Module One: Coping Power Lesson Overviews
Lesson Overview
Lesson Goal:
Students will improve in their communication and active listening skills.
Lesson Objectives:
Students will review and practice relaxation strategies.
Students will explain the connection between active listening and the PICC model.
Students will define and provide examples of active listening.
Students will demonstrate active listening with a peer.
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Welcome back to the eighth installment of our Coping Power Classroom video series!
Your students have been practicing a range of different thought, behavior, and relaxation-based coping skills to develop self-control, regulate their emotions, and better respond to difficult situations. Your students have been practicing a range of different thought, behavior, and relaxation-based coping skills to develop self-control, regulate their emotions, and better respond to difficult situations.
Now that they've built these coping skills, they will begin exploring how to re-enter and effectively resolve the conflicts and stressors that they face in their everyday lives, both at school and outside of school.
Active listening is the next step students are learning in effectively PICC-ing apart a problem. To do this, your students are learning and practicing these strategies such as picking up on emotional cues from gestures and facial expressions, making eye contact, avoiding distractions, asking questions, and summarizing what was said to them. Students are learning that all of these strategies show interest and attention towards the speaker. They will practice with peers so that they can determine the difference between active listening and not active listening, and they should begin to recognize how much better it feels to speak to someone when they are listening actively. All of this is intended to continue building those perspective taking and empathy skills.
Some, if not all, of these active listening skills are likely new to students in your classroom, and they can be challenging skills to develop, especially in a world of constant distractions. This lesson introduces skills, provides animated examples, and discussion opportunities prior to expecting them to engage in active listening to help them get more comfortable with the strategies overall.
Since active listening skills take time to develop, we encourage you to practice regularly with your class through this week’s challenge task. Focus on finding times when you can help your students apply active listening strategies both in their own lives and in the stories and experiences of others. For example, you can model active listening when one of your students is talking to you about a problem to demonstrate what active listening looks like. You can even have them reflect on how they felt after having someone listen actively to their problem.
If students are facing a conflict or challenge in a situation at lunch, on the playground, etc., you could also guide them through actively listening to the other student’s experience of the interaction.
Best of luck practicing and developing this new strategy! We’ll see you next week.
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Academic Extensions of Lesson Content
Looking for ways to include this week’s Coping Power content in your classroom lessons? Check out our suggestions below:
Math
Practice active listening in peer groups while solving math problems. While working on math exercises in pairs or small groups, have one student be the listener/writer, while the other is the problem solver. The problem solver will verbally tell the listener how to solve the problem, and the writer will write it down on the worksheet or a whiteboard. The writer should not interrupt the problem solver to enforce active listening, and likewise, the problem solver should not help the writer write the problem work down. Students should switch roles after each problem.
English/ Language Arts
Review the active listening guide taught in Coping Power lesson 8 with students. Provide students with sentence stems as shown in this lesson, either on the board or as a paper template:
You felt...
You think...
Let me see if I understand what you are saying...
Have students write a short (1 paragraph or so) narrative about something they did over the weekend or a fun memory. Pair students up and have them share their paragraph with their partner. While one partner reads their paragraph, the other will practice active listening and complete the sentence stems to discuss with their partner.
Social Studies
Implement an adapted version of the active listening activity practiced in Coping Power Rural lesson 8. After teaching students about a historic era or event (for example, Ruby Bridges’ story) put them into pairs. Each partner will retell the story they just learned while the other practices active listening. The partner telling the story will then offer feedback to the listener about how well they practiced active listening.
Science
Effectively explaining science: Brainstorm as a class: How can we ensure we communicate information effectively to our audience? What should audience members do to ensure they are being effective active listeners? Once students have reviewed and brainstormed active listening strategies, separate them into groups. Each group will come up with a way to “teach” the rest of the class about a recent science concept covered in class (note: this could be a good test review). Groups will take turns being the teachers and the active listeners. After each group teaches the class, ask the presenters if they felt the class was a good audience.