1. Listening Friends
-Revision slides
Use these slides to help you remember
your training and to help you practise
your skills.
2.
3. st
Be hone
and Wor
k ou
y wha t
tru stworth feel t
ings
Keep things sayi are
ng.
confidential
Show real care
T for other
und ry to people.
bef ers
be ore tr tand to
Try and
und yin t
ers g to
too ders ers
un oth
d. how el
fe
4. Explain Befriender
process Promise
Greetings
Listening Friends
Mind Map
5. This is the I’m sorry, I’d really
Befriender like to help but I can
Promise. only listen to the
I’ll just read problem if you are
I’ll try to help you it to you. happy with the
by listening to Is that promise.
what’s bothering okay? If you want to think
you. about it, you can
come back again and
talk to a Befriender
later.
Explain Befriender
process Promise
I’m going to ask an
adult Befriender to
Greetings come and help. It’s
okay I’ll talk to
them with you.
Hello, my name is … Who would you like
I’m here to be your me to ask?
Befriender today.
6.
7. What is bullying?
What does it look like?
What does it feel like?
Why does it happen?
What can we do about it
8. Explain Befriender Checking
process Promise Active
listening feelings
Greetings Open Reflecting
Need
questions to back
know Know
more? enough?
Listening Friends
The Summarising
Mind Map
problem
9. What does it look like? What does it feel like?
~ nods, ums and yes ~ feels comfortable
~ recap ~ makes people feel equal
~ good eye contact ~ makes people feel
~ comfortable seating welcome
~hands on lap ~ makes people feel
~ not fidgeting confident
~ looks as if you ~ makes people feel safe
understand
~ looks as if you care
10.
11.
12. I bet you When …
felt …? How did happened, did
you feel you feel …?
when …?
13. We get people to
talk by asking good
questions and we
actively listen
REMEMBER
BEFRIENDERS
IS A
LISTENING
SERVICE!
14. Explain Befriender Checking
process Promise Active
listening feelings
Greetings Open Reflecting
Need
questions to back
know Know
more? enough?
Listening friends
The Summarising
Mind Map
problem
Moving on
Prompting suggestions
Assessing Checking
suggestions feelings
15. So what would you like to happen?
Moving on OR
What would you like to do about it?
IF THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY
Prompting suggestions STUCK, A FEW USEFUL
SUGGESTIONS ARE:
Perhaps you could
~talk to them about it
Assessing ~ talk to your parents about it
suggestions ~ talk to your teacher about it
~ talk to an adult Befriender
about it
What do you think would
happen if you did that?
That seems a really good
idea.
Checking How would you
OR
feel if that
feelings Maybe you’d rather try
happened?
something else.
16. Explain Befriender Checking
process Promise Active
listening feelings
Greetings Open Reflecting
Need
questions to back
know Know
more? enough?
Befriender Mind Map
The Summarising
problem
Moving on
Endings
Prompting suggestions
Exit poll
Assessing Checking Goodbyes and
suggestions feelings good lucks
Editor's Notes
PS 1.05pm Welcome the children and explain that we will be going on the next step of our journey together. Introduce the adults and their roles in Befrienders (as trainers, supporters, team mates, people we need to learn to trust if our service is to work well). Explain frequency of training and choice to be made about whether to work as a Befriender when the training is over. We’ve done some work together on understanding our own feelings ready to work with other children. Can anyone remember what we’ve learnt so far? (ICE, good listening). We’re now going to start out training properly. The training is in 2 stages: Befriender training, where we learn to be listening friends. Mediation training, where we learn to help people listen to each other to solve their problems.
