Plan-Do-Review Strategy for Task Completion

When it comes to completing tasks that often follow a specific order, like chores, homework, or crafts, children can benefit from direct teaching on how to organize their thoughts and actions. This is especially helpful for kids with executive function difficulties, including challenges with sequencing, initiating tasks, inhibiting impulses, or planning ahead.

One strategy we can teach children of all ages who struggle with these kinds of activities is the Plan-Do-Review strategy. This approach can also help reduce anxiety around situations or tasks that feel difficult.

Step 1: Plan

Before starting an activity, encourage your child to make a plan for how they’ll complete it. What will they do first, second, and third? Will they need help, or can they do it on their own? Is there a part they predict will be difficult?

During this planning stage, making lists or drawing pictures can help take good planning thoughts out of their head and onto paper. This gets their planning skills moving, while also creating a visual aid to help them remember their plan.

Step 2: Do

Follow through with the plan. If you’re completing the activity with your child, you can help them refer back to their plan if they need to be redirected, reminded of a step, or encouraged that they’re making good progress.

If your child is completing the activity independently, remind them to check their plan as they go, and stay 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 want to change next time. This is genuinely tricky, even for adults. Because self-reflection is difficult, this stage often means modeling and teaching your child how to do it. You might 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 your child with questions like “What should we do differently?” or “How do you think it went?” These are great questions, but limiting yourself to just one question at a time, and modeling reflection yourself, reduces the chance of frustration while still teaching your child how to participate in self-reflection.

When to Use Plan-Do-Review

Working on planning and reflecting benefits all children and can be practiced in many different scenarios.

This strategy can be used in a very structured way, like sitting down to make 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 use this strategy is when getting ready for special events, like sports games, musical performances, or other events that don’t happen every day.

We’re Here to Help

For more strategies to support your child’s executive functioning, check out our posts on building attention and executive functioning skills and games for executive functioning. If you have questions or concerns, contact us today.