Listen Up! From Jan Kennedy, a special education teacher at Woodruff Elementary in Woodruff, South Carolina: "How do you get your students to really listen to a teacher read-aloud selection? I prepare a sentence strip word card featuring a significant word in the story for each student in the class. Students choose a card at random, prior to the read-aloud. They are instructed to listen carefully for their word and, upon hearing it, raise their card in the air. This activity can be extended as you ask the word card holder to echo the sentence in which the word was heard, ask the meaning of the word, ask the spelling of the word, where they've heard this word before, etc. This activity offers the possibility for everyone to respond successfully at his/her own level of functioning. In addition, I tape every teacher read-aloud. My students can enjoy the reading selection again in the listening center and have the word cards available for reuse in the same manner."