3344: Listening

My definition of listening is to be able to take what someone is saying and convert it to a way that you can understand it. I think as easy as it may sound, it can be very difficult. There are four different types of listening; discriminative, aesthetic, efferent, and critical. Discriminative is when you pick and choose what you want to hear based on your interest. An example of this would be like when you watch the news and you see a headline that really gets your attention. You may not watch all of the news but you will be ready to listen to that part. Aesthetic listening is what you do for pleasure. An example of this would be like your S.S.R. I usually do this be reading aloud to my girls at home every night. Efferent listening is when your listening for information or simply taking notes. My personal example of this is when we took my father-in-law to the hospital and the doctors were telling us everything that was going on. We currently still have him in the hospital and everyday we have new information to listen to. Critical listening is when you listen carefully and more in depth. I think an example of this is when we did the debate in class. We had to carefully listen to see which point we can argue back and how we can argue back.
During the debate I think the hardest part was the actual listening. We had to use all four types of listening. We had to pick and choose what points we thought were the best to argue back, which were more interesting to us, take notes on what was originally said, and also use our brain to think of how and what we were going to debate. I didn't think it was really difficult until it was time to argue back, I guess this means I really wasn't doing the right type of listening. After the first time I got more into it and was able to pick up on the different types of listening and it made this debate way easier.
After reading choice words, I think the most important "teacher talk" was "Did anyone notice...?" I think this was important because you are showing the children what to look for while reading a book or how to get more involved in discussions. This will also let the children become more aware of new punctuation, allow them to expand their vocabulary by looking up new words they have noticed, and also allowing them to use their imagination by creating new characters or stories. By using this talk we can learn to start discussions and children will feel more involved by us (as teachers) inviting them into these discussions by simply asking this question. This will not only make students more productive readers, but will also allow students to try new possibilities and becoming aware of new things. This will certainly expand their literature world and allow them to notice different things.