Designing for child

Age · under 12 · All situations

176 rows from 157 pages say what to change when the brief's age is child; 121 of them cite a claim. Pages whose rows cite claims come first. Read the basis before relying on a row: many carry a claim to learners or settings it did not test, and say so.

Support Early Language Development

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Infants, or children not yet using words (from the wording)	Respond to gestures, sounds and pointing as turns; name what the child attends to; use books as things to point at and talk about rather than to read through; keep exchanges to a few turns at a time across care routines	untested proposal; the associational turn-count finding (conversational turns [+M]) and the child-directed speech element. The dialogic-reading trials did not include infants
Typically developing children of about 2 to 3 (from the wording)	Make daily dialogic reading the core routine (completion and recall prompts, expansion, repeated books), one-to-one or in small groups, and coach the parents or staff who do it	Dialogic reading improves expressive language [+S] (moderate effect against typical shared reading; larger for younger children)
Children of about 4 to 5 (from the wording)	Shift to open-ended and "your own life" prompts and retelling by the child; add short, explicit teaching of a few selected words from each book; do not expect the same gain from reading alone	Dialogic reading improves language outcomes [~S] (effect substantially smaller at 4–5); Explicit Vocabulary Instruction
Children with language delays or disabilities (from the wording)	Use one-to-one or very small groups, more sessions, simpler prompts, and work with a speech-language professional; do not rely on a parent-led reading routine alone, and judge progress on the child's own talk (utterances, variety of words)	Potentially positive effects for children with disabilities [+M] (two trials, 52 children with language delays); Dale et al. 1996 [+M] (gains on 2 of 6 measures); parent-led dialogic reading showed no significant differences [-M] (19 children); the hub's smaller effect for children at risk [~S]
Children who are deaf or hard of hearing (from the wording)	Give early, full access to a language the child can perceive (including a sign language), with the same responsive turn-taking in that language; involve specialists early	untested here; from the earlier page (early sign-language exposure is time-sensitive). No claim in the wiki was read for it
classroom with one teacher for 15–20 children (from the wording)	Rotate small groups of 4–5 for 10-minute dialogic sessions while others play; train assistants or volunteers to run some groups; check once a week that sessions happen and children talk on most pages	the teacher-delivered replication failure in the hub [~S]; frequency of implementation moderates effects [~M]; group sizes are untested proposals

Universal Early Literacy Screening

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Kindergarten (child, age 5–6)	Screen letter naming and phonemic awareness; skip nonsense-word fluency if the other subtests are given; expect lower accuracy than in later grades	Kindergarten DIBELS subtests predict first-grade instructional reading, with Letter Naming Fluency the strongest predictor [+M]; Classification accuracy of the screening cut scores is lower for Grades K-2 than Grades 3-8, attributed to a 12-36 month lapse between MAP Growth and criterion measures [~M]
A school serving many children from low-income families, or with high teacher turnover and low attendance (from the wording)	Expect more children flagged; budget added instruction and staff for that number before screening; read the rate as a measure of the school's resources and the children's prior opportunities, not of the children	School characteristics—percentage of low income students, teacher retention, and attendance—are associated with students' likelihood of being identified as at significant risk in early literacy screening [~W]
Many children sit just above or below the cut score (from the wording)	Treat a band around the cut as borderline: a diagnostic look and a recheck rather than an automatic placement either way	Exploratory analysis found no observed differences in later MCAS performance between students just below and just above screening risk thresholds [~W]

Autonomy

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Praise is part of the routine (children, after success) (from the wording)	Praise the effort or strategy used, not the learner's intelligence	Praise for intelligence undermines motivation after failure [~M]; Intelligence praise against effort praise [~M]
Young children (child, about five) in early literacy, and the brief asks for child-chosen activities	Distinguish choosing which activity from thinking for oneself within it. Keep teacher-led activities in which children make their own connections (an open shared reading of a big book, a text the children compose with the teacher as scribe), and keep explicit teaching of the spelling system; do not rely on free choice of activity to reach it	Autonomy at one level may inhibit another [~W]; Orthographic mastery needs instruction [~W]; Big-book reading and cognitive autonomy [+W]; Co-construction with the teacher as scribe [+W]; all from one report, argument and teacher report, no comparison

