#COMPREHENSIVE LISTENING SERIES#

Though my time teaching in a bilingual setting was brief, it taught me some of the active listening strategies that I continue to use today.Do you want unlimited ad-free access and templates? Find out more What is listening? I found this strategy to be very effective.įurther reading: Should You Let Students Listen to Music in the Classroom? Whether my students were learning from an educational video or a piece of technology, I'd have them listen or look for a purpose. If I was teaching a lesson, I'd make sure to pause frequently and ask students to write down a question about what they'd just heard from me. For example, before they had to read from their textbooks, I would tell them to look at the title and the bold headings, and write down any questions they had before reading. Since my students did so well with the listening task, I decided to try to consistently give them a purpose for whatever they were doing. I've found that when you give students a purpose, whether it's for reading or writing, they become more engaged and more apt to listen to you. The students seemed to get the hang of this strategy fairly quickly and did very well with it. Once the student was done reading, their partner would reiterate what was read in their own words. I will pause after each fact, and you'll take turns telling your partner what you heard in your own words.' Next, I had the students take over and read a paragraph from their textbooks to their partners. For example, I'd say, 'I'm going to discuss three facts about our solar system. Each day, I had students pair up and practice listening to me and then to their partners. Give Students a Listening TaskĪnother great way to encourage active listening is giving students a listening task. At the end of the week, I noticed that when I did speak, my students were more engaged. Every day, I increased the amount of time students talked within their groups and decreased the amount of time I talked to the class. I decided to try out this strategy by doing a few mini lessons. We need our students to listen when we speak so they can obtain information and comprehend it. Active listening is an important skill for students to have. But what if we allowed students more opportunities to speak? Then, when it's our turn to talk, they might be more apt to listen. Listen More and Talk LessĪs teachers, our first instinct is to take over the classroom and do the majority of the talking. The key is giving one direction at a time and waiting for everyone to follow suit, and making sure not to repeat yourself.

Now sit down, take out your math book, and turn to page 10.' Using these simple commands really captured their attention, and once I had their attention it was easier to keep it. Now touch your head with your right hand. Instead of just telling the students to turn to page 10 in their math books, I tried to give them a few other commands first to make sure they were really listening.

#COMPREHENSIVE LISTENING SERIES#

Since the students were only in third grade, I thought a good active listening strategy to start with was to give them a series of simple commands to really grab their attention. I also used the information I learned to help me plan lessons and activities throughout the weeks ahead.įurther reading: Reduce Stress and Improve Student Focus 2.

The more I got to know them, the more they listened when I was teaching. I took a few minutes every day to sit and talk to each student about their lives, hobbies, interests, and goals. But because English was their second language, it was easier to bond with them than I anticipated. I, on the other hand, could only say 'Hola' and count to 10 in Spanish. It figured my colleague would have an easier time getting to know our students because she spoke Spanish. Here are five ways that I got my students to actively listen that summer. I wanted to encourage active listening, so I decided to try a few different strategies. They had become so reliant on us repeating ourselves that it just became part of our daily structure. I found myself, as well as my co-teacher, having a hard time getting the students to listen. I didn't speak any Spanish except for a few words I remembered from a class I took in high school. A while back, I was co-teaching a third-grade bilingual summer school class in a low-income urban setting.

Comprehensive listening