Listenwise Content Philosophy

The mission of Listenwise is to inspire individuals to fulfill their potential through the power of listening. 

• We believe in the importance of listening for student success.
• We believe in the power of a great story.
• We believe in literacy for all.

Listenwise lessons are designed to help students develop listening comprehension and other core literacy skills, build academic vocabulary and background knowledge and connect the curriculum to the world beyond school. Our lessons are aligned with curriculum standards in ELA, social studies, and science.  

We are guided by a belief that teachers and students deserve fact-based stories that prompt thoughtful reflection and constructive conversations, resulting in deep learning about important topics and issues.

We create instructional materials with the following goals in mind:

• Developing literacy skills, academic vocabulary, and background knowledge
• Promoting critical and creative thinking
• Fostering social and emotional learning
• Encouraging consideration of diverse perspectives on a range of topics and issues
• Facilitating civil dialogue about important matters of broad interest

We aim to curate audio stories that engage, inform, and inspire students.  Our intention is to offer a collection that reflects and recognizes the diversity of our world.  We strive to be fair and balanced in our selection of third-party content for inclusion in our audio library. We try to include stories with a variety of language complexity levels that cover a range of topics in our collection.

Our audio content selection is guided by the following criteria:  

• Topics aligned with national and state curriculum standards  
• Stories of broad relevance to students’ lives
• Accurate, fact-based information
• Engaging, well-produced, well-told stories
• Balanced views that reflect diverse perspectives
• Developmental appropriateness