- Findings
Engaging children of young age in the classroom is a great teaching experience, but comes with multiple challenges for the teachers. As a childhood educator, my experiences with young children have always been great and memorable but the only challenge that I faced during my experience was to reinforce active listening skills among children. I have found that children of young ages have different needs and capabilities, as every child is different. As a result, I have also found that every child responds differently in the classroom. Considering the active listening skills among children, the age group giving me a tough time was children aged 6 to 7 years old.
One of the challenges that I faced while teaching a group of children aged 6 years old was to catch their attention towards the topic and make them remain focused for a long period of time. I witnessed those young children often distracted easily during classroom lectures, as their attention span is very short. Children of this age get easily distracted either by a bird out of the window or by a classmate playing with a pencil.
“I was teaching 6-7-year-old students about the properties of water and required children’s attention. However, I observed that student A was talking with other children and was distracting the whole class. In the first fifteen minutes, I realised that the lecture was not going as planned, so I had to opt for a strategy to foster active listening among students.
To help children bring attention to the topic and to foster active listening among them, I pointed at a random student and asked her to share her thoughts related to the properties of water. I observed that the student was initially confused but later she tried explaining her point of view, using short sentences. I appreciated her and nodded positively to her response to make her feel confident and appreciated. After I appreciated the student, I saw that she felt good, and in the next class, I observed that she listened actively to my lectures and paid attention. And not only, her, but the other students also listened actively to me during the class. I felt a need to address student A’s behaviour and wanted to foster active listening skills among students like her who are easily distracted and have a short attention span. Considering the student's behaviour and response to whom I pointed at, I believe that the behaviour of children can be influenced through positive reinforcement. So, the next day, I introduced a sticker-rewarding activity in the class, asking children to listen actively in the class and then they will be rewarded with listening stickers. After the lecture, I addressed student A and told her that I noticed that her paying attention to the lectures and carefully listening to me. Later I appreciated her for paying attention and asked other students to clap for her. As a result of this positive reinforcement, I observed amazing results. I noticed all the students started listening actively during lectures and paid attention. I also noticed that children were waiting for the sticker rewards, which was a kind of motivator for them to listen actively in the class.”
Reflecting on this experience, I feel that rewarding children for their active listening skills help them repeat the same behaviour and pay attention to the class, as the behaviour of the students changed after I started implementing the positive reinforcement strategy.
Moreover, considering another experience from my reflection journal, I also believe that active listening of students can be enhanced by asking them questions about the lectures after the class and then appreciating them verbally to boost their confidence and make them more interested and active listeners in the class. In my experience of conducting an extra class for children aged approximately 8 years old, I encountered the same problem of reinforcing active listening, for example:
“I was teaching English to a group of 8-year-old children when I observed some students lost in their thoughts which impacted their ability to concentrate and listen to the lectures. At that moment I realised that I should switch to a strategy, in a way that could help them listen actively to what I was saying. To address this issue, I asked one of the students: “I feel like you are thinking about something, would you like to share your thoughts with us?”. The student at first felt shy, but later he said that he was thinking something related to the topic, but he did not listen to what I was telling the class at that moment. He further said that he was trying to relate the topic with reality, which made him lose his attention towards the topic. I listened to the student and appreciated him thinking out of the box about the topic at first. Then I politely asked him to first actively listen to the lectures, so he does not miss any important information. I told him that I would love it if he listened to what I spoke, and I will be thankful for that behaviour. So later, when I continued teaching, I observed that the student was listening actively to what I was saying, and not only him, but the other students were paying full attention to the lectures as well. I observed that the students were responding to my questions in class, so I verbally appreciated their active listening and participation, and this brought a big smile to their faces. This strategy of verbal appreciation and verbal reward influenced their habits and made them active listeners.”
This made me realise the power of positive reinforcement, which could be done in so many ways. I discovered that teachers can use the positive reinforcement strategy by simply asking a question to the children, or politely addressing them to pay attention to the class. I did not reward the student with a gift, but my polite behaviour and verbal appreciation towards him, made him motivated to listen to the lecture actively.
Another important way that I believe can be used is to give presents to children as a reward for active listening or to offer them leadership roles as rewards, as young children like to play the roles of leaders and lead children of the same age group. I experienced this while teaching students aged between 7 to 11 years old, where I realised that children need to be motivated and positively reinforced differently, as their preferences changes with increasing age. Below is a piece of my reflective journaling from this experience:
“The summer break was near, and I had some pending topics to teach in the class. When I entered the class, the children were not in a mood to study as they were excited for the vacations. It was tough for me to get the class disciplined and foster active listening among students, as I had a task that I needed to complete by the end of the class. I instantly had an idea in my mind and said “We have to do a group activity after the class lecture”. The children did not notice, which made me think that maybe children aged 7 to 11 are not very interested in an anonymous group activity, so I should specify it, by saying something that can instantly attract them. Then I said, “children who will listen actively during the lectures will later be rewarded with gifts or points which can be later exchanged with small prizes”. I noticed that some children were looking attentively at me during the lecture and were listening to what I said, so to check if they were listening, I asked a question related to the previous content I shared. I observed that children aged 6, 8, or 9 years listened carefully, and wanted to answer. However, some children aged above 9 were not very interested in listening to the lecture, so, I rewarded the children later with small gifts such as a ruler, coloured pencils, markers, etc.
The next day, I wanted to address children aged above 9 years and wanted them to develop active listening skills. For this, I announced that “children who will listen actively to the lectures might get a chance to become a leader of the project activity”. After this, I received the immediate attention of the targeted children as they were more interested in becoming a leader of the group rather than receiving prizes upon listening carefully to the teacher”.
As a result of this, I found that children who were aged below nine years were more interested in receiving gifts for paying attention and listening actively to the class, while children aged above 9 were more interested in being rewarded with roles and leadership responsibilities. However, I felt a good change in both cases, as children from both age groups were actively listening to me and paid their attention in the class. This was because children considered gifting, and being rewarded with leadership roles as a positive motivator, or appreciation from the teacher upon listening actively in the class, indeed it was a form of positive reinforcement. Now I believe, that positive reinforcement can be used as a powerful tool to help children engage in the classroom and listen actively to the lectures.
