In Chapter 1, I introduced an instructional strategy called precorrection. Briefly, precorrection is anticipating mistakes that students might make, and providing instruction to help them avoid those mistakes. Consider, you give a complex assignment to students . You know that even if you supply them with written instructions, they are likely to make mistakes, even when following the instructions. You might also give the students a video demo, and a Frequently Made Mistakes document. You could even host a chat before the assignment to answer any questions they have about how to complete it. If you focus these items on the parts of the assignment that are most likely to cause trouble, they become examples of precorrection.
You can use a lesson to give students precorrection for difficult instructions. Place directions that should be read in a specific order on a series of lesson pages. See to it that the students step through those...