Active listening is way more than just hearing. It is an intentional act to engage, understand, and reflect. Active listening plays an essential role in building a student’s communication and language skills. During the early education period most learning is done in the verbal format so, parents should pay more attention to developing active listening skills in their kids. In the longer run, it will be quite helpful for students as they can perform better in their academics and also do justice with their relationships.

Being one of the  leading CBSE schools in Bangalore, we understand the importance of active learning and hence sharing a few tips on improving listening skills for children:

• Always maintain eye contact while speaking: Parents and guardians should make eye contact with their kids. Making eye contact boosts their child’s confidence and improves active listening skills which makes them more enthusiastic during conversation.

• Repeating the key points: During the conversation, parents should pay attention to the things their children are more focussing on and if they want them to focus more on a particular point, it should be repeated again and again. This will feed it into their subconscious mind.
• Ask multiple questions: Asking multiple questions during the conversation is a good way to develop listening skills among children as answering requires active listening. This is also a good way to develop inquisitiveness among them.

Here is the list of different types of listening:

• Critical listening: It involves listening and analysing both the positive and negative aspects of any topic and synthesising the information to form a point of view.

• Discriminative listening: In this type of listening interpretation is done by considering sound and body language rather than the words. 

• Aesthetic listening: It involves enjoyment. Aesthetic listening is often used by parents or teachers to make the education fun and more engaging. 

• Biased listening: It is also known as selective listening as the listener only focuses on a particular part of the communication. It leads to distorted information leading to communication.

If you are a parent and wondering how to teach listening skills to your child, here is a list of a few exercises:

• Take the help of audio resources: Children like to listen to audio clips as they find it more interesting and engaging. So parents should use audio resources for teaching different subjects. Nowadays audio resources are made using such special sounds that the brain finds more appealing. Such types of audio clips can be used to improve the active listening skills of children.
• Conduct regular listening activities: It is one of the best parenting tips for listening. Listening activities can be made in the form of games to make it more engaging and fun. Once a week it can be done as a group activity in school. This way children can not just participate but also learn to reflect on certain topics.
• Take regular feedback: Parents and teachers should be involved in taking regular feedback. This will make the students more responsive and attentive during teaching sessions as to provide any feedback it is essential to be attentive and actively listener.
• Include short questions in between conversations: It is one of the best active listening strategies for teachers and parents. Short questions in between learning sessions encourage the students to be an active listener and more attentive. This also promotes an inquisitive nature among students.
• Maintain a relaxing environment: It is one of the most essential points that parents and teachers should never miss out on. A relaxing environment promotes the holistic development of students. It enhances the confidence and promotes the participation of students in discussion sessions which further enhances the active listening skills. 

It is advisable to promote active listening skills among students as it not just be the building block of their communication skills but will also help them perform better in their academics. As per a study, there is a direct correlation between active listening and academics. Active learning skills boost student’s overall development which will help them in becoming a holistic individual. 

If you are tired of searching the internet with terms like the best schools in Bangalore or the best CBSE schools in Bangalore, consider visiting Ekya Schools. With over 30 years of education legacy, it makes us one of the leaders in the education sector. All our 5 campuses across Bangalore follow the Understanding by Design (UbD) Framework which is based on research pedagogy. Our teachers are well qualified and go through rigorous year-long teacher training programs. This makes them well-versed with modern education techniques over conventional rote learning methods. UbD framework focuses on special learning techniques that focus more on practical knowledge given through various activities to make the learning fun and more engaging which further enhances the active learning skills among students.