4.2 Active Listening
Instructor Preparation and Summary
In today’s fast paced world of technology and social media, we are often distracted and not listening to others speaking to us. This unit has some fun activities for students to engage and assess their own listening skills. Each student will need a piece of letter size paper and a cellphone or a fidget toy to participate in the activities. The topic of communicating in a way that others will want to listen to you is discussed and demonstrated during this unit. Students will reflect on their communication mistakes that they make in their lives and focus on improvement in these areas.
The principles of Universal Design for Learning are incorporated into the variety of activities in this unit.
In this unit, some students will learn to:
- Identify the difference between listening and hearing.
- Discuss the importance of two way communication.
- List the strategies of being an active listener.
- Explain the 7 Communication Mistakes people make that makes others not want to engage with them.
- Reflect on their own communication mistakes and how to improve on those areas.
Classroom Activities
- Snowflake Activity: (P.30 from Skills to Pay the Bills)
- Give each participant one sheet of paper.
- Then verbally give them the following instructions pausing between instructions.:” “Hold your piece of paper in front of you and close your eyes. Now listen to my instructions carefully as I will tell you what to do with your paper. There is no peeking and you cannot ask questions. Those are the rules:) OK. Now fold you sheet of paper in half.(pause) Then fold it in half again. (pause) Now tear off the lower left corner of the paper. (pause) Fold it in half again (pause) Now tear off the top right corner of the paper. Now fold it one more time in half. (pause) Now tear off the lower right corner.”
- “Now open your eyes and unfold your paper. If I did a good job communicating and you were a good listener then all your papers should look the same!”
- Discuss: Why don’t they all look the same? People may need to receive information in different ways to be successful. What changes could we make to have everyone’s snowflake look the same?
- Summary: Effective two way communication is essential in the workplace, home and in the community.
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- Communication Exercise: Listening with and without Distraction
- For this activity, you CAN use your cell phone if you have one for the exercise. If you don’t then your instructor can give you a fidget toy for the activity.
- Get into 2 circles with students facing each other. There will be an inside circle and an outside circle. If there is an odd number of students, have one group with three people.
- You are to have two conversations: First Conversation: both people can play with their phones or fidget toys while they are talking. Second Conversation: Both people put their phones or fidget toys away while they are talking. Each conversation lasts about 2 minutes.
- Then once you have had the two conversations with your partner, rotate the outside circle so that students then have a new partner and do the conversations again. Do this 3 times total. Afterwards, have a class discussion asking the following questions:
- Did you notice a difference in the conversations when you had a phone/fidget compared to the ones when you didn’t?
- How much do you remember from the conversations?
- The same amount from both types of conversations?
- Different amounts from both types of conversations?
- Why do you think that is?
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Applied Assessments
Instructor Resources
References
Interpersonal Skills for Life and Work for College Students on the Autism Spectrum by Dr. Michael W. Duggan, LCPC, CRC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
United States Department of Labor. (2014). “Skills to Pay the Bills: Mastering Soft Skills for Workplace Success. Office of Disability Employment Policy. Retrieved April 6, 2022, from https://www.dol.gov/agencies/odep/program-areas/individuals/youth/transition/soft-skills
