Understanding and following instructions

Speech and language therapy

﻿Hello, everybody. My name's Emma, and welcome to today's lesson. I'm looking forward to today's session and I hope you are too. I can't wait to get started. But before we do, just a quick reminder. We here at Oak are here to support any approaches you might already be using and any work you might have already been set. We know this lesson is going out to so many different children and families. So if you're not sure or have any questions, please do contact your child's school or usual speech and language therapy team. In today's session, I'm going to be talking to you about instructions. Together, we're going to do some thinking about how the adults can help you to understand instructions and then we're going to play some understanding games. Throughout all of the activities today, I'll be sharing some tips for adults so that they can help you to develop your understanding of language. So for today's session, you'll need a blindfold. This could just be a piece of material that you could wrap around you and your adult's eyes when it comes to the activity. Adults, you'll need the downloadable resource that's available on the Oak website with this lesson. So before we begin, find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed for the lesson. Turn off any distractions or notifications that you might have running on your device, and then make sure that you and your adult are seated comfortably. When you're ready, let's begin. Okay, let's start by doing some talking and thinking about instructions. Instructions tell us what we need to know in order to be able to do something. Instruction words give it meaning. The words and instructions could be who needs to do something, what they need to do, with what objects, where, when or how something needs to happen. We're going to have a quick game of Simon Says. Simon Says, "Wave your hand." What were the instruction words when Simon said, "Wave your hand"? Can you guess? That's right. In the instruction, we were told to wave our hand. Wave is the doing word. Hand is the object. So we had to wave our hand. Instructions by having five or 10 minutes of practising this skill every day. Following instructions is part of everyday life, so it's important that we give children the best chance to make progress in this area. We can work on instructions with different key words to make sure that children understand the vocabulary. But adults, we need to be very careful and think very, very closely about the strategies that we use to support children to be able to follow instructions. The trick is when adults are giving instructions, it's better when they start simple. If an instruction is long, we need to break it down into parts. And this is the job for the adult. The adult needs to think about the words that they're using and change how they're delivering instructions so that children are better able to follow them. It's also important that adults give children lots of time. This time helps the child to think about the instructions and organise a response to them. Sometimes it can take 10 to 30 seconds to process information that we've heard. So we need to be respectful of this and allow the child some thinking time. It can also be really helpful to make instructions visual using pictures or symbols. To break instructions down into the keywords or the key parts means that it can be referred back to, and it helps the child to understand what they've been asked to do. So we're going to have a quick game. It's called the Robot Game! This is where we need the blindfold that I talked about. In the blindfold game, the robot has to wear the blindfold. He has to listen carefully. The robot has to listen carefully to the instructions to do something or find something. For example, take three steps forwards. This can be reversed so that the adult is the robot, or the child. But, adults, make sure that the child understands any words that you're using in the instructions before giving them. When you've had five or 10 minutes playing the Robot Game, come back to the video and press play to continue. As ever, any language activities that we're providing needs to be positive and enriching. We want to avoid testing our child on words. We don't want to be testing the length or complexity of instructions they understand, but creating language rich environments where they're accessing models to scaffold their understanding. We should continue to use strategies to reinforce words, for example, visuals and symbols, to really help the information stick. And where possible, continue to use the downloadable resource for ideas on activities that could help your child to work towards understanding more instructions. Well, that brings us to the end of today's lesson. But a really big well done on all the fantastic thinking and learning that you've done today on understanding instructions. If you'd like, you could ask your parent or carer to share some of the work with your teacher at school so that they can see the progress that you're making understanding instructions. You could also ask your parent or carer to share some of this work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter by tagging @OakNational so I can see your progress too. Well, all that's left for me to say is thank you. But take care and enjoy the rest of your learning. Bye-bye.

Understanding and following instructions

Understanding and following instructions

These resources will be removed by the end of the Spring Term 2026.

Lesson slides

Lesson details

Key learning points

Equipment

Licence

Lesson video

Worksheet