Daniel Willingham's short video talks about a number of things, including the brain and reading and writing. Consier what he says about the role of listening on learning to read towards the end of this video
Hear What People Are Really Saying
- Listening is one of the most important skills you can have. How well you listen has a major impact on your learning, job effectiveness, and on the quality of your relationships with others.
- We listen to obtain information.
- We listen to understand.
- We listen for enjoyment.
- We listen to learn.
Given all the listening we do, you would think we’d be good at it! In fact we’re not. Depending on the study being quoted, we remember a dismal 25-50% of what we hear. That means that when you talk to your boss, colleagues, customers or spouse for 10 minutes, they only really hear 2½-5 minutes of the conversation.
Turn it around and it reveals that when you are receiving directions or being presented with information, you aren’t hearing the whole message either. You hope the important parts are captured in your 25- 50%, but what if they’re not?
Clearly, listening is a skill that we can all benefit from improving. By becoming a better listener, you will improve your productivity, as well as your ability to influence, persuade negotiate. What’s more, you’ll avoid conflict and misunderstandings – all necessary for workplace success.
" Hey mom; I think I'm going to drop out of school!"
"OK hon. Just don't forget that dinner is at seven tonight."
Does this sound familiar to you? Don't we all do this at one time or another? We hear! We hear the voice! We hear the sound! But are we really listening?
Listening skills are learned. They should not however be learned haphazardly. There should be a planned program to increase listening skill abilities, and it should be a significant part of elementary education.
- Listening is basic for communicating, learning, thinking and acquiring awareness of the world around you.
- Listening needs to be taught.
- Listening requires participation.
- Listening is an information-processing activity.Listening is more than just hearing; it's deciding what we listen to and how this can be done most effectively.
- Listening requires an active effort on the part of the student. It trains the child to select, remember and process sounds.
Let us keep in mind that this is not necessarily every child's preferred channel of learning. Some children learn better through visual means, kinesthetic ones and other venues. Still, listening is an important skill and needs to be taught. This skill can be accomplished very simply by planning and dedicating time on a daily basis.
Resources
- 8 Tips for Practicing Active Listening in the Classroom
5 Strategies to Improve Students’ Listening Skills
Students not listening is a common complaint, but listening is a skill like any other—it can be improved with practice.
- Educators' Guide to Active Listening
- The Best Ideas To Help Students Become Better Listeners
What Productive Talk Looks Like in the Elementary Grades
Using sentence stems to scaffold classroom discussions guides students to speak, actively listen, and build on each others' ideas.
- Speaking and listening section. The speaking and listening section contains subsections offering lessons and activities to develop a specific skill. Those skills are listening for specifics, communication skills, formal and informal speaking, and giving presentations. Each section has a short introductory video followed by a set of quizzes and interactive games in which students test their skills. (www.freetech4teachers.com)
- 9 Strategies for Getting More Students to Talk and Listen
- APP WITH MOVEMENT AND MINDFULNESS VIDEOS FOR CHILDREN
Speaking and Listening in Content Area Learning
In this article, Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey offer instructional ideas to help your students build speaking and listening skills. Suggestions include reader’s theater, listening stations, presentations, and reciprocal teaching. Technology offers new ways to engage students in speaking and listening tasks
- Using movement and Creative Dramatics to Promote SEL
GoNoodle Kids is packed with videos to get children moving—running, jumping, dancing, stretching—while learning along the way. The videos are relatively short (between three and five minutes) and feature both live-action and animated elements. Some videos incorporate lessons on the fundamentals of arithmetic. “Hollabaloo,” for example, on the Blazer Fresh Channel, has children forming the “less than,” “greater than,” and “equal to” signs with their arms as they exercise. GoNoodle isn’t entirely academic, though. The “Go Bonkers” section is all about releasing energy, while the “Chillax Dude” section encourages children to reach for the sky and inhale deeply. Also an app, for iOS and Android devices
- Several Ways To Help Students Become Better Listeners.
