Active Listening

Active listening is a useful skill in communication.  It is, as the name suggest, listening actively.  This means that you are actually listening in to and perceiving what the person/speaker is saying rather than just hearing it and letting it in through one ear and out the other.

With active listening, you use your ears, body language and your words.  When someone is talking, it is important to not only face them but to also let them know that you are listening (actively).  You can do this by nodding your head a few times, asking some questions and also to rephrase what they have said.  All this shows understanding.

In life, there are many situations in which active listening comes in handy such as working things out when there's a misunderstanding between you and maybe a close family member/friend or listening to instructions.  Active listening can also be applied in PE.  Being the physical subject that Physical Education is, there's bound to be a lot of talk and with talking comes listening.  An activity that would require actively listening is the blind obstacle course.

This is a regular obstacle course except you do it blind-folded while being guided by a friend's voice.  The blind obstacle course is a good exercise to practice your active listening because as you are blindfolded, you can't see where you're going so you are forced to listen carefully to your friend's words.  In the activity, whilst guiding my friends along, they asked many questions and repeated what I said, evidence that they were indeed listening actively.