If your students struggle to follow directions—whether it’s a simple “get your notebook” or a multi-step classroom routine—you’re definitely not alone.
Understanding and carrying out directions is a foundation for success in language, academics, and social interaction, yet it’s one of the trickiest skills for many students on your caseload.
In this guide, we’ll explore six evidence-based strategies you can use to assess, teach, and practice following directions in speech therapy. You’ll learn how to identify what’s really behind a student’s difficulty, discover engaging activities that boost comprehension, and walk away with ready-to-use materials to make your sessions smoother.
Let’s start by looking at why following directions is such an essential part of every student’s communication and learning journey and how we can set them up for success from the very first session.
Why Following Directions Is Foundational in Speech Therapy
Following directions is about far more than compliance; it’s a core language skill that supports nearly every academic and social task a student faces. From understanding classroom routines to playing games with peers, a child’s ability to process and act on directions impacts listening comprehension, executive functioning, and overall independence.
In speech therapy, we often see that students who struggle with following directions aren’t just “not paying attention.” Instead, they may be missing key vocabulary, syntactic cues, or the working memory skills needed to hold multi-step instructions in mind. As Wallach (2014) notes, therapy for school-age children should always focus on “real-world language use” rather than isolated tasks—so targeting this skill contextually is crucial.
That’s why every SLP’s toolkit should include visuals and structured activities that make direction-following more accessible and engaging.
Following Directions Visual Checklists
Following Directions Skill Pack
Evidence-backed visuals, assessments, and activities to help students master following directions.
- Research summary highlighting six evidence-based strategies
- Informal assessment to establish a solid baseline
- Visuals to help you teach following directions effectively
- Leveled practice with a variety of visual supports
- Activity guide to facilitate generalization across contexts
Everything you need to assess, teach, and generalize following directions — all in one place.
How to Teach Following Directions in Speech Therapy (6 Strategies)
Every student is different, so there’s no single “right way” to teach following directions in speech therapy. But research gives us a clear roadmap. Studies show that effective intervention blends assessment, strategy instruction, movement, collaboration, and contextualized practice (Cirrin et al., 2010).
When we look closely, students who struggle with directions usually need support in one or more of these underlying areas:
- Vocabulary: Understanding key words in the direction (e.g., temporal and spatial concepts).
- Syntax: Understanding relative clauses (e.g., Touch the one that is red.), reversals (e.g., Before you go play, put on your socks.), etc.
- Executive functioning: Paying attention, remembering the steps, and staying focused on copleting the task.
The good news? By using structured, engaging activities that target these components directly, we can make lasting progress.
In the sections that follow, you’ll learn six evidence-based strategies drawn from current research and practice, each paired with examples and printable supports from the Following Directions Skill Pack.
Strategy 1: Assess and Identify the Root Cause
Before choosing materials or setting goals, start by identifying why a student struggles to follow directions. A thorough assessment helps you decide whether the barrier is vocabulary, syntax, memory, or attention and which intervention strategies will help most.
A differential assessment (Gill et al., 2003) can break this down by analyzing a student’s responses to one-, two-, and three-step directions.
A dynamic assessment adds another layer, letting you observe how quickly students improve when given cues or modeling.
Together, these approaches help you pinpoint underlying language or cognitive factors instead of assuming a “listening” problem.
SLPs can also gather classroom observations or teacher reports to see how the student follows directions across environments. This data informs more functional IEP goals and ensures therapy targets the real root of difficulty.
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Use the Assessment Overview and Observation sheets from the Skill Pack to document how students perform with one-, two-, and three-step directions and note which strategies help most.
Strategy 2: Incorporate Movement-Based Learning
Sometimes the best way to improve a child’s ability to follow directions isn’t at the table; it’s through movement. Research shows that pairing language with movement helps children retain and comprehend instructions more effectively (Kosmas et al., 2018; Mellor & Morini, 2023). When students physically act out what they hear, they engage multiple systems—language, memory, and motor planning—which makes learning more meaningful.
Incorporate movement by turning everyday therapy sessions into interactive games and challenges:
- 🪜 Obstacle Courses: “Hop to the blue square, crawl under the chair, and touch the wall.”
- 🔎 Scavenger Hunts: “Find the red crayon before you pick up the green one.”
- 🎵 Action Songs: Combine rhythm with sequential directions (“Clap twice, spin around, and sit down”).
- 🎯 Conditional Directions: Practice “if directions” with visuals and real-world actions.
