Build the arrangement

The arrangement is the set of cues that let a child in the middle column meet the standard. It's what the classroom has and home hasn't, and it's not complicated.

The list by the door. Five things, in pictures or words depending on the age, at the child's eye level, by the door they leave through. Kit, book, coat, water bottle, lunch. The child checks it on the way out. Not you. Them, with you watching at first, then not. This does for the shelf what chapter 3 said needed doing. It takes the items off the child's working memory and puts them on the wall.

The bag packed together the night before. At nine, with you. You say "what do we need for tomorrow?", they answer, you both put it in. The bag goes by the door. The morning has one less thing on the shelf, and the child has practised the planning, which is the proactive control Munakata described, in the only way it can be practised at nine, which is alongside someone who has it.

The timer they can see. For the tablet, for getting dressed, for leaving. A kitchen timer or a sand timer, set where they can watch it, with the words "when it goes" rather than "in five minutes". Chapter 6 is why. Time becomes a thing they can see run out, and a thing they can see they can act on.

The warning. "Ten minutes and then it's bedtime" at twenty past seven, "two minutes" at twenty-eight past, "time" at half past, with the tablet handed to you rather than put down. Three cues instead of one, spaced, so that the inhibition that's being asked for at half past has been prepared for since twenty past. This is what a good teacher does before every transition, and it's why the classroom works.

One instruction at a time. "Shoes, then coat, then bag" is three things on a nine-year-old's shelf. "Shoes" is one. Say the next when the first is done. An earlier book in this series is about asking once, close and quiet, and the same applies here, and the reason is Gathercole's line.

Cue, don't nag. A cue is a signal that arrives once, at the right moment, from a list or a timer or a single word. Nagging is the same signal repeated with rising heat. The first builds the function. The second builds resentment and teaches the child to wait for the heat, and the NHS's "try not to overreact" is about exactly this.

The visible clock. A clock the child can read, in the kitchen and in their room. Not a phone. A face they can glance at. Time judgement develops partly by being checked against a clock, and a child who can see the time is a child who can begin to hold it.

Be specific about what went right. The NHS says to be positive about the good things and to be specific. "You checked the list without me asking" tells the child what he did and that it was seen. It's the opposite of the label, and it's the thing that makes him do it again.