How We Hear

Active learning works especially well for ‘How We Hear’ because sound is an abstract concept that students experience physically. Moving, listening, and constructing models helps learners connect the science of sound waves to their own bodies and communities in a lasting way.

• Year 2
• Science
• 3 activities
• 30 min–45 min

Learning Objectives

1. Identify the main parts of the human ear involved in hearing.
2. Explain how sound vibrations travel through the ear to the brain.
3. Compare the vibration of a drum surface to the vibration of the eardrum.
4. Analyze how hearing contributes to understanding the environment and communicating with others.

Role Play

⏱ 30 min·Small Groups

Role Play: Animal Signals

Assign students an animal (e.g., a kookaburra or a whale). They must use a specific sound to 'call' their group together or 'warn' them of a predator, discussing why sound is better than sight in a thick forest or deep ocean.

Prepare & details

Explain how our ears help us hear sounds.

Facilitation Tip: During Role Play: Animal Signals, circulate and coach students to exaggerate their gestures and sounds so the class can clearly see the intended emotion or message.

Setup: Open space or rearranged desks for scenario staging

Materials: Character cards with backstory and goals, Scenario briefing sheet

• Apply
• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Social Awareness
• Self-Awareness

Gallery Walk

⏱ 40 min·Individual

Gallery Walk: Community Sounds

Students draw or find pictures of things that use sound to tell us something (a school bell, a smoke alarm, a 'walk' signal at a crossing). They display these and peers must guess what 'message' each sound is sending.

Prepare & details

Compare how a drum vibrates to how our eardrum vibrates.

Facilitation Tip: Set clear sound levels before the Gallery Walk: Community Sounds to prevent discomfort and allow students to focus on identifying and categorizing sounds.

Setup: Wall space or tables arranged around room perimeter

Materials: Large paper/poster boards, Markers, Sticky notes for feedback

• Understand
• Apply
• Analyze
• Create
• Relationship Skills
• Social Awareness

Inquiry Circle

⏱ 45 min·Pairs

Inquiry Circle: The String Telephone

Groups build classic tin-can-and-string telephones. They experiment with keeping the string tight versus loose and discuss how the sound 'travels' as a vibration along the string to communicate over a distance.

Prepare & details

Analyze the importance of our ears for understanding the world.

Facilitation Tip: For the String Telephone, pre-cut strings and paper cups so every pair can build quickly and test their setup without frustration.

Setup: Groups at tables with access to source materials

Materials: Source material collection, Inquiry cycle worksheet, Question generation protocol, Findings presentation template

• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Create
• Self-Management
• Self-Awareness

Teaching This Topic

Teachers approach this topic by starting with students’ lived experiences of sound—what they hear at home, in nature, or in their neighborhood. Avoid beginning with textbook diagrams, which can make the ear feel like a distant machine. Instead, let students discover the parts of the ear through playful sound-making and model-building. Research shows that kinaesthetic and auditory experiences anchor later reading and diagrams, so move from concrete to abstract in small, connected steps.

What to Expect

By the end of these activities, students should be able to explain that sound carries meaning, describe how sound travels to the ear, and recognize communication in both human and animal signals. They should use vocabulary such as vibration, eardrum, and pitch confidently in discussions.

Watch Out for These Misconceptions

Common Misconception

During Role Play: Animal Signals, watch for students who believe humans only communicate with words.

What to Teach Instead

After the game, ask students to reflect: How did you get your emotion across without words? Make a t-chart on the board labeled ‘What we said’ and ‘How we showed it’ to highlight pitch, volume, and gesture.

Common Misconception

During Gallery Walk: Community Sounds, watch for students who think animals make sounds for no purpose.

What to Teach Instead

At each sound station, pause and ask students to guess the animal’s reason for making that sound. Record their ideas on sticky notes and revisit them after viewing real clips to correct misconceptions about animal communication.

Assessment Ideas

Quick Check

After the Collaborative Investigation: The String Telephone, show students a diagram of the ear. Ask them to point to and name the eardrum and ear canal. Then ask: ‘What happens to the eardrum when sound waves enter the ear?’ Listen for responses that mention vibration and energy transfer.

Exit Ticket

During Gallery Walk: Community Sounds, hand out small papers. Ask students to draw a simple picture showing how sound travels to the ear. They should label at least two parts of the ear and write one sentence explaining what happens when sound enters the ear.

Discussion Prompt

After Role Play: Animal Signals, ask students to imagine they are in a noisy playground. How do their ears help them hear a friend’s voice? What might happen if their eardrum could not vibrate? Use their responses to assess understanding of vibration and the role of the eardrum.

Extensions & Scaffolding

• Challenge: Ask students to research and present one animal sound that humans have mimicked to communicate, such as a whistle for a dog.
• Scaffolding: Provide sentence stems like ‘When the string telephone vibrates, it…’ to help students describe what they observe during the Collaborative Investigation.
• Deeper exploration: Invite students to design a simple sound signal for a scenario, such as a lost hiker, and test it with peers to see if the message is clear.

Key Vocabulary

Eardrum	A thin membrane inside the ear that vibrates when sound waves hit it.
Vibration	A rapid back-and-forth movement that produces sound.
Sound waves	Invisible ripples of energy that travel through the air and cause objects to vibrate.
Ear canal	The tube that connects the outer ear to the eardrum.