Quick Tips: Written Directions

"Written directions" sounds like one of the easiest accommodations to make happen. However, it is one of the most overlooked, underappreciated, and underused. Written directions are especially essential for students who struggle with auditory encoding and recall, and students who are easily distracted. I'm sure you've seen your student take out his homework, stare at the page, and go "I don't know what to do". And, you are just as stuck as he is because there are no directions for what to do. Without written directions for every assignment with directions over one step (and I'd argue, for assignments that include even one step), students may do an assignment incorrectly or not even attempt it due to the confusion.

It is worth it to fight for your student to get written directions on all assignments. Here are some creative suggestions you can use when you are up against that teacher that's saying "well, I showed an example several times in class", or "he didn't pay attention the first time; that's not my fault", or the classic: "I can't write directions for everything I do". Here are my suggestions:

• Email them!  Ask the teacher to email the directions right there, in class, after checking in with your student about what to do. Most teachers say they "checked for understanding", but walk away before the student was able to encode. Help the teacher realize they can easily do both (check for understanding and provide written directions). Have the teacher write a quick list of steps in an email to the student as a "check out" for understanding.
• Write them!  Recently I helped facilitate an agreement between a student and their teacher. The agreement was simple: the teacher rephrased the directions, and the student wrote down the rephrased directions on the top of the page. The major key to this is that the teacher has to stay and wait for the student to get it correctly written down before walking away. 
• Say them! Nowadays we are so fortunate to have speech-to-text software accessible at the click of a button. The teacher or the student (under the teacher's supervision) can say the directions into a google doc after activating the voice recorder. This is especially helpful for auditory learners. 

If you have a "quick tip" need, reply to this post!

"I didn't know what I was supposed to do"

Ellen is in the 11th grade and has difficulty in the area of visual processing. In Chemistry Ellen is often frustrated. She received these two assignments. One was a practice worksheet and the other was the quiz to assess mastery of the same skill (identifying covalent compounds):

Ellen became so frustrated by the worksheet (the maze) that she ended up copying from another student. When it came to the quiz she got a 24%. The teacher showed Ellen the worksheet and the quiz and asked: "Ellen, you got everything right on the worksheet, why did you do so terribly on the quiz?" Ellen's response is classic:

"I didn't know what I was supposed to do."

The Truth: Ellen is not alone. Many students often do not know what a task/worksheet/assessment is asking them to do simply because of the formatting. Oftentimes students give up by either copying off others or guessing because the format of the page is inaccessible to them. When Ellen first received this worksheet she was thinking:
-Why are there so many boxes?
-How do I know where to go after the start box?
-Why do I put my name on the side?
-Do I go up or down?
-Where do I put the formula it's asking me for?
And so on...
Ellen spends so much mental energy on simply processing the layout of the assignment, that she is unable to learn a new skill and even once it is learned, show mastery of that skill. Ellen, like so many students with visual processing difficulties, get lost in the visual details. 

What I Suggest: Students like Ellen need: visual continuity between assignments of the same skills, and less clutter on the page to show mastery of learned skills. We need to make the main ideas and the details of each assignment clear to students who struggle to process visual information. Speaking with your child's teacher about overly cluttered and visually complicated assignments is a must for your child to get the same opportunity to show mastery as students without visual processing difficulties.

Some suggestions you can provide to teachers to support visual continuity are:

• Always use the same font and font size on all assignments/assessments.
• Always put the same header on the page, no matter what the assignment/assessment is.

Example:

• Always put the directions in the same place, and identify them as separate from the questions themselves by italicizing, bolding, or boxing them.

Example:

• Always line up information linearly. Students should be able to complete the assignment/assessment in the same order in which they read (left to right, and from one line to the next).
• Limit the use of visuals, and make sure the visuals are aligned linearly on the page so they are easily identifiable. 

Reply to this post with samples of visually cluttered assignments/tasks that need to be visually accommodated for your child.