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"Giving Instructions" Procedure Plan and Reflection
"Giving Instructions" Procedure Plan and Reflection
Context
The current unit is a survey of Asia. Students have already done „case studies‟ of the culture of
representative countries from each region (Japan from E. Asia, India from S. Asia, Vietnam from S.E. Asia,
and Saudi Arabia from W. Asia). This is their first day looking at Central Asian culture; they previously
examined the geography.
Lesson Materials
Photo cards
Post-it notes
Tape
Writing utensils
Graphic organizer handout
Butcher paper
Procedures
Pre-Activities: Description Time Frame Objective(s) Targeted
“Week of Warmups” activity 23 5 min Map features
(note: this is a daily scripted activity, not specifically
part of this particular lesson)
Students who finish early can begin transferring their n/a Taking notes
facts about Central Asia to the butcher paper poster that
will be displayed in the classroom for use in future
lessons.
Assessment
Formative assessment: the graphic organizers
Summative assessment: later this week, students will be creating “graphic novels” where a character from
one of the countries we‟ve studied visits another of the countries we‟ve studied
Reflection/additional comments
Feedback
Procedure Plan: Giving Instructions
Context: I chose to focus on giving instructions, because I find giving instructions to this
particular group to be somewhat challenging. This class is academically strong, and all the
students are extremely communicative. However, their English is quite limited. Thus, they tend
to grasp concepts easily and be impatient with being “spoon-fed” information, but they also get
out of their depth quickly, and some of them are easily frustrated by this. Also, given their
varying degrees of comfort with written English, they tend to work at very different paces, which
means that assignments for this class need to allow students to transition from one stage to the
next in their own time, which means they need instructions that are clear and memorable enough
They have already filled out a graphic organizer almost exactly like the one they‟ll be
using today, and know how to form descriptive sentences and make inferences.
Planned Procedure:
2. After introducing the lesson topic, inform students that this activity is similar to one
we‟ve already done, but there are slight changes, so they need to pay close attention to
the instructions.
3. Holding up a picture card, tell the students that they will be writing descriptions of the
photos on post-its. Ask a student to describe a photo. Write the description on the post
“element of culture” category on the wall. Say the elements of culture, and have the
students point to them. Ask students what the more unfamiliar terms (such as
“transportation” and “architecture” mean. Ask students which category our example
photo belongs in – make sure to use an example photo that could go in multiple
5. Show students the note-taking/inferences graphic organizer. Ask whether the students
remember what to do. If they seem to recall, don‟t bother explaining in detail – just call
on a student to briefly recap. Remind students that they need to make inferences, not just
7. Tell students what time the assignment needs to be completed in full by. Remind students
to work efficiently.
I‟m providing a written version of the instructions on the SmartBoard so that students
with better reading comprehension than listening comprehension have an alternative way
of understanding the instructions, and I‟m leaving it up for the entire activity, as this
I make a point of acting out what I‟m saying and talking with my hands, to help students
I don‟t intend to linger long on providing instructions for how to fill out the graphic
organizer and make inferences, as they did well on a very similar activity recently. Plus,
since they‟ll be starting that step of the activity at staggered intervals, I can touch base
individually with students about it as they get started, thus avoiding information overload
at the start of the lesson. The class is small enough (12 students) that I can check in with
I intend to deliberately leave some aspects of the activity open-ended – for example, I
didn‟t tell them how to divide up the work of labeling the pictures. This group of students
is good about sharing responsibility, and generally works well cooperatively, so I don‟t
like to micromanage their group work in most cases. If I did this activity with a different
class, I would likely assign group roles, or at least go over group behavioral expectations.
I am having them do the picture labeling in small groups so they can provide one another
with language support for filling out the post-its, so that the post-its can provide language
support for them when they‟re individually filling out the graphic organizers.
These students are, for preadolescents, decent at time management, so telling them when
they need to be finished by should promote their staying on task and moving efficiently
Steps 5 and 6 allow me both to check that they understood the directions, and re-iterate
the instructions one last time to (hopefully) fix them in the students‟ memories.
All in all, the lesson went smoothly. All but two students finished in the allotted time,
and the two that did not quite complete it were very close to completion. There was very little
downtime or off-task behavior. The students seemed challenged enough that they stayed
when giving initial instructions. I made up for this later by giving them periodic updates on how
much time they had left to complete the tasks. They did work efficiently, so this turned out fine,
but I would have preferred to tell them the time frame up front and then let them manage their
The other deviation was deliberate. When I was giving the initial instructions, I felt like
they were going a little long, and the videotape bore this out – it was going on five minutes when
I dismissed them to their groups. Five minutes isn‟t ridiculously long-winded, but in a fifty
minute period, that starts to get into lost instructional time territory. So I chose to skip steps 5
and 6. I replaced step 5 with going around to individual groups and checking in to make sure
they‟d understood and were implementing the instructions, and I replaced step 6 with giving
students the graphic organizer as they finished taping up the photos and briefly touching base
with them about how to fill it out. I think this actually worked out better than my plan would
have, and it had the nice side effect of requiring me to interact individually with each student.
One positive indicator of the efficacy of my instructions was that the students‟ questions
throughout the lesson were almost all about the content and language, not about what to do. It
can be very exasperating when one has just gone through detailed instructions, releases the
students to start the task, and then is immediately asked “What am I supposed to do?” Most of
the questions were asking for help identifying what was happening in individual photos, with the
occasional “What do you call this thing in English?” question. Being able to focus on the
objectives allowed us to maximize the instructional time, I think. There were several questions
about spelling, which is less than ideal, as the students should really be using strategies for that,
but most of them came from a student who has an educational exceptionality that affects
reading/writing, so I‟m more glad that this student was choosing to continue making the effort to
express himself in writing than worried that he was using instructors as a crutch. If I were his
teacher for the entire year, I would make a point to gradually transition him to greater self-
Another positive indicator was that students moved readily between the steps of the
assignment. I only noticed one serious lapse in this area, which occurred when one group
finished taping up photos before I‟d gotten a chance to give them the graphic organizer sheet.
However, they were only fooling around for a minute or two, and got to work as soon as I gave
change. At one point, one group started getting sloppy about where they were taping up their
photos. I should have addressed this ahead of time in two ways – firstly, by letting students
know that thoughtfully categorizing the photos was part of their assignment grade, and that I‟d
know which groups did which photos by the color of the post-its, and secondly, by requiring
students to explain their categorization choices. However, my mistake was not a total loss, as
other groups caught some misplaced photos, discussed why they were wrong, and corrected the
This lesson has reminded me that giving instructions is not only an important part of
instruction, it‟s an important part of classroom management. As my students were able to easily
follow the instructions, they stayed on task, which meant that they did not have time to engage in
what my school calls “below the line behaviors,” such as teasing or damaging property. Thus,
giving good instructions maximizes instructional time in two different ways: first, by allowing
students to complete tasks efficiently, and secondly, by helping the class avoid the distractions