I had a tough time last week. I was teaching turn left, turn right and go straight on to my classes of 8-9 year-olds, which is generally quite a fun activity as we hide things in the classroom and the students have to direct one of their classmates to find the object.
But the problem comes when they have to put it on paper. The fact is that the majority of students at that age can’t visual the route on paper as more than lines going left, right, up and down. They have no problem with left and right until they have to imagine that they are walking along the road and have to turn right, not up.
In the end, with a lot of book-turning, we got there, though we took the longer route and got lost on the way!