Listening Activities

My biggest pet peeve when doing a listening activity with my class is students shouting "Wait? What number are we on?!?!" right in the middle of the activity.  Has this ever happened to you? Perhaps you've faced different challenges keeping your students engaged and on-task during a listening assessment.  With lots of thought and reflection, I designed video-based audio files now included with my Grammar Mini Units. I think you'll agree that their unique design helps to address various challenges in the classroom.

When I originally designed my Grammar Mini Units, I included a script so that teachers could narrate the listening activities for their class.  Over the years, I've received several requests to include audio files for these activities.  I struggled with the best way to accomplish this.  Without getting into too many technical details, I experimented with different ways to distribute these to teachers and to share them with students.  I did plenty of research and read about different pitfalls and difficulties teachers were encountering when trying to use audio files included in products they purchased TpT.  Below is my (foolproof) solution!

If you purchased one of my French Grammar Mini Units in the past, you may have noticed that I'm working on upgrading them with a little something extra: a video-based audio file. That's right!  Not just an audio file, but a video presentation that will walk your students through the activity. Let’s talk about why I chose this format and how it can make your teaching life easier.

Videos are very teacher friendly and compatible with different device types. With my video-based audio file, you can: 

• Drop it straight into your PowerPoint or Google Slides

• Embed it on Schoology, Google Classroom, or any LMS

• Play it full-screen on your Smart Board

• No extra apps. No random files floating around. Just hit play.

I didn’t just turn the audio into video and call it a day. These videos are designed with real classrooms in mind—and yes, that includes the “What number are we on?!” moments I described above.

Each listening video includes:

• ✅ A calm, visually appealing background – because let’s face it, a black screen is boring.

• ✅ Item numbers displayed onscreen – so students can visually track which prompt they're on.

• ✅ Each spoken item is repeated twice – because most language students need to hear it more than once

• ✅ A timer bar at the bottom – so students can see when the next item is coming. It’s like magic for focus and classroom management.

In short, I’ve built in all the little things I do when I’m guiding listening activities in my own classroom—and packaged them into a no-prep, just-press-play format.

Every Grammar Mini Unit includes one of these videos right inside the zip folder you download. You can:

• Upload the video directly to your Google Drive, One Drive, or Schoology course folder

• Assign it through Google Classroom, Schoology, or another LMS

• Share the link from your Drive with students for asynchronous practice

• Insert the video into your lesson slides

• Share the video to your Smart Board for a whole class activity

These video-based audio files are just what I needed in my French classroom.  I hope they save you time, reduce stress, and give you one less thing to worry about during your French block. 

If you'd like to check out my growing library of French Grammar Mini Units, you can visit my TpT Store:

La Petite Prof French Resources

Let me know by email if you’ve tried these in your classroom—I’d love to hear how they’re working for you! lapetiteprofresources@gmail.com 

À la prochaine!