These hands-on activities are especially powerful for students who struggle with complex or out-of-order directions, since movement allows them to “see” and “feel” the structure of the sentence.
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Students use “Quick Helper” and “After / Out of Order” visuals to understand conditional directions like before and after while completing physical tasks.
Strategy 3: Teach and Model Explicit Strategies
Even after assessment and movement-based practice, many students still need explicit instruction in how to follow directions. Research suggests that directly teaching and modeling these strategies can help students strengthen working memory and self-monitoring skills (Gill et al., 2003).
Here are a few strategies to model and practice in therapy:
- 🗣️ Rehearsal: Encourage students to repeat the direction out loud (“First touch your head, then pick up the pencil”).
- 👀 Visualization: Teach students to “make a movie in their head” of what they need to do next.
- ✏️ Drawing or Icons: Have students sketch or mark icons to represent steps in multi-step directions.
- 🙋♀️ Clarification: Model how to ask for repetition (“Can you say that again?”).
- 🧠 Check for Understanding: Pause between steps to confirm comprehension before moving on.
When these strategies are modeled consistently—and reinforced by teachers—students begin to internalize them and apply them independently.
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Teacher and student strategy visuals help students rehearse, visualize, and self-cue during direction-following tasks.
Strategy 4: Collaborate with Teachers for Carryover
Following directions doesn’t stop in the speech room. To make real progress, students need consistent reinforcement across the school day, which is why collaboration with teachers is one of the most powerful steps you can take.
When teachers understand and use the same strategies introduced in speech therapy, students get more opportunities to practice—and their success transfers naturally to classroom routines.
Research supports this kind of team-based approach. Co-treatment and shared strategy implementation have been shown to improve concept development and generalization (Lund, Young, & Yarbrough, 2019).
Here are a few ways to make collaboration easy and effective:
- Chunk Directions: Encourage teachers to give 1–2 steps at a time, pausing for processing.
- Visual Supports: Post visuals like “before/after” or “first/then” cards around the room.
- Cue Attention: A simple “eyes on me” cue before giving instructions helps students reset focus.
- Reinforce Student Strategies: Teachers can prompt students to rehearse or visualize before responding.
These small adjustments make a huge difference in how students understand and execute directions across contexts.
Teachers can use the “Check for Understanding” and “Cue to Direct Attention” visuals from the Skill Pack to reinforce direction-following strategies during daily routines.
Strategy 5: Contextualize Practice and Generalize Skills
Even the best therapy session won’t make an impact if students can’t carry what they’ve learned into real life. To create lasting change, we need to design activities that reflect authentic classroom and social contexts. This is what Ukrainetz (2015) calls contextualized language intervention.
In other words, therapy should look and feel like the environments where students actually need to follow directions (e.g.,the classroom, the playground, and at home). Instead of isolated drill work, embed direction-following into literacy-based tasks, crafts, and everyday routines so students can practice comprehension, sequencing, and planning in meaningful ways.
Here are a few examples you can build right into your sessions:
- 📚 Literacy-Based Therapy: Read a short passage and ask students to follow related instructions (“Underline the title, circle the author’s name, then draw a star next to the main character”).
- ✂️ Crafts: Hands-on projects like the Weather Man Craft from the Skill Pack combine visual, verbal, and fine motor steps.
- 🧪 Science Experiments: Have students perform multi-step actions using direction words like before, after, while, and if.
- 🏫 Classroom Routines: Practice real directions used during transitions (“Hang your backpack, put your folder in the bin, then line up at the door”).
These activities promote generalization by connecting the therapy room to the real world—and they make sessions more engaging and memorable for students.
Strategy 6: Provide Feedback and Reinforcement
Once students are engaged and practicing meaningful tasks, the next key step is consistent feedback and reinforcement.
According to Cirrin et al. (2010), therapy is most effective when feedback is immediate, specific, and tied to functional outcomes. For following directions, this means giving students clear information about how well they executed each step—not just whether they got it right.
Here are a few research-backed tips you can integrate into your sessions:
- ✅ Recast and Re-Model: Repeat or model the correct direction sequence after errors (“First circle the star, then draw the line”).
- 💬 Highlight Accuracy: Instead of “Good job,” say, “You remembered to do all three steps in order!”
- 📋 Visual Feedback: Use worksheets or cards that show completed steps so students can track progress.
- 🎯 Gradual Challenge: Start with 1-step directions, then move to multi-step directions as accuracy improves.