GE 1.20pm I’m going to show you the things that you will learn and be tested on during and at the end of the training. As I read them out I want you to think carefully about what they mean to you and to reflect on how hard they will be for you to learn. If you feel completely confident about something, then when I read it out give me a double thumbs up, if you feel you’re good at it but could do with a little improvement give one thumbs up, if you know you understand what it means but need quite a bit more practice give a wobble, if you know what it means and you know you’ve a lot of work to do on it give a thumbs down, if you’ve no idea what it means give us a different sign. Over the training we will be practising and developing all of the skills. Don’t worry about the ones you don’t understand at the moment as we’ll be teaching them to you.
If time, look at emotional intelligence.
GE 1.40pm This is the first step of the mind map. Getting a visual picture of the colours and order and number of the clouds is an important part of remembering. Before we start to practice this part of the map we’ll just have a quick brain break. Head shoulders knees and toes.
If time, pass round copies of Befriender promise, one between two. Ask the children to position their chairs ready for a Befriender session and to practise showing it to the client ready to respond appropriately in case they say that’s okay or not okay. Mini-plenary: How do you think it will feel to tell someone that we can’t continue? Why is it very important to stop if they don’t agree to the promise? Method: What language would we choose to tell someone in the middle of a session that we needed an adult Befriender? Model appropriate use of language and display on wall. Ask children to practise again with a partner. Mini-plenary: Do we feel confident about when to use the promise and how to use it? We should have made people feel comfortable at this point and we’re now ready to help them without solving their problem for them.
1.55pm GE Introduce the Befriender Promise. Read it through a sentence at a time. Discuss what each section means. Ask how we will help without giving advice. Emphasise importance of just having a chance to tell your problem can feel like a weight has been lifted. Ask if anyone has ever told anyone a problem and they’ve been told by someone else how they should solve it, maybe they were told not to play together or to say sorry. Is this always helpful? How does it make you feel? People do this to try to be helpful or sometimes they do it because they’re busy and want you to get it sorted out so it doesn’t take time up. But often when we have a problem we need to be the one to make the decision about how it should be solved. Sometimes it helps if people give you a few ideas for you to think about it to help you solve it but often it’s best if the person with the problem makes the decision. When might we need help from an adult Befriender? Why do we ask if that’s okay? What would we do if someone didn’t agree with it?
9.40 Bullying (mini-plenary at 10am) Aim: To identify different forms of bullying. To draw up a definition of bullying. Method: Remind children about the exploration about making people feel bad about what they look like and that this is a form of bullying. Explain that we’ll be working in 3 groups discussing what bullying actually is and to do this each of us will tell the rest of the group about some real bullying in our school. Tell a story of bullying that’s happened at our school that they might know about. Ask if that’s bullying? How the people involved would have felt? Split into groups and undertake a round about bullying. Adults scribe key words on paper in 3 different colours to represent emotional, physical and verbal bullying. Each group to select 2 people to feed back to main group. Mini-plenary: What is bullying? Anything that is emotionally or physically upsetting for a person is a problem even if we wouldn’t define it as bullying. So if someone feels that they are being bullied we deal with it as if they are. We are always compassionate towards people as Befrienders and we empathise with their problems even if the same thing wouldn’t be a problem to us. 10.20 Back-to-back Stand Up Aim: To help to build a climate of trust. Method: Tell the children that we have been thinking a great deal about the issue of trust since last week and that we are going to be doing things to help them develop trust and to feel comfortable with each other. Remind them that some very emotionally intelligent people were saying last week that they didn’t feel a total trust because they didn’t feel to know everyone. If as a group we really do feel that it is important to develop more trust then as a group we have a responsibility for trying to get to know each other a little more. We would like you to do something very difficult and very emotionally intelligent now. We are going to play a very difficult cooperation game that requires you to work closely with a partner. Remember to talk to your partner and also to listen to your partner so that you show each other mutual respect at all times as this is fundamental to trust. We’ll be asking you at the end to tell the group what you enjoyed about working with your partner, so remember to have your yellow hat on while you are doing the activity. Adults demonstrate. They must then stand up without unlocking their elbows. Who feels that they would be able to select a partner, who they would not normally feel particularly comfortable working with because they do not know or do not understand them very well, to try this with? Can you demonstrate to the group. What do you need to remember while you are working with each other? After a little while, even if they are unsuccessful, as them how hard it was, what was hard about it and what they enjoyed about working with their partner. Divide the children into three prearranged groups. Each group goes with an adult who arranges partnerships and allows the children to try the activity. Do a round in the group about children’s feelings. Mini-plenary: Often we put on a black hat and start to think negatively about working with people we don’t know very well and by doing that we are almost setting ourselves up to fail as we’ll be ready to criticise any mistakes they make. We might not do this to their face and give them the chance to realise that they are causing upset but we might go off to do it behind their back to a friend. If we do this we are letting them down, we are letting ourselves down and we are letting the whole class down as we are not actively trying to develop trust we are destroying it. If we wear a yellow hat when we work with them, we are much more likely to be successful, we are likely to enjoy whatever we are doing more and we are actively trying to build trust so we are supporting other people, helping ourselves to become more emotionally intelligent. We should feel really proud of ourselves because we are helping the whole class to become a team.
