Three instructions at once, and only one is left: the label tucked into the school bag pocket teaches the teacher to break them into three
A label at the bottom of the school bag pocket, scanned in the morning by the teacher or in the evening by the after-school supervisor, and the three-part instruction arrives cut into three short sentences, given one after the other, instead of being repeated three times louder.
This case involves a 9 year old child whose working memory holds few pieces of information at a time. The profile is prepared by a parent, and it is aimed at the adults who give instructions all day long: the class teacher, the supervisor of the homework club and of the after-school care.
Between the board and the desk
There is an open pencil case, a notebook still closed, and a sentence that evaporated along the way. The teacher has just said, in one breath: take out the red notebook, write the date, copy the three words from the board. The others are already on the second step. Noé, 9 years old, is holding his red notebook and looking around to guess what comes next. He heard the whole instruction. What did not hold was keeping it in mind while he was carrying out the first part. Seen from the front of the class, the scene looks like a child daydreaming.
His mother tucked a label into the inside pocket of the school bag, the one where the home-school notebook is kept. At the start of the year, the teacher scans it. She reads what the mother wrote: Noé understands everything, but he can only hold one piece of information at a time. Three things announced in one go, he keeps only one, almost always the first or the last. What works is one instruction at a time, written on the board and left in view, and an agreed signal when he needs to ask again.
The next day, the teacher gives the same series in three steps, with the written trace left on the board. Noé takes out the red notebook, writes the date, copies the words, in order and within the time given. In the evening, the homework club supervisor has read the same profile: he no longer repeats the instruction three times louder, he splits it in two. Nobody wrote a note in the home-school notebook, nobody mentioned a lack of seriousness at pick-up, and Noé did not have to choose between asking a fourth time and staying stuck in front of his notebook.
- You write it
- The QR is in place
- The reader scans
- Understood, without explaining again
Where to put the QR code in this case
Here, the QR code is not there for an emergency: it is useful at the moment when an adult takes charge of the child for the first time that day. So it has to be where that adult already looks, without having to search through the school bag.
- Label in the inside pocket of the school bag, the one for the home-school notebook, printed from an A4 label sheet (standard model): it is the first place opened in the morning.
- Label stuck on the second page of the home-school notebook, from the same A4 sheet, for the substitute teacher who takes the class with no handover.
- Card in wallet format handed directly to the lead after-school supervisor, at the start-of-year meeting, because the evening homework club never opens the school bag.
- Link sent by message to the head teacher before the first day, so that it circulates within the team without depending on an object left at home.
The rule here is discreet redundancy: the same profile in three places, none of them visible from the next desk. The label informs the adult, it does not label the child in front of his classmates.
Pre-written text templates
The outlines below are a starting point for filling in the sections of the profile. They can be rewritten in your own words: the way your child signals that he has lost the thread belongs to him, and it is exactly that detail that makes the profile useful.
For the "Presentation" section
"I am the mother of [first name], [age] years old. He understands instructions, he does not hold on to them. His working memory keeps one piece of information at a time: out of three things announced in a row, he does one, often the first or the last. It is neither chosen inattention nor unwillingness, and he notices it himself, which discourages him quickly."
For the "How to help" section
"You can give one instruction at a time, and wait for it to be done before the next one. You can leave the instruction written on the board or on a sheet of paper on his desk, so that he rereads it instead of asking again. You can agree with him on a discreet signal for when he has lost the thread. You can ask him to say the instruction back in his own words, once, before he starts."
For the "What to avoid" section
"Avoid stringing several instructions together in the same sentence. Avoid repeating the same thing louder, it is not a hearing problem. Avoid having him write down homework dictated out loud with no written support. Avoid commenting on the forgetting in front of the class. Avoid treating missing equipment as a lack of seriousness: he rarely holds on to the instruction and the object at the same time."
Particularities involved in this case
Working memory does not have a page of its own in this directory: it is described here through ADHD, where the difficulty of holding on to a piece of information long enough to use it is the best documented. The same adjustments (one instruction at a time, a written support, an agreed signal to ask again) are also found in learning difficulties, without having to wait for an official assessment to put them in place.
Similar cases
The cases below share the same mechanism: an adult at school or at the after-school club meets the child with no handover, and the way they phrase their instructions in the first few minutes decides how the rest of the day goes.
The teacher understands, right when marking, why the handwriting is difficult, without the child having to ask out loud for leniency.
View the case Autistic child (ASD level 1), age 7 Reader: Substitute teacherThe substitute can access the sensory triggers and routines without any written handover, and without singling the child out in front of the…
View the case Child with ADHD, age 11 Reader: AESHThe support assistant has the right strategies from day one, with no trial and error and no extra meeting.
View the caseThis situation is something you should not have to replay with every new person.
Every new school year, every new substitute, every appointment: you have to start all over again. myHandiQR puts an end to that. You write it once. You will no longer start from scratch at every meeting.