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Dear Learning Lab: How do I get students to follow homework directions

September 29, 2010 by Jeremy Jones

Dear Learning Lab,

I have a couple of students who never seem to follow directions on their homework! They’re bright kids, but they can’t get full credit if they’re not doing everything I ask…

Sincerely, Put a smiley face in the top right corner of your paper if you read the directions

Dear Smiley Face,

Although we want our students to ultimately be able to read a paragraph of directions and follow all of them to a T, some of our students (general ed and sped!) lack the reading comprehension skills and the self-discipline to complete assignments exactly as we specify. To combat this, we as teachers can help them build those skills by providing some accommodations to address the problem and then slowly ease them off. Some suggestions to assist students include:

make sure the student is writing down their homework in their agenda!
you can seek out the student and make sure it’s happening, or informally assign students buddies to check
on worksheets, assignments, tests and quizzes, bullet-point your directions. Each direction is its own line so that nothing gets lost as a result of complicated sentence structure.
when working on projects, provide the student with some kind of checklist containing your expectations and the necessary components
when working on an essay, provide the student with the actual rubric or have the student utilize a writer’s checklist
encourage the student to read (whisper) the directions out loud to him or herself
have the student repeat directions back to you
reduce the amount of oral directions you are providing at a given time OR complement your oral directions with a print out for the student