Building Communication Skills in Students
Facilitator: Dr. Bruce Ellis (@DrBruceEllis) | http://bit.ly/TCEAcommunicationskills
Session Description
Communication skills are critical for students to master regardless of their age. Join us to learn a variety of easy tools that you and your students can use to develop good communication skills. You’ll leave with tools, tricks, and tips to help your students communicate with confidence and ease.
What is Communication?
Merriam-Webster Dictionary define communication as, "a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior."
models of communication
Linear Model
A message is sent by a sender to a receiver. Both the sender and receiver need to be aware of distortion (or noise) that may inhibit the message from arriving and being interpreted as intended. This one-way method of communication is much like sending a single text message but not having a dialog.
Interactional Model
This model goes beyond the one-way communication method in the Linear Model. The Interactional Model consists of information going back and forth between two people. The receiver gives feedback, such as a verbal "Yep, that makes sense" or physical such as nodding the head and raised eyebrows. The feedback included in this model helps the sender gauge if his/her message is being understood as intended. One key, but limiting, feature of this model is that a person can be both sender AND receiver but not at the same time. Communication is achieved through feedback.
A unique aspect of this model is to recognize that each person has a field of experience from which they communicate and process.
Transactional Model
Participants in this model are not senders/receivers but communicators. Communication is seen as a transaction in which both are involved AND a shared meaning is achieved. Instead of each person just inhabiting their field of experience, they each lean in to participate in a shared field of experience. Messages are also built on each other.
Teach Effective Communication Skills
Dr. James Stanfield offers eight tips to help teach effective communication skills to students. They include:
Teach kids empathy
Teach conversation skills
Establish listening/speaking procedures
Teach respectful vocabulary
Teach the power of pausing
Practice speaking and listening in natural settings
Encourage introspection
Turn taking
Harshita Makvana shares several basic skills that a child should be taught. As you look though these, consider how culture may alter this list.
Initiate or enter a conversation with polite enthusiasm
Make eye contact with the listener
Speak clear and try to be audible
Be empathetic and accept differences
Never interrupt a conversation
Listen and respond appropriately
Complete the communication loop
proper discourse
If you want to be more specific about communication, then consider sharing with your students how to have a proper discourse. Our current society lacks these skills...and it is quite evident. Discourse has rules that you follow. They include:
Discourse includes at least two people with each person given full agency and equal respect.
Discourse is only about the words spoken in a specific conversation.
The person proposing the 'idea' has the burden of proof. The other person/people have the burden to listen with empathy
Participants have an open mind and understand that entertaining a thought that is presented does not mean to agree with the position.
Participants must be willing to change their minds if presented with valid reasons/points.
And, just because an argument is a good one doesn't mean it is true or valid.
games/activities
Google listening and speaking skills can be taught in a variety of ways in the class. You may find these ideas easy to use when you have just a few minutes remaining in class but aren't able to release the students yet.
The Crazy Professor Reading Game
Chris Biffle incorporates whole brain teaching in this "game." Initially used as students retell a passage they read, it can be used when students retell what was just taught in class. With this technique, students use expressive language and hand signals as they share. The listener encourages them on and asks questions with excitement. Some instances have the student retelling what they learned as they use hand gestures while the listener is mirroring the hand gestures while they listen.
Party Line Game
Students have to listen carefully and use a variety of words to win at this game. A word is given and the first person describes it in a concise way. Once the second person gets it right, they turn to the third person and continue the play. BUT, no words can be reused in describing it AND everyone has headphones on (or their ears covered) until it is their turn to listen and guess. [YouTube Video]
The Telephone Game
Students sit on the floor in a circle close enough to whisper in the ear of the other student but not too close so that other students can hear. The 'first' student is given a word or phrase and whispers it in the next student's ear. That student then leans over and whispers it to the next person. Play continues until it gets back to the 'first' student. The last student says what he heard and the first student says what he started with. [Instructions]
20 Questions
Whoever is "it" thinks of an object that the others will try to guess. Guessers have 20 questions to ask to determine what "it" is thinking of. Questions asked of "it" should be yes/no question...such as, "Is it an animal?" If someone thinks they know the answer they can guess; if they are wrong, they are out of the game. You can play the online version, Akinator, in which the computer uses artificial intelligence to guess the character, object or animal you are thinking of.
