Active Listening Skills Lesson | Editable PowerPoint, Workbook, Activities & Teacher Guide

Help students develop one of the most important communication skills for school, work and everyday life: active listening. This complete, ready-to-teach resource moves beyond simply telling students to “listen carefully”. Students learn practical behaviours they can use to show attention, clarify information, check understanding and respond appropriately in realistic situations.

Students explore the difference between hearing and active listening, verbal and non-verbal listening behaviours, common barriers to listening, questioning techniques, paraphrasing, summarising and checking understanding. They also consider how distractions, interrupting, judging and planning a response too early can affect communication.

Practical activities give students opportunities to apply the skills through discussion, workplace scenarios, partner activities, role play, reflection and self-assessment.

This resource includes:

• 34-slide editable PowerPoint presentation
• 17-page Student Workbook
• 17-page Teacher Answer Workbook
• 1-page Teacher Guide
• Editable Word student workbook
• Printable PDF student workbook
• Fillable PDF student workbook
• Teacher answers with suggested responses
• Teaching guidance, discussion prompts and model answers

Students develop skills including:

• Giving full attention
• Using appropriate body language
• Recognising verbal and non-verbal listening behaviours
• Identifying barriers to effective listening
• Asking open, closed and clarifying questions
• Paraphrasing what another person has said
• Summarising key information
• Checking understanding
• Listening without interrupting
• Responding with empathy and professionalism
• Applying active listening in workplace and everyday situations
• Reflecting on their own listening habits and setting an improvement goal

Suitable for secondary education, further education, careers and employability, business studies, vocational learning, communication skills, work experience preparation and life skills programmes.

The lesson can be taught as a complete sequence or divided across shorter sessions.
Total resource content: 34 PowerPoint slides plus 35 supporting pages.

Communications, Workplace, ESOL and Computing Resources