Whole Body Listening

Have you heard of whole body listening?  It is a great technique for teaching proper listening behaviors.  I use it all the time in my speech therapy room!  I start of the school year introducing it and doing various activities to help familiarize my students with this concept.  I have found numerous materials shared on various blogs and file sharing website such as Speakingofspeech.com and boardmakershare.com. 

I created a little poster visual that you could hang up to remind your students about the strategy.  As you can tell I used Boardmaker! "What is the difference between listening and hearing?" "What do you need to listen?":

• feet quiet and still on the floor
• sit upright, back straight in chair
• brain repeating what you are hearing, thinking about everything!
• hands quiet and still on lap, table, or desk unless it is raised for a question!
• eyes on the speaker: teacher or peer
• mouth closed, no talking unless you have a question!

You can also make this into a project and have your students glue the pieces onto the ear to demonstrate all that is required for good listening.  I have also turned this visual into a Smart Board lesson and had students drag the pieces onto the ear as they explain how each part helps them listen.  Grab your copy here!

There are tons of ways to introduce and use this strategy.  What have you done?!

Looking for more information on this technique: SocialThinking