- The Power of Smart Listening by Annie Murphy Paul is another good resource.
- Excellent Post On The Different “Levels” Of Listening
- Here’s a playlist from TED Talks on the topic of listening.
- Malcolm Gladwell’s New Story On The Importance Of Being A Good Listener
- Say What? 5 Ways to Get Students to Listen is from Edutopia.
- Everything You Need to Know About Becoming a Better Listener is another excellent article from The Harvard Business Review. It’s short and accessible, and will be a great addition to the lesson plan I have about becoming better listeners in my Self-Driven Learning book. Here’s a tweet about the article:
- 5 Powerful Questions Teachers Can Ask Students
- Communicating with Teens
- Active Listening with Primary Students
- Student Handout listen.pdf
- Empathetic Listening
- Inspire
My Kids is a website featuring stories designed to inspire kids
to positive actions. Inspire My Kids uses videos, pictures, audio, and
text to tell the stories of inspiring people and groups of people. You
can find stories on Inspire My Kids by browsing through the list of
values and topics. You can refine your story search by age
appropriateness.
Activities
- Arrow stories K - 4
- Tell - Rephrase: 1. One member makes a statement on an assignmed topic. 2. Other pair member paraphrases the partner's statement. 3. Continue the interchange pattern for a limited time 4. The teacher calls on a random student to share something their partner said amd their own statement of it.
- Podcasting: Listen to podcasts and create podcasts. After listening to a podcast, students should comment on them and/or answer questions. 5 Great Video Tutorials on How to Create Podcasts Using Audacity
- Listenwise ( gr. 6 - 12) makes it easy to bring authentic voices and compelling non-fiction stories to the classroom. Teach your students to Listen with the Power of Public Radio. Curates the best of public radio to keep teaching connected to the real world and build student listening skills at the same time.
- Tell - Spin Off: 1. First member states an idea or topic 2. The other member makes a statement that connects to the first statement. 3. The pattern continues. 4. The teacher calls on students to share some of the spin offs. (p88 Jacobs for examples) Other variations: Tell/Disagree, Tell/Exemplify
- Speaking and listening section. The speaking and listening section contains subsections offering lessons and activities to develop a specific skill. Those skills are listening for specifics, communication skills, formal and informal speaking, and giving presentations. Each section has a short introductory video followed by a set of quizzes and interactive games in which students test their skills.
- Pair_communication.pdf active listening exercise
- Paraphrase Passport: The ticket to talking is correctly paraphrasing the person who has just spoken. After someone has contributed an idea, another person must correctly restate that ideas before contributing his/her own idea. This structure makes sure that everyone is talking and no one is listening. It also lets individuals know how their ideas are heard by others.Paraphrase
- Folktales on cooperation
- ListenCurrent
makes it easy to bring authentic voices and compelling non-fiction
stories to the classroom. We curate the best of public radio to keep
teaching connected to the real world and build student listening skills
at the same time.”
- Blob - Listen for lies or
facts that are incorrect
- Divide the class into two teams A and B. Ask one student at a time to come to the front of the class and read aloud a passage which you have chosen, e.g. a story or newspaper article. Then ask them to read it aloud again, but to make some changes. Each time a lie (or change) is read out, the students must stand up. The first team to stand up gets a point. This game requires students to listen carefully and encourages them to remember important information and details.
- 'To be Continued...': This is an easy activity to improve active listening and requires a common topic to be given to the group on which one of the students begins to speak on. It could be a fun or easy topic at first, followed by more difficult ones. The teacher or supervisor can then suddenly stop the person in mid-sentence and ask the person next to the speaker to continue along the lines of the previous speaker's last few sentences. This continues for some time and once everyone gets a hang of how it works, the supervisor can then pick anyone at random to continue speaking. This greatly improves listening and helps everyone to learn to carefully listen to the speaker.
- Trust: The Boy Who Cried “Wolf!”
- Tell Me; I'll Listen