Reference no: EM133350400

Active Listening

I. Use the Active Listening techniques of restating (paraphrasing) and/or reflecting (expressing the emotions of the speaker) to respond in a single sentence to each of the statements below. When submitting your work, you don't need to copy the original statement, just your response to each.

Fifth Grader: Pat and Tasha are so unfair! They always grab the best books for themselves before anyone else can get there.
Tenth Grader: I wish this rain would end! I'm sick of being indoors for P.E.
First Grader: My tooth is loose! I can't wait to see how much money the tooth fairy leaves me!
Parent: My son spends three hours on homework every night. He has no time to see his friends. He has no time to relax. We are watching him turn into a homework machine instead of a human being.
Paraeducator: Ms. Gold never tells me ahead of time what I'm going to be doing in her classroom. When I walk in if they're doing math, I work with kids having trouble with the math. If they're doing social studies, I help someone having trouble with that. Sometimes I can't figure out exactly what the instructions are and the student doesn't know either.
II. Give a rationale for using Active Listening to improve communication by explaining at least two of the benefits for using it (1 point).

Grading criteria: Responses are accurate representations of rephrasing or reflecting; responses make sense in each situation; rationale provided with explanations of at least two clear benefits; grammar, spelling, and sentence structure are relatively free from errors .

PART B: I-Messages

I. Out of the following five possible scenarios, pick three and write three I-messages you might use to open a conversation to help you solve the problem in each of the following situations (1 point each)

Follow the format: I feel (description of feeling) when (objective description of the event/behavior) because (how the behavior affects me). Please be sure to omit the word "you", either stated or implied. Please be sure to name an actual feeling; remember the idea is that you are owning your feelings.

1. A colleague keeps interrupting you while you are working with a group of students in order to ask you where particular supplies are.

2. A fifth grade teacher always walks her class very noisily by your classroom on their way to the cafeteria while your second graders are trying to read silently.

3. The school secretary has not put phone messages in your mailbox on several occasions. This has resulted in your children not being picked up and your not knowing that a dentist appointment had been cancelled.

4. The paraeducator who works in your classroom has not followed through on the discipline plan that you both agreed upon. The groups he works with are becoming very disruptive and are clearly not getting the reading practice they need.

5. Several students are listening to ipods during your lesson.

II. Please describe why you would use an I-message rather than a you-message?