About this activity
Twelve three-step directions: stand up, turn around, and sit back down; pick up the pencil, draw a circle, and give me the pencil; open the book, find page four, and point to the picture; take three cards, put two back, and hand me the last one. That final one is the hardest on the board, because the steps interact rather than simply following each other.
How to use it in a session
Say it once, at a normal pace. Slowing down is a legitimate support and it changes what you are measuring, so decide which you are doing. If three steps break down consistently, look at whether the elements within each step can be reduced before dropping to two steps — give me the blue crayon, take the green one, and draw a line has three steps and seven pieces of information. Ten minutes covers the twelve.
What to listen for
Watch the middle step, which is the one most often lost at this length. Notice whether the student rehearses under their breath — subvocal repetition is a strategy worth teaching explicitly to a student who has not found it. The card direction is the diagnostic one: a student who can do the sequential directions and fails on that has a working memory limit rather than a language one.
Carrying it home
Morning routines are three-step directions already. Saying all three at once — shoes on, bag by the door, coat from the hook — rather than one at a time is a small change with real practice value.
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- Second through fifth, once two-step directions are reliable.
- Is it free?
- Yes, all twelve directions play with no login.
- Is failing at three steps a language problem or a memory one?
- Often both, and the way to tell is to reduce the information within each step while keeping three steps. If that helps, it is load; if three steps fail regardless of how simple each one is, it is sequencing.