Listening Skills (Primary Classroom)

Hi,

I'm a TA working with an autistic child in Key Stage 2 and want to work on listening skills. When this child is listening they do really well in the lesson, but often they are not listening and it is very hard to tell from watching them whether or not there is listening going on. I would therefore like to do something to encourage good listening.

As a starting point was considering a poster in the NAS book "Autism in the Primary Classroom", which has 3 steps: Stay quiet, Look at the person talking, Think about what they are saying. I also looked around on the internet and came across several "full body listening" posters, which I initially liked. However, on further reading I found quite a backlash to this apporach from several autistic writers for reasons which I now understand (concentrating on what all the parts of the body are doing actually inhibits listening). This certainly got me thinking about needing to be careful about not judging what would be helpful for an autistic person by thinking about my own experiences and even made me wonder whether the NAS poster with the instruction to look at the person was actually the correct approach.

Does anyone have any advice on a good place to start?

Thanks in advance!

Fairlie Simple over 9 years ago

Thanks for your advice. It is very difficult for me to tell exactly what happens behind the scenes when the child I'm working with appears to listen and engage, but I will keep observing and bear your suggestions in mind. The classroom environment is quite busy - it is hard when teachers believe that blank wall space will count badly against them to suggest that maybe there are too many distracting words, colours, textures everywhere!
I've been working as a TA for 18 months now, 6 in current school and another thing I find hard is trying to find alternative ways to engage a child in a lesson when you yourself have very little knowledge of what is coming. I suppose it is all part of the challenge!
Lotus over 9 years ago

"Stay quiet, Look at the person talking, Think about what they are saying"
This sounds OK to me as advice about learning to listen. However autistic people find it difficult to filter out other sensory input. Common distractions are any other noises (which could include noise other people don't notice like a clock ticking), movement such as someone playing with an elastic band, smells such as food being cooked in the school kitchen, and the feeling of hunger.
You state that the child does well when they listen, but I wonder if the times they work well are really because they actively listened?
We're usually very visual learners with poor short term memory, so we'll forget much of what you tell us almost immediately unless we read it or write it down, are shown something in the format of a picture/graphics/video, or can relate it quickly to some other long term memory we have. Were there any visual aids used in the lessons where the child did well? Was the subject matter of interest to the child or related to something they learned previously, enabling them to relate it to a "saved image" in their long term memory?
I was a special needs teaching assistant years ago and the children I supported did much better in small groups outside the classroom, with less distractions and lots of visual aids to learning. Auditory learning is the most difficult learning method, for everyone.
So I would suggest that while it's OK to encourage them to try the 3 steps to listening, you need to work with their class teacher to ensure that the learning environment and lesson delivery enables them to learn without them having to work hard at active listening. For an autistic person it's almost impossible, even as an adult.
Former Member over 9 years ago

This is a very interesting question to me (as an adult with autism who has come into contact with other autistic adults who have problems with listening/taking turns in conversation etc) who is wondering whether, and how, listening skills is a skill that can be taught/learnt later in life. Is listening skills part of Speech and Language Therapy? Have you had any contact with other professionals who have experience of helping autistic children.