Reinforcement builds confidence and helps students internalize strategies like rehearsal, visualization, and self-monitoring. There areskills they’ll need to succeed in more complex environments.
Students complete a “nest” worksheet that targets multi-step and conditional directions using icons and visual sequencing.
Writing Effective IEP Goals for Following Directions
Once you’ve identified the root cause of difficulty and implemented teaching strategies, the next step is to write clear, measurable IEP goals that reflect a student’s true language needs.
Rather than writing narrow goals like “Student will follow multi-step directions,” focus on the foundational language systems that make following directions possible—syntax, vocabulary, and morphology. These are the building blocks that allow students to understand, process, and act on increasingly complex directions.
As Wallach (2014) reminds us, goals should emphasize functional language outcomes rather than rote task completion. Effective intervention shifts away from isolated “compliance” goals and toward addressing the underlying language systems that support comprehension, attention, and academic success.
🧩 Reframing “Following Directions” Goals
While direction-following assessments provide valuable insight into a student’s performance, they should be viewed as a lens for uncovering underlying language weaknesses—not as an endpoint. Targeting syntax, vocabulary, and morphology helps students develop the comprehension and reasoning skills that transfer to real-life learning situations.
🧱 Foundational Goal Examples
🧩 Syntax Goals
Focus on understanding sentence structure, which supports processing of complex directions.
- Receptive Syntax:
Given a short passage or oral direction, the student will identify and explain the meaning of sentences containing embedded clauses (e.g., “Before you circle the picture, underline the word”) with 80% accuracy.
The student will follow directions that include temporal and conditional clauses (e.g., “After you color the circle, draw a line”) by demonstrating understanding of the sequence of actions in 4 out of 5 opportunities. - Expressive Syntax:
The student will produce complex sentences using subordinating conjunctions (e.g., before, after, because) to describe sequences of events in 4 out of 5 opportunities.
When given a simple direction, the student will restate it using appropriate syntactic structure to demonstrate understanding of relationships between actions.
🧠 Vocabulary Goals
Focus on key concepts, verbs, and relational terms critical for following academic and functional directions.
- The student will demonstrate understanding of spatial concepts (e.g., above, between, next to) by identifying or acting out directions containing those terms with 80% accuracy.
- The student will define and use common classroom direction verbs (e.g., underline, match, circle, label) appropriately in structured activities in 4/5 trials.
🔠 Morphology Goals
Support comprehension of morphologically complex forms that alter meaning within directions.
- The student will identify and explain the meaning of morphological endings that affect direction verbs (e.g., coloring vs. colored) with 80% accuracy.
- When given oral or written directions, the student will demonstrate understanding of plural, tense, and comparative markers (e.g., draw two smaller circles) in 4 out of 5 opportunities.
🧾 Sample Direction-Following IEP Goals
Once you’ve built those foundational skills into your plan, you can also include functional direction-following goals that reflect applied comprehension:
- 1-Step Directions:
Given visual and verbal cues, the student will follow one-step directions related to classroom routines with 80% accuracy across three consecutive sessions. - 2-Step Sequential Directions:
The student will follow two-step sequential directions using visual supports (e.g., “Pick up your pencil and draw a circle”) with 75% accuracy as measured by SLP data collection. - 3-Step / Multi-Step Directions:
Given conditional and out-of-order directions (e.g., “Before you underline the title, circle the author’s name”), the student will complete three-step tasks with minimal verbal prompts in 4/5 opportunities. - Generalization Goal:
During classroom activities, the student will apply taught strategies (rehearsal, visualization, clarification) to follow teacher directions with 80% accuracy as measured by teacher observation.
These examples build naturally from the earlier strategies—teaching foundational skills, incorporating visuals, and expanding to real-world contexts that encourage carryover.
Example Following Directions Activities by Complexity
When targeting following directions in speech therapy, think of each “level” not as a checklist of tasks—but as a way to systematically build the underlying language and cognitive skills that make direction-following possible.
These activities still progress from one- to multi-step sequences but are designed to strengthen comprehension, working memory, and linguistic processing—not just compliance.
Level 1: One-Step Directions — Build Concept & Vocabulary Foundations
Early instruction should target basic concepts and receptive vocabulary—the building blocks of comprehension. Focus on spatial, quantitative, and descriptive words students must understand before multi-step tasks can succeed.
