Don’t you just love a quiet classroom from time to time? No, that is not a trick question. 😉
If you’ve been following our blog for awhile, you know we’re kind of what they call “Lovers of the Listening”…You can read about our listening love affair {here}.
We’ve sort of made it our teaching mission to actively teach kids to listen whenever little humanly possible in our classroom. So, when they were having a hard time fully embracing the concept of listening last week and math time rolled around, an idea literally clicked into our heads!
Introducing Listen Addition!
The Rules
1. Stay super silent
2. Listen to the clickers and count along
3. Record
We’ve had a bowl of these little frog clickers floating around our classroom forever. We take them out to go along with our pond habitat learning around this time of year. But, you can use any noise maker ~ a bell, a clap, a tap, a snap…Whatever works!
The rules are simple…
Listen to each clicker and add. The first day, we just had them use their whiteboards, which was quick and easy! But, of course we couldn’t leave it alone, so hopped home that evening and created a little worksheet for our silent sums. Also, a few of the kids were having a hard time keeping up with the clicks mentally, so we added the tally feature to keep them focused and tallying along as they listened. 
We asked them to put their first set of tally marks on the left side of the box and the second set on the right. This helped them make a smooth transition to their addition equations. 
We kept the numbers to 10 and under, but you can go as high as your class capabilities allow.
Look how this one made her own number line around the border of her worksheet. Ummm…genius!
Once our kids were listen addition experts, we called them up to be the Kings and Queens of the Clickers. Probably no secret that you could hear a pin drop for the opportunity to be the king or queen! 
Want to give Listen Addition a try?
Click the butterfly to download a copy of your own.
