Ever find yourself sitting in a therapy session trying to think up short stories for a student? I do! There’s always that one.

That one student who needs simple stories. And another who needs a visual. And others who need slightly longer passages. More than once, I’ve been in the middle of a session trying to come up with short, simple stories off the top of my head. You’d think that it would be easy. It should be easy to whip out sentence story after sentence story. But about ten in, I’m embarrassingly out of ideas. It’s hard to think on the spot.

Unfortunately, most of the short stories materials I’ve found don’t focus on single sentences, or don’t have the visual.

And I always have that student who thinks he’s listening and getting the picture, but the details trip him up.

Armed by these challenges, I created Community Listening for Details. It works for many students on my caseload with it’s various levels and activities to target receptive language.

It starts with single sentence and the student selects the picture that corresponds to the sentence. Then we move away from the visual for a harder listening activity. And finally we reach paragraphs that are more complex and have more questions.

I can also have the students read the stories and turn it into story comprehension, which I love. I also included definitions so my more advanced students can match the buildings and people to their descriptions. Building vocabulary has been a goal for many of my students.

And then there are the details. I know that you found one of the people who work in a restaurant, but did you find the one who carries food and drinks and has a blue apron?

I went with a community theme for this download because, well, occupations and places are one of the big areas my students need vocabulary.

See more about this download in my TeachersPayTeachers store.