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Listening Skills (Primary Classroom)

Fairlie Simple

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!

Parents

  • 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!

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  • 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!

Children
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