Active Listening Pair Work

The goal of this ETP is to have students practice “Active Listening Skills.” It is part of a unit meant to train students in mentorship skills and with the goal of eventually beginning mentoring younger students to increase participation in STEM classes. Other lessons in this unit include many of the “soft skills” (presentations, collaboration, constructive feedback; appreciative inquiry and using open-ended questions. etc.) mentioned by the Industry Experts we were lucky enough to interview in our work at SEMI.org. Given the current shortage of semiconductor chips and dearth of physical and chemical engineers, our goal is to do outreach within our own student communities and increase the participation in STEM programs by those typically under-represented student groups, as this industry is actively seeking to hire them in the future. By teaching our students mentorship and presentation skills we will be hopefully preparing them to enter this essential industry. This lesson uses a short video clip, class discussion and partner work with sentence frames.