Learning to listen

We take the development of communication for granted but it is actually the best achievement of our lifetime. There, is however,  a very alarming national decline in speech, language and communication skills which means that at least 40,000 children started school in 2009 without adequate spoken language ability (Wright, J., 2009) and a Government report in 2008 showed that this can be as high as 50% of children in some areas (Bercow, J.). The Government’s Communication Tsar Jean Gross, reported that ‘at least’ 1 in every 6 three year olds has a recognised difficulty while many, many more were undetected. Today’s demands of the reception class teacher are tremendous yet the children are starting school without the necessary pre-requisite skills. Spoken language skills are the building blocks for written language and almost every educational task pre-supposes a certain level of ability.

I carried out a study recently involving 100 schools across the country, which showed 100 % Primary Head Teachers were extremely concerned about declining speech, language and communication skills. The main problem they believed was a lack of listening skills.

We live in a very visual, fast- paced age and often the first time a child is required to do any formal listening is when they start school. Many, many children have to be taught to attend and listen before they can begin the demands of the national curriculum. I started my Small Talker groups to try to address this issue.  We work on ‘active listening’.

A lot of parents and staff will repeatedly say “Listen!” But what does that mean to a 3 year old? Listening is not a passive skill, it’s an active one and therefore one that needs to be learned. We tend to get quite poor results if we say “Behave!” to our little ones. It means very little, whereas if we describe the behaviour we want, they are more likely to understand what we require of them and then we might have some chance of them doing what we’ve asked. For example, if we want them to be quiet, sit still and not run around in the GP waiting room it better to tell them that than ask them to ‘Behave!’ Many parents and lots of teachers know this and act accordingly. We need to treat listening the same way.

Active listening can be broken down in to:

•good sitting

•good looking

•good waiting

•good thinking

You wouldn’t expect good thinking until school age and it’s very hard to do good waiting as a 3 or 4 year old (it’s hard enough for me to wait if I've got something to say!) Which is why they find it hard to wait for their turn or to let others answer a question to which they know the answer.

Our Small Talker groups (for 3 and 4 year olds) work on the first 3 components of active listening. We use a puppet to demonstrate ‘not good’ sitting so that he actually mirrors some of their behaviours e.g. picking the carpet to picking their noses. They are asked to help the puppet ‘because he’s not naughty, he’s just got to learn’. They have to look for the ‘un-desired’ behaviour and say ‘stop, do good sitting’. They are usually excellent at identifying the behaviour in the puppet although they may still be doing the same themselves for a while. Afterwards, I put the puppet where he can ‘watch’ them do good sitting so he can learn by example. I then monitor the behaviour in a very positive way so that I praise good sitting (and the wriggly ones usually sit up in an aim to please) or if that doesn’t work I ask the wriggly ones to help the puppet by showing him ‘good sitting’. If they are constantly nagged to sit still or to listen, they will switch off. It’s amazing how well they respond to this approach. I have had a few run-ins with TA’s and parents who have been completely peed off with my approach because they are itching to dictate ‘Will you sit still, now!’ However, I’ve asked them to trust me and watch what happens even if I am irritating them….  we’ve had some great results!
www.smarttalkers.org.uk or www.smalltalk-ltd.co.uk

Related articles

• Active Listening - It's Harder Than You Think (ahhamoments.wordpress.com)
• When good habits go bad: active listening (nitpickersnook.wordpress.com)

Hear hear!!

I was very concerned about the poor listening skills of children in primary schools so I decided to seek the views of colleagues in education. This was to reveiw an earlier study in the 1990s which I had been done with a colleague at the time, Sue Gowers. This is a brief report on the findings:

The Problem?

        189 Early Years Departments including Head Teachers, class Teaches, early years co-ordinators and special needs co-ordinators contributed their feelings. The 94% return rate for a questionnaire probably speaks for itself about the level of concern as typically, a response of around 32.5%

All of the schools were extremely worried: children generally have shorter attention span and most have difficulty listening. The problem is getting worse with children entering school ill-prepared for the demands of the classroom.

