By: Mallory Carr, M.A., CCC-SLP
When it comes to completing tasks that often should follow a specific order like chores, homework, or creating crafts, children can benefit from direct teaching on how to organize their thoughts and actions. This is especially helpful for children who have executive function difficulties (i.e., difficulties with sequencing, initiating tasks, inhibiting, planning, etc).
A strategy that we can teach children of all ages who struggle with these kinds of activities is the Plan-Do-Review strategy. This strategy can also help reduce anxiety about situations or tasks that are difficult.
Step 1: Plan
Before starting an activity, encourage your child to make a plan of how they will complete it. What are they going to do first, second, and third? Are they going to need help, or can they do it by themselves? Is there a certain part they predict they will have difficulties with?
In this planning stage, we can make lists and draw pictures to help take the good planning thoughts out of their head and onto paper. This gets their planning skills going, while creating a visual aid to help them remember their plan.
Step 2: Do
Follow through with the plan! If you are completing the activity with the child, you can help them refer back to their plan if they need to be redirected, reminded of a step, or to encourage them that they’re making good progress.
If the child is completing the activity independently, you can remind them to check their plan as they go and be available to help along the way.
Step 3: Review
Once the task is complete, encourage self-reflection about what went well with the plan and what they might like to change next time. This is a really tricky thing to do, even for adults. Self-reflection is difficult so this stage might be modeling and teaching them how to self-reflect. You can say things like:
- “I noticed that…”
- “When you did X, I saw X happen,”
- “This part looked tricky, let’s try this next time,”
- “It seemed like X went really well!”
At first, try not to bombard the child with questions (e.g., “what should we do differently?” “What did you think about this?” “How do you think it went?”). These are great questions, however, try limiting to one question at first and modeling reflection. This will reduce the chances of frustration while teaching your child how to participate in self-reflection.
When to Use Plan – Do – Review
Working on planning and reflecting is helpful for all children and can be practiced in many different scenarios!
This strategy can be used in a very structured way by sitting down and making a homework checklist and talking through every assignment, or it can be used extremely informally. It can be as simple as talking through your plan at the grocery store before you go in, executing the plan, then chatting about it back in the car. Another great time to implement this strategy is getting ready for special events, such as sports games, musical events, or other events that don’t happen every day.
Enrichment Therapy and Learning Center is Here For You
Enrichment Therapy & Learning Center has locations in the Iowa City, IA area and Des Moines, IA area. We provide individual speech-language therapy and tutoring as well as offering small group academic programs. At Enrichment Therapy & Learning Center, our passion is to help kids achieve effective communication skills and gain academic success. Contact us for more information on how we can help your child succeed.
info@enrichmenttherapies.com
740 Community Drive, Unit A
North Liberty, IA 52317
319-626-2553
infodm@enrichmenttherapies.com
5530 West Pkwy, Suite 300
Johnston, IA 50131
515-419-4270
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