Educational Readiness

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Children are entering kindergarten or first grade (child, early years)	Observe in play and short one-to-one tasks rather than a written test; plan play and movement into the day as teacher-side readiness; meet families before the start	Difficulty adjusting to kindergarten and first grade can put young children at academic risk [+W] (a fact sheet's assertion, no data); family meetings: transition programme interviews [+W]; play and movement: untested, from the earlier page
A family or school is considering holding a child back a year, or having a child repeat kindergarten (from the wording)	Recommend on-time entry with the entry check and bridging above; record the specific concern and plan an adjustment for it	Redshirting kindergartners likely carries costs that outweigh its academic benefits [+W]; At the end of first grade, children whose kindergarten entry was delayed were behind their classmates who began kindergarten on time in math [+M], though they were slightly ahead in reading [~M]; US data, associational except one regression discontinuity
Readiness records concern young children, families or disabilities (sensitive) (from the wording)	Share results with the family and the teachers who act on them, not more widely; record observations, not labels; let families see and correct what is recorded	Untested proposal
The brief reports a mismatch learners actually showed (children unable to sit through long seated lessons; students who could not do the algebra in week 1) (from the wording)	Use it as the first item on the prerequisite list and as the contrast in planning: what the setting assumed against what the learners did	Untested proposal

Fostering Creative Thinking

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Short rounds (3–5 minutes), oral or drawn ideas collected by the teacher, play-like prompts, no grades on creative work, process and portfolio rather than product	Concrete reward increases children's mean ideational fluency [~M] (fifth graders: reward per idea raised idea counts in the session, so a reward-free design trades some output for interest); process focus for young children is from the earlier maker-assessment page, untested
Generative AI is used with child learners	As above, and treat any benefit as unestablished: keep the AI step short and after the child's own ideas, and check what the child produces without it	Primary studies report possible benefits of GenAI for children's divergent thinking, narrative creativity and creative self-efficacy, without confirmed efficacy [~W] (a scoping review of 22 small, heterogeneous studies; none in the wiki separates assisted from unassisted performance in children)

Modality Principle

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Middle-school children (k-12) learning a science unit from animation (from the wording)	Narrate; expect a smaller effect than in the adult lab studies. Adding the written words under the narration is not needed, but did no measurable harm in the same study	The modality effect held for middle-school students learning electricity, d = .35 [+M] (quasi-experiment); adding written text to narration made no significant difference [~M]
Younger children, still learning to read (from the wording)	Speech is the default for any accompanying explanation; untested as a modality comparison at this age. In an e-book whose aim is exposure to print, pair the narration with highlighting or a tracking pointer on the words being read, which draws children's eyes to the text	Modality comparison untested; narration with finger-tracking animation directed bilingual preschoolers' looking to the print being read [~M] (attention measured, not learning; the effect stopped when the animation ended)

Positive Self-talk

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
The goal is academic writing or problem solving, child or adolescent	Teach self-instructions as part of the strategy (its steps become the cues) with goal setting and self-monitoring, over several sessions	Strategy Instruction Improves Writing Quality [+M] (grades 4–10; self-instruction bundled with three other components)
Learners are young children (child, early primary)	Let them talk aloud while working; the adult models the cue first and the child repeats it, then whispers it; do not treat talking aloud as off-task	Thought and language become increasingly interdependent in the first few years, with private speech evolving into inner speech as self-regulation [+W] (a theoretical overview; no study)

Text-to-Speech

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child early readers building fluency	Use speech or read-along for access to stories and content above their reading level, not as the main fluency practice; keep the child reading the words aloud themselves in separate practice, and check comprehension after read-along rather than assuming it	Repeated listening improves oral reading fluency in second-grade students, with Listening Only outgaining Reading While Listening and Reading Only [~M] (one seven-week study of 75 second graders, reported second-hand in a review; reading while listening had the smallest fluency gain and an average comprehension loss; no statistical test printed)
Young children with an e-book or app, possibly in two languages (from the wording)	Choose narration with a highlight that tracks the words, in the language whose print the child should look at; ask two or three story questions after, since attention to print did not reliably become comprehension	Audio narration with finger-tracking animation directs bilingual preschoolers' attention to the target-language print in dual-language e-books, including the nondominant language [+M]; Multimedia features improved story comprehension in dual-language e-books (marginal trend) but not in single-language e-books [~M] (one eye-tracking study, bilingual preschoolers)

AI Tutoring

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Children or young adolescents (from the wording)	Prefer a structured tutor or teachable agent with teacher oversight to open chat; test the tutor's safety over long multi-turn conversations and against requests to cheat, not only single prompts, and do not rely on an off-the-shelf safety filter	Teachable agent improved fourth-graders' science reasoning [+M]; warning about AI mistakes raised seventh-graders' hint requests [+M]; multi-turn interactions raised attack success on conventional risks three to five times [-M] and safety classifiers passed exam-answer and cheating requests as safe [-M] (model evaluations, no learners)

