Tuned-In Listening Poster

Every part of my old Whole-Body Listening poster described what a listening kid looks like to the adult at the front of the room.

Eyes on the speaker. Mouth closed. Body still. Not one of those panels described what a listener actually does, which is take in a message, make sense of it, and hold onto it long enough to go and act on it. It took me a few years of teaching alongside that poster to notice the difference, and once I noticed it I could not unsee it.

I also have students who genuinely cannot do that poster. For some of my autistic students, eye contact is not a neutral request: it burns up the exact mental resources they need in order to process what I am saying. Some of my students with ADHD listen better while they are moving, and there is research to back that up. In the one subject where movement is the whole medium, I had a visual on my wall asking certain kids to stop moving in order to learn.

So I rebuilt it. The Tuned-In Listening Poster breaks getting ready to learn into three steps, and it stays flexible about how a student gets each one done:

🛑 I tune in. My body stops, my equipment goes on the floor, and my attention turns toward the speaker. You cannot catch the instructions if your body is still playing.

🧠 I take it in. I watch the demonstration, I pay attention to the instructions, and I picture myself doing it. Your brain needs a picture before your body can try the skill.

✅ I check in. I show that I have it with a thumbs up, or I ask for help if I do not. Asking is not failing, it is the fastest way to get good at something.

🎛 My Dial. Everyone's dial is different and my listening can look different from yours. What stays the same is that my body never takes learning away from someone else.

Under each step you will find a row of chips offering different ways to complete it, because eyes on the speaker and an ear turned toward them both do the job. Each step also carries its own "why" so that students understand the reason behind the ask rather than just the ask, plus a hand signal they can mirror back to you across a gym that is far too loud to rely on your voice alone.

This one lives on my gym wall right where my students gather for instruction, and it has given us a shared vocabulary for a conversation that used to come down to whether or not a kid looked like they were paying attention.

Happy Teaching!

‍