This chapter discusses best practices for ensuring students understand instructions. It recommends that instructions be explicit, clear, simple, and repeated back to check for understanding. When giving instructions, teachers should list materials, concrete steps, and provide written, verbal and visual representations. Instructions should be broken into "bite-sized chunks" with time for students to practice between chunks. To improve understanding, teachers should gain students' full attention, provide both written and oral instructions, repeat instructions, break instructions into chunks, and have students repeat back or demonstrate what they are supposed to do. These strategies help eliminate confusion and frustration that stem from poor listening comprehension.

1. Chapter 4
Ensuring Students
Understand Instructions
By Huy Nguyen

2. How Instructions Should Be





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.

3. Instructions on Giving Instructions





Make instructions concrete.
List the 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 diagrammatic, a
demonstration of exemplary exemplars (examples of
outstanding work)
When multiple steps are involved, give instructions
in “bite-sized chunks,” having students complete
several steps before discussing the results and then
presenting the next set of instructions (Dyrli, 1999)

4. Five Ways to Improve Instructions





Gain Students’ Full Attention
Provide Written and Oral Instructions
Repeat Instructions
Chunk Instructions
Solicit Tell-Backs and Show-Mes

5. Gain Students’
Full Attention

1.
2.
3.
4.
Four Different Types of Attention
Executive Attention – The
ability to willfully inhibit attention
from being drawn to irrelevant
stimuli.
Selective Attention – 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 – The
ability to direct attention to a
specified location and
reorienting to a new location.



Teach students from the first day that the
signal for getting quiet and attending is raising
our hand at the front of the room.
Use the instruction cue, point to our eyes, and
then our ears, and finally the middle of our
chest while saying the chant, “Eyes and ears
on me.”
Using attentional cues for students with ELN
because, attention is ensured and confusion is
eliminated when we have students’ attention

6. Provide Written and Oral Instructions

When giving instructions
provide students with both
written and oral instructions.
Both serves the needs of all
students and is effective,
efficient, and absolutely
economical – three criteria
for determining the feasibility
of an instructional strategy.

1.
2.
3.
4.
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 both hear and see
instructions
Frustration is reduced when
students understand what they
are supposed to do.

7. Repeat Instructions




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
Frustration is reduced
when confusion is
eliminated

8. Chunk Instructions



Chunking means to combine small,
meaningful units of information
The benefit of chunking is derived from
the learner’s reduced memory load
when compared to a condition in which
she or he doesn’t chunk. (Instead of
remembering one long string of
information, the learner needs only to
remember several short strings.
Chunking instructions is successful
because

Confusion is eliminated when
students are not overwhelmed with
input

Memory is enhanced when smaller
numbers of items must be
remembered

Frustration is decreased when
students know exactly what to do

9. Solicit Tell-Backs & Show-Mes


It is important to repeat the
instructions three times while
the students look directly at us
After the instruction is
complete, we then ask several
students, including ours
students with ELN:




“Tell me what you are
supposed to do”
“Show me what you are
supposed to do”
Then we allow them to start
the assignment
This strategy accommodates
for the genetic influences on
poor listening comprehension.

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
Frustration is eliminated when
confusion is elminated

10. Reference Page

Gore, M.C. Inclusion Strategies for
Secondary Classrooms: Keys for
Struggling Learners. Thousand Oaks:
SAGE, 2010. Book.