Monster's Club
Tips to help your students in the classroom
Given the importance of listening well to maximize success in and out of school might lead you to wonder if there are any specific guidelines for teaching it. Here are 7 tips to help you. They are as follows:
1. Set the purpose
Students must understand the purpose of listening to get the most
out of their experience; they need to listen rather than listen. Having an explicit goal in mind will help in understanding where to focus, the opportunity to achieve success. Do they need to listen to determine which statements are facts and points of view? Do they need to understand the procedure for carrying out a specific activity? In either case, letting students know up front will make their achievement more likely.
2. Set the stage
Getting ready to listen is like getting in the zone or warming up. A good first step in setting the stage first is to tell students:
1- the purpose of listening.
2- to prepare the environment. Eliminating background noise, sitting in an appropriate configuration.
3- telling students what will transpire after they have listened.
3. Provide follow-up
The importance of providing time for follow-up. Immediately after students have listened, hold them accountable for whatever it was that they were attending to when listening. Many times this follow-up will be in a written format so that there is a paper trail of student learning. Such follow-up enables you to see what they were able to ascertain while listening, thus serving as an authentic assessment of sorts. When reviewing their responses you can see who was able to achieve the stated purpose and who might need additional help.
4. Keep it brief
Keeping the listening experiences brief and focused will help guard against children tuning out. Given that some students find listening difficult, either because it is not their favored learning modality or because they are grappling with how to listen.
5. Integrate it
Using listening in a variety of subject areas is an excellent way for students to understand how it crosses all content areas. Listening for steps to conduct an experiment in science, propaganda techniques used by the media in social studies, and listening for the argument in English—all are ways for students to capitalize on listening in different content areas.
6. Be a model
Showing students how to be better listeners with
our own example is more powerful than telling them.
For example, if we really want kids to show some
respect to a someone, we have to do the same thing.
7. Avoid repeating
Probably easier said than done, nonetheless important, is to say something once and only once. Patterns take time to break, however, which is why this one guideline might be difficult.