Therapy ideas:
- Concept sorting: Have students follow single-concept directions (“Put the big square under the table,” “Point to the longest pencil”).
- Action-verb practice: Combine visuals with motor actions (“Wave,” “Jump,” “Circle”).
- Concept stories: Read a short story and give one-step directions related to the text (“Find the red apple in the picture”).
Level 2: Two-Step Directions — Strengthen Syntax & Working Memory
At this level, focus on sentence structure and order processing. Students begin linking two ideas using conjunctions such as and, then, before, after.
This supports both syntax comprehension and working-memory sequencing.
Therapy ideas:
- Sequential play tasks: “Before you put the block on top, pick up the blue one.”
- ABA-style chaining: Use two-step routines like “Touch your nose and clap twice,” prompting rehearsal and visualization.
- Sentence reconstruction: Give students two picture cards and have them act out the correct order.
Level 3: Multi-Step & Complex Directions — Integrate Syntax, Morphology, and Executive Function
Once students can follow two connected ideas, you can integrate temporal, conditional, and morphologically complex forms (e.g., before, after, while, if, plurals, and comparatives).
These directions mirror real classroom language and push both comprehension and planning skills.
Therapy ideas:
- Conditional sequencing: “If you see the triangle, color it blue; if you see the circle, underline it.”
- Morphology in motion: “Draw two smaller circles before coloring the largest one.”
- Academic integration: Embed multi-step directions into science or literacy projects (“After you label the diagram, write the definition and tape it on the wall”).
Reinforcing Progress with Printable Following Directions Worksheets
While the most powerful way to target following directions is through contextual, hands-on learning—such as crafts, literacy units, and classroom activities—printable visuals and worksheets can play a valuable supporting role. They’re especially useful for reinforcing concepts after structured practice or for assigning quick carryover tasks.
Printable materials provide a structured format for review and progress monitoring, giving SLPs a way to track comprehension across 1-, 2-, and 3-step directions. When paired with visuals, these resources can help students apply strategies like visualization, sequencing, and self-checking.
To maximize impact, combine worksheets with interactive practice. For example:
- Use a worksheet as a warm-up before a craft or science task.
- Review worksheet visuals together, then act out the same steps with real materials.
- Send them home as short practice assignments that reinforce classroom learning.
Wrapping Up: From Research to Practice
Helping students learn to follow directions is about far more than getting them to “listen.” It’s about supporting the language and executive functioning skills that make them confident, independent learners.
By combining assessment, explicit strategy teaching, movement, and contextualized practice, you can create therapy sessions that don’t just check a box; they change how students understand and use language every day.
The evidence is clear: when we make direction-following interactive, visual, and meaningful, students not only meet their goals—they begin to thrive in the classroom and beyond.
References
Cirrin, F. M., Schooling, T. L., Nelson, N. W., Diehl, S. F., Flynn, P. F., Staskowski, M., Torrey, T. Z., & Adamczyk, D. F. (2010). Evidence-based systematic review: Effects of different service delivery models on communication outcomes for elementary school–age children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 41(3), 233–264.
Gill, C. B., Klecan-Aker, J., Roberts, T., & Fredenburg, K. A. (2003). Following directions: Rehearsal and visualization strategies for children with specific language impairment. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 19(1), 85–103.
Kosmas, P., Ioannou, A., & Zaphiris, P. (2018). Implementing embodied learning in the classroom: Effects on children’s memory and language skills. Educational Media International, 55(4), 324–339.
Lund, E., Young, A., & Yarbrough, R. (2019). The effects of co-treatment on concept development in children with Down syndrome. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 40(3), 165–174.
Mellor, L., & Morini, G. (2023). Examining the relation between exercise and word learning in preschool-age children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 66(10), 4004–4015.
Ukrainetz, T. A. (2015). Contextualized language intervention: Scaffolding preK–12 literacy achievement. Thinking Publications.
Wallach, G. P. (2014). Improving clinical practice: A school-age and school-based perspective. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools.
More Reading
Looking for more practical ideas to boost language and comprehension skills?