Ask Experts

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Keep the consultation one-to-one or with two or three children, short (10 minutes), on one problem, with the expert moving up the question–hint–model ladder and back down after each success	Contingent scaffolding improves learning more than fixed or absent support. [+M] (fourth and fifth graders, long division, 8 per condition, one-to-one)

Authentic Assessment

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary school)	Keep the task short and concrete with one product, one audience the children know of (another class, families), criteria as two or three "I can" statements, and teacher-led feedback rather than peer scoring.	Authentic audiences [+M]: second-graders wrote better for an external audience (one study, abstract only); the rest is untested

Balanced pronunciation curriculum covering suprasegmentals, segmentals, and fluency, with a short list of central features selected by diagnosis

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (under 12)	Keep segments to 5–10 minutes, use rhymes, chants and games for stress and rhythm; if ASR is used, short individual turns with an adult nearby. Expect prosody to move slowly.	AI reading tool, prosody null [~M] (third-grade learners, oral reading, not spontaneous speech); individual or peer ASR practice [~M] (unsettled; third-graders did best individually in one study)

Build productive instructor-learner relationships so adults feel connected and take an active role in learning

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are adolescent or child (the school studies' population)	Keep the greeting at the door and the empathic response to misconduct as daily routines; shorten the intake and involve families where appropriate	Positive Greetings At The Door Improve Engagement [+M] and A brief online empathic-discipline exercise for teachers halved suspensions in one randomized field experiment, while its preregistered replication found a small, marginal overall effect but narrowed group disparities [~S] (middle school, the population tested)

Building Empathy

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are young children (preschool or early primary) (from the wording)	Use role-play and pretend play with adult support, inside a sequenced social-emotional curriculum, rather than discussion of perspectives	SEL programmes improve social-emotional skills [+M] (ages 2–6: d = 0.30 social, 0.54 emotional competence); Pretend play facilitates perspective taking [+W] (a review)

Bullying Prevention and Intervention

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Whole school, primary age (child), goal is less bullying over several years	Adopt a schoolwide positive behaviour framework as the climate layer, keep it for four years, and track teacher-rated bullying and peer rejection each year against the expected rise	SWPBIS and bullying [+M]; SWPBIS and peer rejection [+M] (group-randomised trial, 37 Maryland elementary schools, teacher ratings)

Character Education

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Whole school, primary age (child), goal is fewer conduct problems	Adopt a schoolwide programme with several components (classroom lessons, schoolwide climate, family involvement) and keep it for more than a year; record conduct, violence and absence from the start	Positive Action, behaviour [+M] (two elementary studies, 56 schools, WWC domain average 0.51); Caring School Community, behaviour [+M] (two K–6 studies, +8 percentile points, rated with reservations)

Classroom Space and Procedural Design

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are a young child (preschool, early primary)	Three rules shown with pictures; each procedure rehearsed physically, daily for four to six weeks; one transition signal (a song or chime); movement breaks of about five minutes between segments; displays at child eye height, mostly their own work	Movement breaks: Classroom physical activity increases children's on-task behaviour, with no consistent gain on attention or other cognitive tests [+M] (primary-school children; on-task behaviour). Displays: Classroom Design Affects Learning Progress [+M] (English primary schools; observational). Rest untested

Cognitive Activation

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are children or young adolescents (child, adolescent)	Keep the "why" prompts but allow spoken answers; use two concrete cases rather than abstract descriptions; one relation per session.	Self-explanation prompts improve learning from worked examples [+M] (pooled across levels of education, and one study with eighth graders; the adaptations themselves are untested)

Cognitive Flexibility

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Age child (under 12)	Use two cases at a time, side by side, with the one dimension that differs named by the teacher; no free navigation among cases.	untested proposal; no claim here tests case comparison with children
Age child, early years (about 2–5), a number concept reachable by several methods (estimating, counting, lining up)	Embed the comparison in a purposeful choice ("which pile do you want?"); model one method and ask what its result means for the choice, then show that a second method gives the same answer; expect the child to propose the cross-check unprompted only later, across months.	Numerical routines individualize through a three-stage sequence of vertical and horizontal bonding [+W]: a teaching experiment with four children, no comparison group; it describes a sequence, not an effect

Coherence Principle

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are children or young adolescents (primary, secondary) (from the wording)	Keep decorative pictures out of and away from the instructional pictures; the evidence with 7th and 8th graders found no overall harm but a weaker benefit from the informative picture. For children below that age, treat it as a proposal	Seductive details effect [~S] (Lenzner et al., grades 7–8; Garner et al., adults and children); younger children untested

