SLANT Listening Strategy Lesson for Paying Attention

In this resource, students will learn about the strategy called S.L.A.N.T. This is a strategy to teach students how to pay attention and listen. This can be such a critical skill when students are in school, at home, and with their friends. SLANT stands for S-Sit up, L-Lean forward, A-Ask questions, N-Nod head, T-Track the speaker. Students will first be asked about what does "paying attention" and "listening" mean. They will also be encouraged to talk about who and what they need to pay attention to and listen to at home and school. Then they will learn about the SLANT strategy. They will be asked to participate in a partner activity in which they will tell about a happy memory for 2-3 minutes with a beginning, middle, and end for the story. They will then ask their partner a question about their memory to see if they were listening. The partner is allowed to ask 1-2 questions if they are unclear about some details. Next, they will swap roles and the person who shared is now the listener and vice versa. The PPT slideshow will prompt some questions about what was easy or challenging about this activity. The last part of the lesson is a fun game called "When someone claps twice." This is such a fun game that your students will want to play again and again. I placed this at the end of the lesson because you can play it as many times as time allows. There are 27 commands in the game. The teacher begins the game by passing out a strip of paper to each student. Some students may get 2 strips as there are 27 strips and you may not have 27 students. That is o.k.! It adds to the challenges. After the teacher claps twice, the student with the command "When the teacher claps twice, ..." needs to do the task on their strip of paper. Then the next student needs to do the task after the student does their task and so on. To reinforce the SLANT strategy, you can print off either slide 5 or 10 and put up in the classroom.