LISTENING WITH UNDERSTANDING AND EMPATHY
We begin by focusing on listening with understanding.
Listening is the gateway to understanding and communicating and, therefore, is absolutely crucial for language learners of all skills.
Listening requires bodily composure, enabling students to apply themselves to learning.
If students struggle to listen carefully, they will miss out on important interactions.
A still body allows the mind to be active.
We have the 5L's for learning in Year One to teach the body composure skills of listening.
Legs, Laps, Lips, Look, Listen.
The expectation is that we are ready to listen and learn.
You might hear the teachers say "Give me 5".
LEGS: This rule has to do with how you sit. If you are sitting on the floor and you are moving your legs around, sitting on your knees, moving places or twisting, do you think you could really listening? Not properly. The other problem is that when you move around a lot you distract the people around you, and interrupt their learning as well as your own.
LAPS: If you move your arms a lot, you stretch, scratch, touch others or fiddle, are you really listening? No! You would be thinking other things, you would probably be distracting others too, and interrupting their learning.
LIPS: This rule means that you should not have noise coming out of your mouth at all when you are listening. It means no chatting, no whispering, no humming, no singing. When you make noise it is very hard for you to listen, and even harder for the people around you to listen.
LOOK: Wherever your eyes are is where your brain is. If you are looking out the window your brain is not thinking about what is happening in the room, it is thinking about what is outside the room. Your eyes need to be on the person speaking.
LISTEN: This does not just mean with your ears, but with your brain. If you were talking to me and my brain was thinking about what I would do after school (go swimming, ride bike etc) would I have really heard what you were saying to me? No!
Did you know that scientists have discovered that the nervous system can not process more than 110 bits of information per second? If you're listening to someone speak you need to process about 60 bits of information per second in order to understand what they're saying. This is why if there are two people talking to you at the same time, you can't listen to both of them and understand what both are saying. (Dr Csikszentmihalyi, 2004)
Listening with understanding is a skill. We are all skill-builders throughout life and it is appropriate for students to be comfortable with the idea that they have new skills to either learn or master, and be actively engaged in their own learning process.
Students in Year One are practising their listening skills with great results.
They would love to share with you the guided listening task, they might even ask you to try the activity as well.
The Following activities are from the Book "Look, Listen, Think." The activities gradually become increasingly complex. The activities are designed to develop listening, concentration and memory skills, with an emphasis on concentration.
TASK ONE
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