Explore these related SLP Now resources:
- How to Teach WH Questions in Speech Therapy
- Speech Therapy Goals: How to Write Goals that Drive Real Progress
- SLP Now Materials Library
- Following Directions Skill Pack
Transcript
Hello there, and I hope you are in the mood for some talk about syntax. Last week, we talked about compound sentences and I wanted to continue the conversation with more types of syntax, like passive voice and relative clauses. Before you hit pause because you're like, well, I work with kindergartners or I work with second grade,this is still a relevant thing to target with our students. There was a study by Owens et al in 2024. They reviewed conversational language samples for 196 children, ages five to 10 years, 11 months, They found that five year olds are using an average of 1.25 subordinate clauses and 2.05 coordinate clauses, so even five year olds are using complex syntax and the number continues to increase with age. So if we are seeing our students only use simple sentences, that is a sign that they may need support with syntax and we might want to look into it a little bit for further. It's easy to hear if they're using simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, and all types of clauses.
If we're not seeing this in their communication, they may be struggling to comprehend that complex syntax as well. And that is an absolutely age appropriate skill for our school age students. Approximately half of five year olds are able to comprehend reversible passive sentences, and that's from Owen's 2016.
And 90% of children between the ages of seven and a half and eight are able to comprehend reversible passives. So very early on in the school age years, this is something that's typical and something that we might want to support if our students are struggling with it.
So hopefully you're still intrigued. I am going to be sharing strategies that we can use in our assessment and intervention when targeting these types of goals. The first strategy, and this has been a common theme, but we want to start with a thorough assessment. Collect language samples and consider multiple contexts because we use different types of syntax when generating narratives, retelling narratives, describing a picture, summarizing a text, explaining how to do something, trying to persuade someone.
So all of those types of samples will elicit different syntax. We want to consider different language samples. We will also want to observe in the classroom because the language that we're hearing in the classroom will be a little bit different. We can look at work samples and look at their writing.
And we can also collect parent and teacher report. And then we can also do a more structured assessment of the comprehension and production of syntax.
In terms of actual treatment strategies, I'm pulling a lot of these from Zipoli 2017. I'll share the citation in the show notes. Lessons should begin with clear explanations of the target sentence structure and give the purpose of the lesson so we can model comprehension and production of sentence structures. We'll want to use clear, concise, and consistent language as we're doing that.
When we're providing demonstrations, we'll give multiple examples and use visual and auditory cues to make the syntactic features more explicit. There's a lot we can do to support the teaching of that. One strategy is focused stimulation.
This is one that applies to all grammar goals and that I have found to be incredibly impactful. This is a little bit more implicit, but this is when we provide frequent models and recasts in a variety of activities. So, when we're modeling the passive voice or a relative clause, we highlight that naturally in conversation. When we recast, we might correct what the child says or modify it. If they produce a simple sentence in our literacy based therapy activity, I can recast the student's sentence and add in that relative class.
Using those models and recasts is what they call focused stimulation in the research and we can incorporate that in all of our therapy activities. That is a great way to implicitly target some of these skills.
Other strategies we might use for passive voice are using directed questions to enhance and scaffold comprehension. So if we have a sentence like Diego was found by Rebecca. We can say who was found and who did the finding, and ask some questions about that statement.
And we can use pictorial support as well and asking students to draw pictures to represent those sentences. The example I gave was with the passive, but we can also do this with a active voice. So instead of Diego was found by Rebecca, we can do Diego found Rebecca. And in SLP Now we have syntax activities attached to the majority of our literacy based units. We embed these strategies in the activities for passive voice, for example. So we have a sentence, with pictures and visual choices to help the students.
We have pictorial support as well, and we give you statements and questions so that you have support as you're implementing these types of strategies. For verbal clauses, which is another type of syntax we might want to target, we can use sentence starters.
This is an effective technique for helping students understand and write more elaborate sentences. If we give them a starter, they can fill in the sentence and create more. We also have picture sequencing. If we have pictures of the different items, for example, before I take the test, I will study. You can have a icon representing studying and taking the test, and you can do that practice using those adverbial clauses. In SLP Now we have icon cards for the conjunctions that you would use with the sentence starters.
We also have pictures to practice and support that understanding. We give you tools for sentence starters and picture sequencing. In terms of relative clauses, two more evidence backed strategies are to use sentence combining, which we talked about last week.
This is where we're combining two or more simple sentences. You can use simple sentences from whatever book or article you're reading and then use our conjunction cards to help students combine those. The other strategy we talked about last week is sentence decomposition, where you take a complex sentence and break it down into simpler sentences.
All you need is the book or article you're reading and identifying those simple, complex, and compound sentences. That is a quick blitz of some strategies we can use for our syntax goals. Check out the show notes for references and more detail about the resources if you want help implementing this.
I hope that this was a helpful review for you and we'll see you in the next one.
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