Following Simple Directions Worksheets
Learning to encourage children to cooperate is one of the fundamental skills teachers learn at the preschool level. This is something that will come natural for some, but often takes a good amount of time for teachers to master. I was one of the teachers that it took some time to get right. The biggest breakthrough was to watch the strategies that veteran teachers used. The first five years of teaching at this level, you will be learning just as much as your students are. The best advice I can give you is to try many different strategies and which ever you use, stay consistent. These worksheets and lessons help students learn how to follow written directions and perform a task based on what it says.
Aligned Standard: K.G.B.5
- Red Crayon Time: Step-by-Step Lesson- Find the green things with a red marker. Is it holiday time?
- Guided Worksheet -Find the thing that you: can play baseball with, has wheels, and is edible.
- Guided Explanation - The fifth one throws some people off, because it is awfully wide.
- Independent Practice Worksheet - Let's find all the living things.
- Matching Worksheet - What can fly in every row?
- Answer Keys - These are for all the unlocked materials above.
Lesson Sheets
We start with drawing simple shapes around objects and progress from there.
- Lesson 1 - The first object is white. The second object is black. The third object is not. The fourth object is black. The fifth object is not.
Practice Worksheets
I varied the number of items that students need to sort through, when tackling these problems.
- Practice 1 - Draw a box around the objects that are used to write.
- Practice 2 - Draw a box around the things that do not have black color inside them.
- Practice 3 - We present this in a way that it can be used in black and white or grayscale settings.
- Practice 4 - Where are all the fruits and birds?
- Practice 5 - Which animal has a bell.
- Practice 6 - Vehicles and things that cannot fly.
Teaching Students to Follow Directions
I remember being a student teacher, decades ago, where one of my lessons was to help students follow directions. I thought it would be the easiest lesson ever. This is because when I grew up following directions is just what you did. Let’s just say that is one of the toughest lessons I learned during that part of my career. Today, students come from many different cultures and home lives. Following directions is not always an inherent skill that you can expect children to come to school with.
While I do not feel there is one single approach to teaching students how to follow teacher given directions. There are a number of considerations that should into all lessons. It all starts with your voice. Make sure that your volume, speed of speech, and tone best suit your purpose. While you do not need to have a commanding voice, especially at this grade level, you do need to be assertive. To start any activity, make sure to capture your class’s attention. Make sure that the procedure you use is consistent. There are many different ways to do this and everyone has a different style. You can stand in front of them tall, use hand gestures, write a word on the board, hold up a sign, and in extreme situations turn off the lights. An effective method is to use a countdown and it reflects what they are learning at this level. My point is, you will eventually learn what works best for you and that is what you should always do. This way youngsters will instantly know that they need to pay attention and prepare to follow your instruction.
Other considerations are to have your class echo (repeat) your direction. You can do this as a class or point to specific students, usually those most distracted, to chorally repeat the instruction. I highly recommend that you always incorporate the use of a visual aid. Make sure the visual is super easy to follow.
How to Make Sure You Understand Sentence Based Directions?
Sentences make different sense based on the words they use. Therefore, to classify the sentences by the clause types or the number of classes available, you can identify the sentences depending on their functions. You need to learn that there are four sentence functions in the language and are as follows
1. Declarative Sentences: These types of sentences state an idea, and they end on a period. This is the most basic form and can be thought of as a statement that makes a statement. For example, I cannot go there because I don’t have a car.
2. Exclamatory Sentences: They show strong emotions and end with an exclamatory mark. They will often give off a sense of excited and heighten how it is received by the audience. For example, the party is ruined!
3. Interrogative Sentences: It asks a question and ends with a question mark. The purpose of this is to elicit feedback from your audience or who it is directed at. For example: Where is your house located?
4. Imperative Sentences: Sentences that give order or directions. This can be poised as a command where the audience must comply, a request where compliance is optional, or to offer advice where nothing is expected in return. For example: Sit down and wait!