Listen with Understanding–Emergent CAFE Parent Pipeline

When listening to a story, many times children hear the words being read but do not understand them.They are too busy looking at the pictures or thinking other thoughts, and forget to take the time to think about what is being read. If they continue to do this, they will lose the desire to read because they will be unaware that text holds meaning. As children advance as readers, they can develop the habit of reading through text without monitoring their understanding of the story being told.

Listen with understanding is a comprehension strategy that teaches children to stop frequently to think about if they understand what is being read. Recognizing that a story is written to tell us or teach us something, helps a beginning reader to think about the text as they listen to a story. When being read to, emergent readers should be able to tell who the story is about and what is happening.