Listening Skills 2

Communication Skills

Listening Skills

Lesson Plan

Objective:

Participants will be able to improve their current level of Listening skills by bringing positive changes in their listening habits

Total Time: 90 Minutes

Materials Required: white board and marker, Speaker to play the audio, Printed Role Play Chits

Instructor Note: Go through the asynchronous student handbook, Show welcome slide no.1 in the PPT. Tell the participants that we are going to discuss very important aspects of active listening which should be our ideal style of listening and practice it so much that it becomes our second nature.In this block we will also practically try to implement what we have learnt in today’s session.

Opening Protocol:

  • Greet the participants

  • Take attendance

  • In pairs, ask participants to share with each other how they are feeling

  • Recap the previous session by asking 1-2 participants to share with the class, what they learnt and did in the previous session

5 Minutes

Opening Activity: Listen to your heart

  • Ask everyone to close their eyes, ensure pin-drop silence, and now ask the trainees to put one hand on their thumping heart and the other on the ears. Ask them what they hear?

  • Say,“You hear your heartbeat. You have just heard your heart”. Now the trainer should say, “if I listen to your heart, what is your heart saying? What is your mood? What do you want to do right now, if you were not doing this training? What would you be doing, if there were no limitations?”

  • Some may say sleep, some may say eat ice cream etc., go on vacation, long drive, be with your parents and family etc.

  • Say, “So there is a difference between hearing your heart and listening to your heart. Do you all agree? Can you tell the difference between hearing and Listening?”

  • Note down all the responses and say that today we will understand and practice conscious listening

5 Minutes

Activity 1: Who is close to your heart

  • Trainer will demonstrate effective and ineffective listening in this activity.

  • Create 3 groups of 4 participants each. Ask 1st group to come, ask some questions but don’t let them answer, as soon as they start speaking, immediately interrupt

  • Then adopt a different technique of ignoring the answers of the next set of trainees and not listening properly, then change his technique to suddenly start listening with great enthusiasm, giving appropriate responses with the next group

  • Ask the first set of trainees, how did they feel when they were interrupted and not listened to. Then the trainer should ask the next set of trainees how they feel when they were not paid attention to. Finally, the trainer should be asking the 3rd set of trainees to share their experience of how they felt when they were listened to carefully and patiently.

  • At this point, discuss that everybody likes to be listened to carefully. Also bring the point up that the one who listens to you, solves your problems, understands you well, listens to you empathetically is close to your heart.

15 Minutes

Concept Discussion:

  • Divide the class in 4 groups and ask them to open their hanbooks

  • Give 10 minutes to each group to read and understand the following topics:-

  • What is listening and why is it so important

  • Difference between hearing and listening

  • What can lead to ineffective/poor listening

  • How can we become successful listeners

  • After 10 minutes, ask group members to share their learnings

  • Involve everyone in the discussion to ensure that all the participants understand all the concepts

15 Minutes

Activity 2 – Roleplay

  • Have the chits of role play handout ready on a table

  • Divide the trainees into 8 teams and ask them to pick a chit

  • Ask them to enact that style in the form of a role-play by imagining a scene and let the audience guess the listening style.

  • Time limit for guessing is 1 minutes and the enacting time maximum limit is also 1 minute.

This activity will help the trainees gain clarity and understand all the listening styles and how they are practically unconsciously done by people in their daily life.

15 Minutes

The Missing in action Listening style

(Teacher teaching and student with blank look on face, not paying attention)

The Distracted Listener

(MD sitting at office desk, talking over phone in between, signing files opened by secretary again & again & simultaneously listening to the employee sitting in front and telling something)

Selective Listener

(TV news anchor narrating how fire broke out in an electrical shop beside a saree showroom where sale was going on, wife picks up the line “saree sale” and tells her neighbor friend to plan a trip to the sale later on in the evening)

Contentious Listener

(Office meeting is going on, whenever any employee gives an idea, Boss keeps on rejecting immediately by finding faults)

Active Listening

(younger brother sharing problems with elder brother about problems being faced in hostel and elder one tries to understand and give solutions)

Empathetic Listening

(Lady narrates problems to her mom about how she is discriminated against in the household and at the workplace, In home daughters are given preference than daughters in law and at workplace , men are given preference to women.

Content Listening

(A resident in society telling another resident about how Mr.Gulati who lives in the flat opposite to his flat parks his own car every now and then in his parking and how Mr.Gulati’s dog plays with the garbage in front of his door every second day creating a filthy mess.

Critical Listening

(A child narrating rhyme/story to a teacher and teacher highly appreciates ,encourages an praises whatever the content is )

Roleplay Chits Chart –to be printed and made chits in physical form and to be allotted by trainer through individual chat windows if the session is an online session

Activity 3: Listening to the Audio

  • Say, “now it is time to practically implement whatever we have learnt so far in this session. I will play an audio and all of you have to be active listeners.Try to understand what is being said and like a diver who goes deep into the sea to get some pearls, you need to dive in the message and get answers to my questions.”

  • Share the questions with them beforehand and DO NOT SHOW THEM THE VIDEO, only arrange the audio to be heard through a powerful speaker. Tell them they can note down any piece of information, if they need to. You can play the audio one more time if participants need it.

The video is about Dandapani who is a famous hindu priest and he is explaining in this video about mind and concentration. Before beginning, tell the trainees to listen carefully. They may close their eyes and take notes , if they want .Don’t show them the video, only make them hear the audio with the help of a speaker. Before you begin, ask them to find out the answers to the following questions. Answers here are for your reference only. Tell them the questions beforehand :

Q1. Why is Dandapani not ready to use snapchat? (Ans : Because it will take away his time and energy which is a limited resource)

Q2. Why do we become distracted? (Ans : because we allow people around us to take away awareness from one area of mind to another)

Q3. What’s according to Dandapani is a great opportunity to practice concentration?(Give your child/spouse undivided attention when you speak to the, if your awareness wanders, bring it back, practice and practice)

30 Minutes

Closing Protocol:

  • Thank the participants for their time

  • Announce the next time you will be visiting them

  • Share the topic of the next session

  • Collect 1-2 most interesting activity sheets/artefacts from students and show to Nodal officer and institution head after session

  • Click pictures of the artefacts for documentation

5 Minutes

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