No Series: Helping Students Follow Directions

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Discussion and Supporting Materials

Thought starters

  1. How do simple actions like highlighting and numbering help students focus?
  2. Why does Mr. Colquitt repeat the directions?
  3. How does Mr. Colquitt check for understanding?

10 Comments

This was a good video and by highlight and then numbering this strategy enabled the students to get important key steps of the task. Also enabled students to ask questions if time permitted. After breaking it down into steps they now know exactly what to do.

Recommended ( 0 )

Following directions is an especially important strategy for students to learn. I enjoy seeing this teacher reading the directions and point out the important factors for the students to refer to and walks them through every step while keeping students engaged with reading it back to him. Being able to hear the directions multiple times not only from the teacher but also from the students allows for the processing time to really be able to apply those directions into the task presented. Once being in the same shoes as the students are in this video, directions were difficult to understand when they weren’t explained in detail, it was hard connecting all the dots to be able to effective do what is being asked of. This teacher does a great job breaking down directions for students to understand.

Recommended ( 0 )

This strategy is a great way to teach the students how to highlight key concepts of the questions and highlighting important instructions. This is a great strategy they can use not only in Mr. Colquitt class but in every class they take. I am excited to use this strategy in my own classroom someday!

Recommended ( 1 )

MARTHE BORN Dec 29, 2018 9:36pm

I work with high school students filling out scholarship applications. Most applications are now done online and students are able to complete most of it without help, but oftentimes they try to submit it without completing the essay portion. Using the highlight and numbering strategy for the essay directions would be very helpful. I recommend to students that they copy and paste the essay objectives to the top of their word document and check off the steps as they complete them. I am going to try the highlight and numbering this semester.

Recommended ( 1 )

I think this is a great strategy for students to learn how to follow directions. This strategy is useful for students with an IEP who specifically need directions repeated, but also keeps all of the students in the classroom on track and focused as well. I like how the teacher first reads the directions, then tells the students what to highlight and how to number each step, has the students read the directions back to him, and then asks if anyone has questions about the directions. This allows the students to hear the directions from the teacher, read it themselves, hear it from a peer, and then process the directions. The repetition helps the students stay on task, get back on task if they were off-task. Highlighting the steps in the directions help to check off each step that has been completed and each step that still needs to be done. This process helps students to create organization skills as well as executive functioning skills.

Recommended ( 1 )

Materials

Transcripts

Helping Students Follow Directions Speaker 1: Everyone should be in this activity packet. We're going to look under the section that's

Helping Students Follow Directions Speaker 1: Everyone should be in this activity packet. We're going to look under the section that's titled Connecting Our Ideas. Please have your highlighters ready, I'm about to provide explicit directions for this activity. You will view a visual in silence for 30 seconds, analyze the visual in pairs using the analysis prompts, and then share out as a class. Now I will repeat the directions and I will let you know what to highlight and what to number. The directions say you will view a visual in silence for 30 seconds. Please highlight that and then place a one above what you highlighted. Persephone, what am I expecting you to do with this activity?
Persephone: We're going to view it for 30 seconds and then we're going to analyze the visual in pairs with the analysis prompts and then we're going to share it out as a class.
Speaker 1: Thank you. What questions do we have about this activity? Yeah.