What Listening Can Look Like

In school, listening is an idea that is both very important and a sort of banal directive. What is listening, at school, beyond paying attention and raising your hand? In committing to listening for the year, it was predictable that there would be many ways of thinking about listening between the two year old children, the school age and the adults. However, the ways themselves weren't so predictable.
Here are some of the ways that children I have worked with have encountered listening as an idea:

playing with radios, microphones, recording

Playing with turntables and vinyl records

Playing with an amplifier and microphone.

   

Communicating from classroom to classroom through barriers 

Building mail boxes to be able to send letters to other classes.
This one is made by Garden room children for Fourth grade.

Discovering sounds in nature, especially how trees communicate.

Listening to trees.

                      

Creating disguises to better listen to trees. Second Grade

A gift for a special tree. Rainbow Room

Finding a way to ask the tree it's name. Rainbow Room

Experimenting with discussion formats. Fourth grade.