Many respondents blamed the constant blare of 24 hour TV with increased background noise causing children to switch off. Others felt that children’s senses were being over loaded with non-auditory stimulation. Most expressed a concern about the time children spend watching television & DVDs or playing computer type games. All felt that too much screen time including TV was partly to blame because children could just watch the pictures and didn’t need to listen.

On the whole respondents blamed parents for children’s poor attention and listening skills. Perhaps it’s the pressure of today’s busy lifestyle that necessitates leaving them in front of the TV as surrogate babysitter with little time set aside for conversation. 75% felt there were no social status differences.  Could it be that all families experience pressure but for different reasons? ‘Middle class’ parents are busy working to pay the mortgage, cars and holidays so they don’t have time to interact with their children, while others don’t realise they ought to?

Consequences?

As a result of poor attention and listening skills the class teacher has to begin by teaching them to listen. Unfortunately, it is assumed that children are equipped with the necessary abilities to learn but most school staff found that a great deal of time is taken up directing and re-focussing. In the 1970s it was felt that by the time a child arrived at school they had almost fully developed attention so that they could be drawing whilst listening to and understanding a completely separate instruction (Cooper, Moodley & Reynell 1978). These days the Teacher would have to ask them to put down their pencils, turn to the teacher, give the instruction and then tell them to continue the task.

As listening is a learned skill, children with learning difficulties will take longer than their peers to acquire it. Often extra work is needed for this group within the mainstream classroom. 
Probably as a result of poor auditory skills, there are many more speech and language problems in mainstream schools. Estimates vary but it is generally accepted that 7% of any class is likely to experience specific difficulty. Jean Gross Government Communication Tsar identified 1 in 6 3 year olds with identified difficulties but ‘many, many more’  with delays which hadn’t been picked up. Delays are almost becoming the norm. Bercow (2008) found up to 50% had communication difficulties which would impact on the children’s learning in school.

The Solution?

Ideally, one of the solutions is parental guidance when the children are younger which is why I set up Smart Talkers pre-school groups. One of the main aims is to show parents how to use ‘active listening’. We tend to think of listening as a passive skill but it actually an active learning task involving several aspects: good sitting, good looking, good waiting and good thinking. These were identified by Maggie Johnson who has done a great deal of work on this area including with children who have ADHD. Each part needs to be worked on in order. Realistically, however, the task of sorting the problem falls to the class teacher.

When working with children with short attention spans, learning activities have to be restructured so that only short periods of concentration are required with many different activities designed to retain interest and attention. Maggie has written ‘How to get them to hang on to your every word’ which has some great class room techniques for all ages. However, the following general strategies will be useful:

General Strategies ·        Ensure you have full attention and eye contact ·        Keep the instructions short & simple so that the key words are kept to a minimum ·        Speak as slowly, clearly and naturally as possible ·        Give the child time to understand/process the information/instruction. It may be necessary to repeat even simple instructions several times in order for the child to process the information ·        Check they have understood what is expected of them ‘Comprehension monitoring’ ·        Try to develop the child overall confidence by praising him for things he is good at. Also try to make communication as pleasurable an experience as possible. When a child is nervous or anxious the ability to understand may be adversely affected ·        Keep external distractions to a minimum whist giving instructions ·        Use gesture and other non-verbal cues whenever possible e.g. facial expression pointing etc ·        Use visual clues and cues e.g. pictures of the tasks, picture timetable

 

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Pay Attention!!

Many people are surprised me when I say I work on attention skills as a speech and language therapist but I feel that it is an important part of my work. If children can't attend and listen then they can't learn. Smart Talkers Pre-School Communication Groups actively seek to develop this aspect.


