Following instructions in school is a skill that often has to be broken down for our dear children. One parent inquired about this on a parents list. Here was my answer below:
Hi all- This conversation about “...following instructions in school...” took me back several years to teaching our child to follow group directions. (we've been in ABA 10 years) We did several things that were helpful at home:
1. Complex instructions. We started these very early, combining two steps, then three etc. This was really a pre- step to group instructions. I remember the earliest was "go to and bring me" and they got more and more complicated the more he learned in other areas. We would also increase the distance we were when we gave these and moved toward more casual language when we could. We also took them out through out the house, more and more through his regular day. He was quite speech delayed receptively so we had to grow this as he gained in different domains of receptive language.
2. Group instructions. We would have as many people as we could gather (my daughter, therapist, neighbor...whoever) One of us would be the teacher and give an instruction i.e. all the boys( only after he knew gender and knew he was a boy:) do thus and so. We would do "every one line up"."every one turn to page" ( after he knew he numbers) etc. We started with just two people, my son and one other, then grew that group as we could. ( of course, we could not grow it to the number of children in a class but we were able to get it to three or four several times during the week)
3. We also worked on observational learning. Starting with simple things like getting out a pencil from pencil box to more complicated,to lining up because others were, getting out the correct book; we found that if he could learn to infer by watching others, all the better.
After these things got stronger, we added distractions, noises...you know, life things because that is what kids experience in school.
We have continued to work on the skills continuously and he continues to get better and better. We still do complex instructions (one weak area is time lag...so do this work sheet , then go do this and so but he is getting much better).
As the years went by, we took data from the class on group instructions he needed to know, what was realistic based on his speech delay and what he knew, and used it to drive our complex school instructions. Sometimes he still leans too hard on his inference observation and misses the direction cues and some times the reverse is true. But he just continues to improve.
I've been on this list 10 years and still just love it :)
love to all as always, Kat