1. 1. By: Diego Lopez EDSC-310 Ensuring Students Understand Instructions
2. 2. *Giving instructions is critical* A Teachers skill at giving instructions impacts the students academic lives
3. 3. Giving Good Instructions Instructions should be explicit rather than implicit Instructions should be worded clearly Instructions should be worded simply Subtle shifts in wording can produce significant differences Instructors should have learners repeat back instructions to ensure understanding
4. 4. Making it Simple to Understand Make instructions concrete List materials needed List the steps to be followed so students can mentally check them off; do not use paragraph form Give multiple representations of directions; written and verbal, pictorial and diagrammatical, a demonstration of exemplary exemplars (examples of outstanding work) When multiple steps are involved, give instructions in bite-sized chunks Have students complete several steps before discussing the results and then present the next set of instructions
5. 5. Unlocking the Doors The poor metacognition of students with ELN is one of the hallmarks of cognition disabilities, one of the locks on the doors to learning We need to ensure that we scaffold them by helping them focus their attention on us while we give directions
6. 6. Pay Attention Executive attention refers to the ability to willfully inhibit attention from being drawn to irrelevant stimuli Selective attention refers to being able to focus attention on relevant stimuli while screening out the irrelevant Sustained attention Maintaining attention over a prolonged period of time in order to detect infrequent signals Orienting attention refers to the ability to direct attention to a specified location and reorienting to a new location
7. 7. Time to Focus Sluggish Attentional Shifting Hypothesis The hypothesis that people with dyslexia have difficulty with orientation of attention Two-Cue System We teach students from the first day that the signal for getting quiet and attending is raising our hand at the front of the room. The first student who notices us with our hand raised immediately stops talking and raises his or her hand. Other students quickly notice, stop talking, and raise their hands When we get ready to give instructions, we use instruction cue. We point to our eyes, and then our ears, and finally the middle of our chest while saying the chant, Eyes and ears on me. We say the chant three times to ensure that everyone has processed it. Only when we have everyones eyes do we give instructions
8. 8. Help Us Learn to Give Directions Better Giving directions = Procedural discourse Poor instructions are ubiquitous Processing difficulties are a hallmark of cognitive disabilities-effective, efficient, and economic- poor auditory perception needs written directions. Poor visual needs oral directions Written directions must be read out loud to the class. When directions are oral the teacher has to write them down Revise and simplify the directions. Hand out copies of the directions Oral directions have an initial advantage, where as the written directions had an advantage over time Providing oral and written instructions helps students with ELN succeed because: perception improves with multicoding of information, confusion is eliminated when perception is supported, sequencing is facilitated when students see and hear instructions, frustration is reduced when students know what to do
9. 9. Repeat it Over and Over Again Repetition/Repetition Priming Priming increases the brains ability to attend to and learn new material while reducing the cognitive load. Repetition sharpens the brains ability to recognize a word in subsequent presentations. (Auditory Cortex) Repetitious instructions provided benefits as compared to non-repetitious instructions, crediting the natural function of inherent redundancy Word identification study for adolescents with dyslexia and without showed that repetition produced a facilitative effect on both reaction time and accuracy for both sets of participants. Researchers call the increase in activation under such conditions latent functionality and note that repetition is one of the factors that will increase activation in the brains of people with dyslexia Multiple-response procedure is more effective than single- response procedure Students with ELN have a biological neurological basis for their disabilities. Denying them simple accommodations that would assist them is illogical Repeating directions is an effective key for increasing students ability to carry out assignments correctly because sequencing is facilitated when students have more than one opportunity to listen to steps of an assignment, confusion is eliminated when students are repeatedly exposed to directions, memory is enhanced by multiple exposures, and frustration is reduced when confusion is eliminated
10. 10. Effective Chunking Chunking a strategy specifically recommended as a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) strategy by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) was initially studied in chess Chunking means to combine small, meaningful units of information The benefit of chunking is derived from the learners reduced memory load when compared to a condition in which she or he doesnt chunk. Instead of remembering one long string of information, the learner needs only to remember several short strings Chunking produced a slight improvement for ninth graders. Chunking instructions facilitated fifth- graders performance in all dependent measures Chunking makes instructions easier to remember by reducing the memory load Chunking of instructions is a successful inclusion strategy because confusion is eliminated when students are not overwhelmed with input, memory is enhanced when smaller numbers of items must be remembered, and frustration is decreased when students know exactly what to do
11. 11. It is Biological In a landmark study, Keenan, Betjamann, Wadsworth, Defris, and Olson (2006) investigated the genetic contribution to listening comprehension. The results showed that the fraternal twins differed from the identical twins in highly statistically significant ways; unlike the fraternal twins, if one identical twin had poor listening comprehension, the other twin was highly likely to also to have poor listening comprehension. The results clearly demonstrated that word-reading and listening comprehension are both genetically determined Students with ELN often have a difficulty with verbal comprehension for what are clearly biological reasons
12. 12. No more Confusion Tell-Backs and Show-Mes We never ask, Do you understand what you are supposed to do? We always repeat directions three times while we have students look directly at us We then ask several students, including one with ELN, Tell me what you are supposed to do, or, Show me what you are supposed to do. Blaming the victim is counterproductive. What we need to do is stop asking, Do you understand? Tell-Backs and Show-Mes are good inclusion strategies because confusion is eliminated when students know exactly what to do, memory is enhanced when students repeat back or demonstrate instructions, Metacognition is increased when students know that they know what to do, and Frustration is eliminated when confusion is eliminated