Experience the feeling of not being listened to
This is a task to increase your awareness of how it can feel for children when they are telling a story or wanting attention from somebody who is not listening.
Step 1:
Watch the video below and reflect on the bodily expression and talk of the preschool teacher. Discuss the challenge of having more than one child around you, in a typical outdoor situation, and how you can try to meet the different initiatives coming from the children all the time. How can you verbally and bodily show interest?
Helpful questions:
- What are the bodily initiatives from the child?
- What are the verbal initiatives from the child?
- How can you explain the diversity in utterances?
- How can it be possible to pick up on initiatives from these situations later?
In this video a preschool teacher student is being approached by several children at once.
Interacting with many children at the same time
Step 2:
Try a micro-roleplay where the aim is to experience the feeling of not being listened to. Work in groups of 2–4 persons.
- The first person is making up a story or recounting something from real life that is exiting to him or her.
- As he/she is going on with the story, the others in the group are to demonstratively look in other directions, or talk to each other, and give bodily expressions to signal that they are not paying attention.
- Switch roles in turn until that everybody has tried.
- Discuss how it felt to be the one who was not being listened to.