Active listening, which includes eye contact, appropriate body position and language, and the acts of asking questions, summarizing, and not interrupting, is an essential skill for making new friends, understanding information, and communicating effectively.
Whether students are building relationships with friends or learning a new concept from teachers, they must engage in good listening in order to be successful. In fact, the benefits of active listening extend beyond the classroom, and is a quality many employers seek when interviewing candidates.
These fun and simple active listening exercises invite students to consider the actions and impact of focusing on what is being said and sharing feelings about being truly heard.
As a teacher in a kindergarten classroom, you can generate interest and excitement by encouraging children to use their five senses to explore the world around them. You can select a few of these activities to supplement your classroom lessons or use the entire kit for a full exploration of the senses.
The sense of hearing can be used to discuss good listening skills.
This interactive game helps children understand their emotions. Children are presented with scenarios (it’s their birthday, their brother breaks a favorite toy, etc.) and asked to click on one of three icons that represent feeling happy, sad, and angry. If they click on an icon that is not the most appropriate for the scenario, the icon turns red and they choose again.
Watch the ways students learn mindfulness by paying attention to their senses, breath, and body movements. This video is from Kindness in the Classroom, a multi-part video series designed to give educators insight into the positive impacts of teaching mindfulness in a classroom setting. This video is more of a training video to help teach educators a technique for teaching students mindfulness skills including listening skills to enhance their health.
Hear directly from educators about their experiences implementing the Kindness Curriculum in their classrooms. This video is from Kindness in the Classroom, is designed to give educators insight into the positive impacts of teaching mindfulness in a classroom setting. This video is intended to train the teacher in teaching mindfulness.
JR Martinez and Elmo talk about how to deal with tough feelings, like anger or sadness. Here are some exercises and tips for dealing with strong emotions. This video can be played during a lesson about emotions, feelings, and using good listening skills.
Being a good friend means sharing and playing nicely together. Use this song as a reminder of why sharing is the best! This video can be played when teaching a lesson on using listening skills to build healthy relationships.
In this episode of Happy Healthy Kids, Miss Kelsey engages kids in a game of Simon Says. This kinesthetic game helps kids learn the importance of listening carefully.
What's the word on the street? Murray introduces the vocabulary word "conflict." This video helps young students understand how to use verbal and nonverbal cues to avoid conflict and how to problem-solve.
This activity is designed to be taught at the beginning of the year and re-visited throughout the first half of the school year as needed. The goal is to help students learn how to speak and listen to each other. There are 6 posters included with this lesson and you will go over each poster and discuss what an active listener is then practice the different varations of sharing and pairing.
Poster Titles
This alignment results from the ALEX Health/PE COS Resource Alignment Summit.
