Instructions: Children by and large seek to do the right thing. I say this as having observed many children, from many different backgrounds working as a volunteer in community child services organisations (hands on stuff, not mucking about with the printers in the office). So when I hear of a child penalised peremptorily for apparently not following instructions, I bristle.
Listen, teacher (to quote Pink Floyd), if there’s miscommunication, it is the sender’s fault, not the recipients. That’s a basic rule of any communication. If your message hasn’t gotten through that illustrations on blue paper won’t be part of the Christmas display, and you don’t guide a child to the right paper (given the waves of excitement that might be distracting, the noise that’s prevented understanding, or the long queue for the red and green paper piles)—and why do you have the wrong colour paper available anyway—you’ve muddled your message.
To then let the child do their work on the wrong colour paper and announce their exclusion after the fact, you’ve modelled a strong message that ‘we’re here to trip up, not to help’. Wait for that to play out in real life!
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