Habit 5: Seek First to Understand...

Habit 5 is a VERY tricky one in my classroom! Habit 5 says "Seek first to understand, THEN to be understood." In other words, "Listen - THEN talk." Not an easy demand of a bunch of always-right, needing-to-be-heard third graders!

We practiced this skill in 5 mini-lessons:

Day 1: Chapter 5 of Sean Covey's 7 Habits of Happy Kids. I thought the discussion questions after the chapter were especially great for this one - and of course, it is SUPER important to listen first and then talk! Lots of miscommunication happening in this chapter - and the kids got a kick out of interpreting the main character's lisp!

Day 2: We made an anchor chart to hang all year about being a good listener. Since good listening is a necessary skill for practicing Habit 5, we made sure to cover all the bases! Here's what we came up with:

I combined aspects of lots of examples I found online and traced them onto the chart paper. Yay projectors!

Day 3: Video day! My kids love, love, LOVE the "Happy Kids" episodes found on the Leader in Me website. The video for Habit #5 is "Lily's Wed Paint", and in my opinion, it's the best one of the four.

Day 4: We read The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs by Jon Sczieska. I have always loved this book for showing perspective, but it also works really well to convey Habit 5! We talked about how the wolf was misunderstood; the police didn't listen to him before they decided he was guilty. They should have sought first to understand! :-)

Day 5: Okay, so this lesson didn't go QUITE as planned. I tried using one of the Franklin Covey lessons from the Leader in Me website. It involved a lot of prep and a LOT of teamwork- I think it could have worked better for Habit 6 (Synergize)! I split the class into groups of 3, and each group member had a number: #1 could talk, but couldn't stand up or write; #2 could stand up, but couldn't talk or write; and #3 could write, but couldn't talk or stand up. Each group member was given two (different) clues to ultimately lead their group in making a house out of gumdrops and toothpicks. 

We did NOT get far. I didn't even take pictures of the horrible lopsided formless structures!
Obviously, we need some more work on synergizing and "seeking first to understand"! While this activity was pretty frustrating for the kids (and definitely WAY longer than my 5-15 minute "mini-lesson" slot - we ended up giving up after 30 minutes!), it did lead into some good discussion about different ways of communication and listening. So, we learned something, anyway!

Good luck teaching Habit 5!