Relationship Skills
Family Resources on Listening and Me, Part 2
Project and Purpose
Students identify good listening skills and create and analyze scenarios that illustrate good and poor listening skills
Essential Questions
How can we improve our listening skills in close relationships?
If this lesson was used in the classroom: Students assessed listening skills and learned about the importance of practicing listening skills. In part 1, students reviewed an article written by an expert on listening and with a partner analyzed the listening skills of people in different scenarios. In part 2, students created their own scenarios to demonstrate good listening skills.
Getting Ready for the Conversation
Being a good listener is essential not just to learn, but being a good listener is also essential to developing and maintaining relationships. While adults often expect adolescents to listen in learning situations, it is also important for adolescents to learn quality listening skills as being part of interpersonal relationships.
Conversation Starters and Practice at Home
The first item is for follow-up after participating in class activities.
Tell us about the scenario you and your partner created in class. What feedback did you receive about the scenario? Describe what others should have learned about listening from your scenario.
Who is someone that you believe is an excellent listener? Describe why you think so.
Assess your skills as a listener. What are your strengths? What do you need to do better? Why do you think so? Develop a plan to help you become a better listener. Why do you think this plan will help you
School to Home Resources on Listening and Me, Part 2
Materials
- Review student responses and self-assessments from previous Listening and Me session
- Good Listeners handout (from previous session)
- Listening Self-assessment (completed in previous session)
- Listening scenarios sheet from previous lesson (optional)
- Paper/writing instruments
Lesson Plan
Open/Download Complete PDF Lesson
(Handouts, Self-assessments, and Scenarios found here)
Procedures
Review and restate session norms. These should remind students how to interact and communicate respectfully. Essential question should be prominently displayed. [1-2 minutes]
Activity 1
- Review and remind students about the previous Listening and Me session where the Forbes Magazine article listed several things that good listeners do:
– Face the speaker
– Maintain eye contact
– Be attentive but relaxed
– Keep an open mind
– Try to picture what the speaker is saying
– Try not to interrupt (unless something is said that you don’t understand)
– Wait for a pause to ask questions and only ask clarifying questions
– Listen with empathy
[4-5 minutes]
Activity 2
- Reflecting questions. [Depending on your knowledge of the group facilitator may elicit verbal responses from students or ask students to write down answers to share with the group. Sometimes the facilitator may wish to have students write down responses for the facilitator to read aloud anonymously.]
- “We have talked about listening in general, but is it easier or harder to listen in a caring relationship?”
- “Why is it important to listen in a relationship with someone you care about?”
- “If you were a parent, why would it be important to have good listening skills with your partner? Your children?”
- “What are some ways (or give examples of ways) you can show that you are a god listener with someone you are in a caring relationship with?”
[5-10 minutes]
Activity 3
- Split students into groups of 2 (and one group of 3 if necessary). [Depending on your knowledge of the students you may want the same groupings or different groupings from the previous session.]
- Hand out or ask students to take out their Listening Self-Assessment from the previous session. Ask students to review their responses. Remind students of the scenarios that they discussed last session (Raul and Claudio) and the scenarios they created in
groups. This time students are going to write short scenarios demonstrating good listening skills between two people in a close, caring relationship. - Ask students to trade scenarios with another group for feedback.
- Share scenarios with the whole group to discuss.
- Use the list of good listening skills from above as a guide to facilitate questions as students share scenarios.
[10-20 minutes]
Conclusion
Debriefing questions.
- “What listening skills do you need to improve in listening to your partner in a relationship?”
- “If you became a parent what listening skills would help you be a better parent/ parenting partner?
