1. By: Diego Lopez EDSC-310 Ensuring Students Understand
Instructions
2. *Giving instructions is critical* A Teachers skill at giving
instructions impacts the students academic lives
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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