Following Directions with Dr. Warren

I recently got the opportunity to review both of Dr. Erica Warren's Following Directions workbooks, and I wanted to tell you what I think.

Before we begin, let me just say that Dr. Warren gave these workbooks to me for free, asking if I would review them on my blog. I am not getting any more compensation than just the workbooks themselves for writing this post, and I would never endorse any product I didn't fully believe in.

With that said, let's talk specifically about Warren's two Following Directions workbooks. The workbooks I sampled are called Following Directions (An Intermediate Workbook 1) and Following Directions: The Easy Way (A Beginner's Workbook 1).

The concept for both of the workbooks is the same: we want to condition our students to pay closer attention to directions and be able to follow directions quickly but accurately. To an extent, these workbooks somewhat reminded me of those "April Fool's Day" following-directions sheets that teachers sometimes give to play a joke on their students, like this:

This (obviously used) April Fool's Day prank was found here.

But unlike the April Fool's Day sheets like the one featured above, Warren's workbooks will not embarrass any student who do not follow the directions precisely (no one has to yell a sentence about their school pride or clap their hands twice during these workbooks! lol).

To help condition students to follow directions, Warren has created a series of worksheet pages with a grid of pictures, numbers, or letters on it. Above the grid is a set of step-by-step instructions as to what the student should do on the grid. Here is a sneak peak at the example page from her Following Directions: The Fun and Easy Way (A Beginners Workbook 1) book:





This is just a simple grid -- the grids and instructions get larger and more complex as you move through the book.

One thing I like about these books is that these grids aren't just practice on following directions. Sure, these worksheets will help students practice following written directions. But I personally think they will also help students exercise their "critical thinking skills" muscle. You see, the directions aren't always clear when you first read them. For instance, one of the directions I saw said, "I am in one of the rows above the second-to-last row." Even as an adult, I had to stop and think about what that really meant. Another line of directions said, "I am a consonant." For this, not only do students need to know the difference between a consonant and a vowel, but they also have to reason that if our answer is a consonant, our answer cannot be a vowel; therefore, we need to cross out all vowels.

As I'm writing this, I'm reminded of the logic grids my 6th grade science teacher used to give us:

This particular puzzle can be found here.

I, for one, love using logic puzzles in the classroom because I feel that most students need to practice those much-needed critical thinking skills, and these are the perfect way to do so. (By the way, Puzzle Baron has actual books you buy that contain paper copies of all of their logic grids. Find one here
.)

Anyway, I think Warren's "Following Directions" workbooks could help students in a variety of ways. There are directional words in almost every line of directions, so students could practice directions and prepositions. There are math words such as "less than," "odd," "trapezoid" with which students will become familiar. There is even some science in these sheets: "I need water to live," and "Sunlight is my food" are two examples. All in all, I think that if you want to give your students practice at following directions (and a few other things), these workbooks are a good buy.

Warren offers a free sample of a Following Directions book on her Teachers Pay Teachers page.

If you'd like to read the reviews and/or purchase one or both of these books, click the images below to be taken to their product listings on Amazon.





Even if you don't want to use these pages as actual activities in your classroom, I think they could still be useful as bellwork or "what to do when you're done" activities for those early-finishers. If nothing else, the critical thinking skills students would build from doing these pages could probably prepare students to achieve higher test scores on those state-mandated exams!