Introduce next leg.
You had a go at empathetic listening. You listened to someone you didn’t know as they told you some things about themselves. Most of you enjoyed it. It gave you a chance to start to know other people a bit more which helps everyone to feel safer and more of a team. When you are being empathetic as you listen you should have compassion in your heart and should not be judging people on whether you agree or disagree. You need to listen and try to understand from their point of view. What does empathetic listening look like? What does empathetic listening feel like?
Tricia to introduce. Gem to have the problem. How do we get people to talk? Open Questions and Summarising Aim: Develop understanding of effectiveness of open questions and need to be able to summarise. Method: One adult has a problem that they want to talk about but they are reluctant to do so. Ask who would like to ask a question that will help the adult to talk. First person to ask question should make Befriender promise on our behalf. As children ask questions any that begin with when, where, who, what and how should be written on board. Why should be written in a different colour in capitals and a big circle should be drawn round it. From time to time ask for volunteers to summarise the problem back to the adult. If a closed question is asked the adult should only answer yes or no and a why question will result in the adult becoming uncomfortable. Mini-plenary: What sort of questions encouraged adult to speak? What do we call this kind of question? Why are closed questions unhelpful? Why has the word why being circled? How does the adult feel about the questioning that took place? Why do we need to be able to summarise?
Gem to introduce. Tricia to tell the story. Listening for Feelings and Checking Out Aim: To identify possible feelings and check out if we are correct. Method: First adult tells a story without saying the feelings. Demonstrate how to check out for feelings. Explain the importance of listening carefully and identifying how feelings might change. Did you notice what happened when a feeling was correctly identified? The person opened up and volunteered more information. Invite children to check out for further feelings.
There were three different ways to check out for feelings. We’ve put them on the white board for you today. Can anyone work out why we’ve used the colours we have for them? Why is the green question better than the orange one? When would you use the orange question? Would you ever use the red question? Split into two groups. Children have uninterrupted time to tell their story and rest of group check out for feelings. Mini-plenary: How did it feel to be listened to? What happens when you correctly identify people’s feelings? Why is it important that everyone should have a go at telling their story? (Everyone should feel how good it is to be really listened to. You gain trust by giving trust, so if we are to continue to build trust we should push ourselves to find the confidence to trust the rest of the group enough to share our thoughts, feelings and ideas with them). Tell stories and check out for feelings. At end of each one check out if there were any feelings we missed. Plenary: With a partner work out how you would explain to someone who had never done Befriender training why we check out for feelings and how we do it.
So the next leg is the listening leg which is what Befrienders is all about.
9.20am Who’d like to demonstrate the first 2 legs? One of the adults will demonstrate the next leg showing each step once it is completed on the next slide.
Only one last little bit to learn. Practise. Next week will be practising with Year 6 coming with problems and them helping us to assess your skills.
