Name: Barrier Game Listening Activities - Oral Language Phase 1 Year 1-3
Brand: Top Teaching Tasks
Price: 6.50 NZD
Availability: OnlineOnly
Rating: 5 (36 reviews)

Description

Boost your students’ speaking and listening skills with this engaging pack of 5 Barrier Game Activities!

This resource is a fun, hands-on tool designed to directly target the Oral Language strand of the New Zealand Curriculum for Phase 1 (Years 0-3). It provides a purposeful and playful way for students to express ideas and understand others.

How It Works: Students work in pairs, separated by a barrier (like a book or folder).

One student (the “Speaker”) receives an instruction script.
The other student (the “Listener”) receives the matching scene.
The Speaker gives clear instructions from the script, while the Listener follows them by drawing directly onto their scene.

Students can then swap roles, giving every student a chance to practice being both the speaker and the listener.

What’s Included:

5 Unique Scene Cards: (Kiwifruit Orchard, Bush Hike, Market Day, Beach, and Campsite)
10 Instruction Scripts: Two different scripts for each scene, allowing students to swap roles for repeated practice.
Answer Sheets: A completed answer sheet for each scene.
Extension Activity: A blank template for students to create their own barrier game and instructions.

Purpose and Benefits:

This activity is more than just a game; it’s a targeted, structured literacy activity that builds essential communication skills:

Targets Active Listening: The “listener” role is a perfect practical application of “Active listening,” which the curriculum defines as “giving full attention to a speaker… to understand their message”.
Builds Expressive Language: The “speaker” practices giving clear, precise directions. This develops their ability to present information using a “written scaffold” (the script).
Develops Vocabulary in Context: The game is rich with specific nouns, verbs, and positional language (e.g., “on the left,” “above,” “closest”). This builds vocabulary knowledge, a core component of structured literacy.
Encourages Classroom Talk: The entire activity is built on the key practice of participating in conversations and taking turns. It also provides a natural context for students to ask clarification questions (e.g., ‘Can you explain…?’), another key skill for this phase.

This resource is perfect for your literacy stations, morning warm-ups, or as a targeted oral language intervention.