25 Words or Less
Two team captains are given a a list of 5 words in which they bid on how few of words they can use to have their team guess all 5 words. Play starts at 25 words and bidding goes down such that one captain might say, "I can do this in 18 words." If the opposing captain doesn't feel like she can do it in less than that many words, she passes. The clock begins and the playing captain has 1 minute and cannot exceed the number of words they bid.
Paper Slide Videos
Creating a paper slide video is a simple and rudimentary way of helping students learn to communicate information in a concise method. Diana Benner shares the complete process in her blog post Reel into Paper Slide Videos. Students are given a set number of blank pages. The first page is the title/author page while each following page highlights important information. When ready to record, one students slides on the table in/out of view of the camera (hence the name) while the narrator reads the information with the third member in the group recording with a video camera such as what is typically on a smart phone. Here are some sample videos posted online to help you visualize the process.
Sketchnoting
Sketchnoting (sometimes referred to as visual notetaking) is a form of note taking in which students use visuals along with text to record what they are learning. Doug Neil provides a short video that explains how to get started in sketchnoting. Consider showing a sample video to your student so they see how the listener is sketchnoting while they are listening. Also, share with students a variety of completed sketchnotes. If the skecthnote was done well, another person should be able to look at the sketchnote and retell the story or information.
Back-to-Back Drawing
In this game, students sit back-to-back. One student is the describer and the other is the artist. As the describer describes a picture that is given to her, the artist tries to recreate it based on the description shared. Once finished, the final drawing is revealed and compared to the original. This could be done as a 1:whole group in which one student describes and all the other students are at their desk and drawing the picture; when time is up the describer shows the image and the artists show their work as well. Instead of drawing, the describer could be telling how to fold a paper to make an origami object.
PechaKucha
PechaKucha is a presentation that is given that involves 20 images/slides. The student has only 20 seconds per slide to share. You can view samples here. If you want to create your own and have it publish to the PK website, then use this creation tool; students upload images, record audio, and the publish to the website.
SLANT Strategy
Dr. Allen Mendler shares a strategy with students to help with listening and speaking. It involves:
Sit up straight
Listen
Answer and ask questions
Nod to show interest
Track the speaker
free audiobook
How To Talk To Anyone (Advanced Communication Skills) by Leil Lowndes
In her book How to Talk to Anyone, Lowndes offers 92 easy and effective sure-fire success techniques - she takes the listener from first meeting all the way up to sophisticated techniques used by the big winners in life. [Listen on YouTube]
communication tools
Seesaw & Flipgrid - These two tools can be used on the computer, tablets, and phones. They provide a simple way to have asynchronous video conversations and sharing behind a firewall.
Doodle Buddy - It doesn't get any easier than this iOS app. No bells and whistles ensure your students stay focused drawing/illustrating their ideas.
Adobe Spark- You can use this tool on iOS, Android, and the web making it a great tool to help tell your story in a variety of forms from graphics to collages, flyers to animations, and even video.
Stop Motion Studio - Create stunning stop motion animations/videos with this tool. Though not free, you can purchase it for Android/Chromebooks, PC, Mac, iOS, and Amazon Fire. Check out the Stop Motion Studio Showcase for sample videos that will help provide inspiration and ideas for you and your students.
CuePrompter - You will find this online teleprompter a perfect support for your students when they need to record videos. After writing out their script, they can copy/paste it in CuePrompter and edit the settings. Start it and your video recorder for a professional looking video where your students don't have to memorize everything!
ChatterPix - This app allows you to give a voice to your photos. Take any photo, draw a line for the mouth, and then record your voice. You'll be amazed how well this works. ChatterPix is for iOS only and can save to YouTube. ChatterPix Kids is for iOS and Android but cannot save to YouTube.
Graphic Organizers - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt provide a wide variety of graphics organizers that you can download and print out. These can help students organize their thoughts about a topic so they can be more comfortable when talking about the topic.
quotes
Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble.
