Just follow the directions
It was simple. That’s what I thought. I have learned that nothing is simple, especially if you are giving instructions to another person. I remember an activity that I tried once with my 5th-grade students.
Here’s the task: Describe to someone how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. In this activity, I was to play the instructed and the students were to write down the instructions for me to follow. They had been forewarned that I was new to this country and though I had a good vocabulary I needed very clear instructions.
It was simple…Right? You wouldn’t have any problems giving those instructions. But then again, I’m a very literal instruction taker.
The written instructions were handed in and I tried to follow them.
- Put some peanut butter on a slice of bread. (Well the bread was in a bag, there were no instructions as to how to get a slice of bread in an enclosed bag, so I tore the bag apart so that I could retrieve a slice. Then taking the jar of peanut butter, I put it on the bread. It seemed odd that a jar on the bread would make it hard to eat
the sandwich, if that in fact, was the end goal, so I thought maybe I should open the jar and take some peanut butter out. So I did. I unscrewed the jar lid placed my fingers in the jar and scooped out some peanut butter then took the glop from my fingers and pasted it on the bread. Mission accomplished.
The look on my student’s faces as I talked myself through step one, was priceless. I decided to take another student’s work and continue. Mind you there were no instructions anywhere as to how to get the remaining peanut butter off of my hand.
2. Do the same with the jelly, which you should place on top of the peanut butter. (I kind of did. I was smart enough to at least open the jar of jelly first. Of course, now I have jelly on one hand and peanut butter on the other, not to mention a jar of peanut butter which now has jelly on it.)
At this point, my class is out of control. They were screaming instructions to me trying to right the wrong. “Use the knife!” You can imagine the thoughts I had on how to do that. Not mention when they told me to slice the sandwich.
It was simple. Just follow the directions given. I mean how hard could it be to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Not to mention how to eat one.
Needless to say, I stopped at one point and then debriefed with the class on the importance of giving clear, understandable directions.
The following day, students were paired up, each with the same set of Legos. One person was to build anything they wanted with Legos and then to describe what they had built to their partner who didn’t see either the creation of the piece or the finished product and had to build it only based on the instructions being given. The direction giver couldn’t see what was being built as they gave the instructions and it wasn’t until the end that the two Lego constructions were compared.
It was simple. Not so much. I’ve also discovered in my years of giving instructions, if you want a number of things done by someone else, don’t give them all the instructions at once. Chances are they will only do the first thing you asked them to do.
Now that is as simple as I can make it.
