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Teaching Students to Follow Directions

Resource: "Following Directions: How do I Teach this Skill?"

https://learningspecialistmaterials.blogspot.com/2011/02/following-directions-how-do-i-teach.html
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For this week resource blog, instead of particularly focusing literacy in a specific content course and how we can implement things in our class to improve student's literacy skills in learning, I wanted to really focus on just following directions. In any subject and any task, following directions is an important skill student need to learn and I've been noticing while tutoring and/or in classes at Hilsman Middle there are a lot of students who do not follow directions or not even read it. Automatically, many students normally just ignore the directions and go straight to the questions of the worksheets. In most cases, I do feel like their work or tests are straight forward and do not require reading the directions to do it properly, especially in math, but that is not true for everything. There are definitely times that the directions have specific points that students would not have known without reading it, such as pick one out of the two questions. So, directions are important, and I definitely feel like reading directions needs to be habitual for students. I found a blog post online, written by Dr. Erica Warren - Learning Specialist and Educational Therapist, that gives some ideas on how to teach students in following directions. It does not specifically talk about reading directions, but it gives 3 fun ideas that can help students improve on following different types of directions (auditory or written). I think everyone should check it out!
WORD COUNT: 245

Comments

  1. Jessica SharrettsSeptember 26, 2018 at 6:42 PM

    Hi Jane!! I am so guilty of not reading the directions! And you know what? I think that is the main reason why I miss questions on an assignment or test. If I just slow down and simply read the directions, I am much better off. I really like how your blog puts emphasis on “reading the directions” because I know other students do the same as I. They do not read the directions. Great post, girl!

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