems; and determining fact from opinion and supporting or rejecting opinions.
• Making Inferences—Learn to reason and make logical inferences by answering questions with and without picture supports. Includes lessons on making predictions, making inferences from the speaker's speaking style, and understanding nonverbal language..

6-Book Set • each book 40 pages • all on 1 CD-ROM • ©2006