Active Listening Skills

Overview

In this Lesson 8 of 12, students practise active listening skills to strengthen respectful interactions in Health. Students complete short listening tasks, reflect on what they heard, and practise how to respond in ways that help others feel understood.

Learning intentions

WALT: Develop active listening skills.

• Students will demonstrate active listening behaviours during partner and whole-class tasks.
• Students will find meaning from spoken messages by identifying key ideas and details.
• Students will use respectful communication to support relationships, including when they are unsure.
• Students will reflect on how listening affects feelings, safety, and wellbeing in group interactions.

Success criteria

• I can maintain respectful listening (eyes, body, silence, and attention).
• I can tell back the main idea and one or two key details I heard.
• I can use supportive responses such as “I think you mean…”, “Can you repeat…?”, or “Thanks for sharing.”
• I can show empathy by noticing how the other person might feel and responding kindly.

Curriculum links

• Health and Physical Education: select, use and refine personal and social skills to establish, manage and strengthen relationships, including predicting and reflecting on how others might feel and discussing what they can do to support them.
• Health and Physical Education: investigate and apply behaviours that contribute to their own and others’ health, safety, relationships and wellbeing, including sense of belonging and connection through supportive interactions.
• Health and Physical Education: use personal and social skills to support respectful relationships in challenging situations (AC9HP4P06 and AC9HP4P10 as applicable through self-regulation and wellbeing responses during listening).

Lesson structure ({total minutes})

1. 0–5 min · Hook and model. Teacher reads a short scenario aloud twice (e.g., “Today we need a quiet corner for feelings. What should we do first?”) while students jot what they think the key message is. Students share quick thoughts: “What did the listener in the scenario do well?” and compare differences after the second reading.

2. 5–12 min · Direct teaching: Active listening checklist. Teacher shows a simple visual checklist: Face the speaker, Stop talking, Listen for main idea, Ask one question, Say what you understood. Students practise silently with thumbs-up if they can show each behaviour, then verbalise one example of a respectful listening response.

3. 12–20 min · Listening task 1: Find the main idea. Teacher plays an audio clip or reads a message (30–45 seconds) twice, including a main idea and two details; students choose the correct “meaning card” from three options. Students record: Main idea + Detail 1 + Detail 2 on a mini worksheet (or digital form).

4. 20–30 min · Partner work: Repeat and reflect. Teacher pairs students and assigns roles: Speaker (A) and Listener (B). Each pair uses a prompt card (e.g., “Tell me a good way to include someone in a game.”). Listeners practise “tell-back” using sentence starters: “I think you mean…”, “One detail I heard was…”, “Does that sound right?” then swap roles.

5. 30–37 min · Small-group challenge: Listening for meaning. Teacher creates 4 groups of 6 students (or 5 groups of 5) and gives each group a “meaning puzzle” sheet with 4 statements; only 2 are true based on a short spoken message. Students discuss and justify choices using evidence from what they heard (not guessing).

6. 37–45 min · Quick role-play: Supportive responses. Teacher demonstrates two contrasting responses: one respectful and one unhelpful when a listener didn’t understand. Students vote with fingers (agree/disagree), then rewrite one unhelpful response into a supportive one.

7. 45–50 min · Exit ticket and reflection. Students complete a one-question exit ticket: “Write one active listening behaviour you will use today, and one sentence you will say to help someone feel understood.” Teacher collects for feedback on listening behaviours and sentence starter accuracy.

Resources

• Active listening visual checklist (poster or slides)
• Audio clip(s) or teacher-read short messages with main idea + details
• Message “meaning cards” (3 options each)
• Partner prompt cards (respectful interactions in Health)
• Sentence starter strip for listeners
• Mini worksheet or digital form for main idea/details
• “Meaning puzzle” sheets for small groups
• Role-play scenario cards
• Exit ticket slips or digital exit ticket
• Timer (visual countdown) for each task
• Dyslexia-friendly supports: coloured overlays or line guides, audio playback device, text-to-speech-capable device

Assessment

• Formative observation during partner listening: teacher uses a quick checklist (face speaker, silence, tell-back, question/support).
• Accuracy check: students’ main idea and detail responses from Task 1 and Group Challenge.
• Exit ticket review: identify whether students can state a behaviour and a supportive sentence that shows understanding and respect.

Differentiation

• Support for learners who need scaffolding:
• Provide sentence starters for tell-back and supportive responses.
• Allow students to use a visual cue strip while listening (main idea symbol, detail bullets).
• Offer shorter messages or fewer meaning options for Task 1.
• Use audio playback at the same pace and allow one additional listening for students who require it.
• Partnerwork differentiation:
• Pre-assign partners (mix confidence levels) so listeners practise with a reliable partner model.
• Give “Listener Aide” cards (e.g., “Did you include main idea? Did you ask one question?”).
• Extension for advanced learners:
• Ask students to create an “active listening guide” for one type of interaction (e.g., school game, feelings corner, sharing ideas) with 4–5 steps and an example tell-back sentence.
• Include an extra challenge: identify the speaker’s likely feeling and suggest one empathetic response.
• Dyslexia-friendly approach:
• Use audio first, then brief text; minimise long reading.
• Provide high-contrast visuals and reduce visual clutter on worksheets.
• Offer text-to-speech or read-aloud by teacher; allow oral responses instead of full writing for exit ticket (captured by teacher or via speech-to-text if available).