Active Listening SkillsActive listening skills is part of the communication domain in a classroom performance assessment. There are different types of listening used in the classroom for students to be effective learners.
Effective listening sills means that students are actively using strategies to pay attention to auditory input. Sometimes when students are not performing well in the classroom, there may be an issue with their receptive language skills. True listening means we not only hear what is said, but have listening comprehension. It means we know when we do not understand something and can use active listening skills for clarification, analyzing and monitoring. Assessing listening skills is often done by a speech therapist, but classroom teachers can analyze if their students are listening effectively. If you observe a student not doing the majority of the listening behaviors described below, there may be a problem and work must be done on improving listening skills. Types of ListeningThere are actually 5 areas of the Active Listening Domain of Types of Communication.They are: Listening Skills, Listening Vocabulary, Listening Comprehension and Analysis, Classroom Directions and Classroom Discourse. For the sake of shortening a lengthy topic, the areas will be put into three groups: Effective Listening SkillsListening skills means that the student can attend to information in a way that allows him/her to process it. An effective listener can disregard other sounds that would interfere with comprehension. The listener is able to focus and sustain attention.Assessing Listening SkillsThe student should: Listening VocabularyVocabulary is key to active listening skills. When a student is having trouble understanding an interactive read aloud and I know he or she has been listening, I immediately look at listening vocabulary.Listening vocabulary means that a person has essential vocabulary to be able to comprehend auditory information. You will know if a child is struggling with listening vocabulary through simple observational assessments. Assessing Listening VocabularyThe student should: Following InstructionsThe typical school day is packed with instructions. Students must be able to decide what to do with information from lessons, test and homework directions, activity directions and transitions. Teachers evaluate a students active listening skills by observing if they can follow instructions.Being able to follow instructions is also part of executive communication skills. We also expect our students to follow implied directions, such as how to act in certain situations. We expect students to infer our meaning, or "read between the lines." Students who lack active listening skills often cannot succeed with implied directions. Assessing Listening for InstructionsIf a student is struggling with any of these types of listening, then teachers should intervene. These students must be explicitly taught active listening skills. The speech therapist is often your best resource for finding just the right listening skill activity. Return to Top: Active Listening Skills
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