There are 6 levels of attention which were recognised in the 1970s by Cooper, Moodley and Reynell. They identified ages by which the stages were achievable and by aged 6 it was felt that a child would have fully integrated attention so that they might carry on with an activity while listening to and assimilating information about something different e.g. listening to an instruction about playtime while colouring in a picture. These days this is certainly not expected and an inadequate attention level is one of the biggest problems when children start school.


This ICan Video is interesting and worth sharing.

A total disaster??? Not really!

I was really excited last week as some people from Singapore were coming to observe the groups at one of the local Children's Centres with a view to having a franchise in Singapore. We had been liaising for months about how the groups worked and what the reasoning behind them was etc. They had had video and sessions plans as well as the franchise agreement. I never 'count my chickens' as it were but I was very hopeful. They were, after all, coming all the way from Singapore!!


On the morning of the visit, I had everything laid out and planned with notes for them to follow so they could see what I was doing and why, in a smart presentation pack.


The first group is for 3 year olds to prepare them for school. A group of 6 children came in and everything went to plan....... for 10 minutes, then there was a loud bang as a Father and his 2 year old toddler loudly burst into the room. The father sat down and left his young son to his own devises. He just gave a running commentary about how naughty he was. He then made himself a coffee and gave his son a biscuit from the kitchen, 'to shut him up'! I continued with the group as best as I could, given the huge distraction the man and his son posed to the young children who were trying to do their best to concentrate.


The people from Singapore had obviously never met someone like this man: vest top with numerous tattoos, missing teeth ........ you get the picture! The clash of cultures was almost audible!


The little boy was gorgeous but had only grunts as his means of communicating. His attention span was so short he couldn't sit down for more than 20 seconds. We muddled through the first group as best we could. The next group is for 2 year olds, so was ideal for the little boy. The parents sit on the floor to encourage their little ones to take part. We work on eye-contact, turn taking, sharing, co-operation, attention, listening and vocabulary before the songs, story, bubbles and snack time. Unfortunately his father didn't join the group or retrieve the little boy every time he ran into the toilet which he did every few minutes. The session was, therefore, dominated by me having to get him out of the toilet area,  prevent him from posting things down the toilet  and generally keep him safe from harm. The other mothers were great and kept trying to involve him with the activities. Another mother did the activities while I was otherwise occupied!


The visitors appeared horrified and somewhat traumatised as the father then told them repeatedly, in front of his child about the horrifying drunken antics of the child's mother over the years. At the end, he just wouldn't leave and his level of conversation completely deteriorated! It was quite frankly a complete disaster in terms of 'selling' the groups. The visitors made their excuses and left!


However, the little boy and his dad are exactly the sort of family that I want to work with in the children's centres. I know that we can do wonders with the little boy and show his dad how wonderful an achievement language really is. I'll set ground rules and discus what we're trying to achieve and why, with ideas to try at home. They are typical of many families these days, where parents just don't know how to interact with their children. They are doing the best they can in stressful circumstances. They are feeding and clothing their little ones but don't know they should be listening to and talking with them. This is creating thousands of children a year who have speech, language and communication delay for no other reason that they are not receiving sufficient stimulation. Without intervention, they start school at a disadvantage and this gap is often not closed by the time they leave. There is frightening evidence  to show that the standard of living for these young   people and their expected long term socio-economic outlook is poor. This is the whole reason why early intervention is necessary and why I set up the Smart Talkers groups.


So, it was a disaster in terms of the people from Singapore but I know that ultimately, I'm there for little boys and girls like this one and that is much more important than selling franchises to Singapore or anywhere else! 

There'll be other opportunities but the little boy needs a chance more than anything.

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Active listening

As we mentioned in previous blog posts, listening is a learned skill and involves distinct components which need to be taught:

• good sitting
• good looking
• good waiting
• good thinking

This is an example of using a puppet to teach 'good sitting'. This was the first time we had done this in this nursery with this group of children and I was delighted with the results.