- Understand the importance and value of active listening
- Identify how to practice active listening
- Build connection among club members
- Share the Active Listening Skills chart by pulling it up on a large screen or handing out printed copies for everyone to read. Go over each skill and pause for questions or quick discussion to make sure everyone understands.
- Then, give each student 3 minutes to write down where they would like to take a vacation if time, money, and travel logistics were not a consideration. Ask them to record multiple descriptors (such as temperature, scenery, food, plants, animals, activities, etc.) of their vacation destination and 2-3 reasons why they chose their vacation destination.
- Assign students to pairs. You can do this easily and without the awkwardness of choosing partners by having folks turn to the person closest to them, or have folks count off by whatever number of attendees you have divided by 2..
- Once everyone has a partner, invite the partners to decide who is going to be the assigned listener first. The other will be the speaker. They will get a turn to be both!
- The speaker will describe their chosen destination and reasons for choosing their destination without mentioning the actual destination or anything that would completely give it away. The speaker has 2 minutes to talk about their destination and should aim to take up the whole 2 minutes with as many details as possible.
- The listener must practice active listening skills throughout the whole 2 minutes–remember to keep the 10 Skills for Active Listening chart visible throughout the whole activity so they can use it for guidance!
- After 2 minutes, the student leader should call “time”.
- The listener of each group then has 30 seconds to summarize the three or four main criteria that they have heard the speaker express and use that to guess their partner’s dream destination. The speaker can let them know if they were right or wrong.
- The speaker then takes approximately 30 seconds to tell the listener if they guessed the destination correctly as well as point out a few specific active listening skills that they noticed their partner demonstrated.
- Then, have each group of partners swap roles and repeat all the steps.
- Move on to the discussion questions and ask for 1-3 responses per question, based on how much time you have left.
- Who correctly guessed their partner’s travel destination?
- How did your partner demonstrate good active listening skills? How did that feel for you as the speaker?
- Do you think active listening might look different from person to person based on their culture, upbringing, and personality? How so?
- Was it difficult or easy to actively listen for 2 minutes? Did you find that your thoughts wandered to guessing potential vacation destinations of the speaker and that you stopped listening and being in the moment with the speaker? If so, how did that affect your final guess?
- If you were speaking and could tell someone was thinking about what they were going to say as opposed to listening, how would that make you feel?
- How could active listening apply to more serious conversations? Why is this important when thinking about mental health?