Collaborative Evaluation

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (under 12)	Use two objects at a time, two or three criteria phrased as questions with picture or worked anchors, and a short spoken comparison in pairs; the teacher gives the reference each time.	Peer assessment [+M]: the meta-analysis includes primary students and found no reliable difference by education level; the configuration is untested

Combine intentional and incidental vocabulary learning rather than relying on incidental learning alone

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child first-language readers, not second-language learners	Keep the same combination: read aloud and talk about texts, pre-teach two or three words, and reuse them in talk; expect taught-word gains	Pairing Contextual Encounters… [+M] (a meta-analysis of vocabulary instruction, population not stated in the entry); most other claims here are second-language and university, so carried

Competency-Based Assessment

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners whose capability is still emerging (young children, early stages) (from the wording)	Add an assisted attempt beside the unassisted one, and record what help made the difference	Static assessment misses developing functions [~W]

Concept Attainment

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (under 12) and the target is a procedure (e.g. a fair test)	Prefer direct instruction of the procedure with examples. Keep concept attainment for categories with visible attributes (animals, shapes).	Guided against unguided discovery [~S]: 112 third- and fourth-graders learning the control-of-variables procedure; not a concept-attainment lesson

Concreteness Fading

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Young children (early primary, kindergarten) (from the wording)	Keep the concrete stage longer, across several sessions, with the teacher's words naming the relation as children act	Manipulatives improve math learning [+M] (kindergarten to college); the longer stage is an untested proposal

Considering The Opposite

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child or adolescent, in science, holding an everyday misconception	Predict–observe–explain: commit to a prediction, ask "how would someone who thinks the opposite explain it?", show the phenomenon, then discuss which account fits; use a refutation text that names the misconception and answers it	Conflict-based instruction improves science conceptual learning [+M] (meta-analyses of science-education studies; staged contradiction helped only confused learners in one small experiment); refutation text [+M] (no developmental pattern found in the review)

Constructive Alignment

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are children or adolescents (pre-k-12) (from the wording)	Write outcomes as short "I can…" statements the teacher shares and checks with learners; keep frequent low-stakes checkpoints with a revision step.	Assessment for learning [+M] for formative checkpoints (K–12 syntheses); the "I can" wording is untested; the earlier page described the pattern as developed in higher education

Contiguity Principle (Spatial and Temporal)

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Children in primary school (from the wording)	Use the same integrated layouts; check understanding with a short "what happens if" question	Education level did not consistently moderate design-principle effects [~M]; the contiguity meta-analyses here are not broken down by age

Cultural & Life Experiences Connections

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are young children (child, K-2)	Build assessment tasks from practices families describe in interviews, as play with cards and objects, and ask children to justify their choices	Assessment tasks built on family-identified funds of knowledge elicited computational thinking from K-2 children in a small design-based study that made no comparison with standard assessment [+M] (13 children, two tasks, no comparison with a standard task; resource-intensive)

Culturally Responsive Classroom Norms

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Teach each convention by modelling and short practice ("now we think for three seconds, then whisper to your partner"); prefer choral and whiteboard response; talk with families about how questions and help work at home	Wait time: Reviews of classroom studies, read from their abstracts, associate longer teacher wait time with longer, higher-cognitive-level student responses, with no effect size recorded [+M] (reviews across grade levels, not by culture). Family conversation: untested

Design tools so productive usage is guaranteed by affordances and constraints rather than instructions

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child or adolescent	Children: an opening screen they can act on without reading, controls with visible extremes, and an adult nearby for the first session. Adolescents with an AI tutor: hints only, teacher-written per problem	Child: A student began interacting with the sim within 10 seconds and verbalized sense-making without explicit guidance [+W] (one sixth-grade student). Adolescent: Guardrails in the GPT Tutor largely eliminate the negative exam effect, though no positive exam effect is observed [~M] (high school mathematics)

Digital Learning

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Use short sessions (10 minutes or less), supervised by an adult in the room; give feedback that needs little reading; avoid open typed answers. A simulation can stand in for physical materials if the same instruction goes with it	session length and supervision are untested proposals; the substitution rests on Physical and virtual instructional materials are equally effective for teaching fourth- and fifth-graders to design unconfounded experiments when instructional method is controlled [+M] (one science skill; no difference found, equivalence not tested). Online-versus-classroom comparisons for school-age learners are almost absent: A systematic search found almost no rigorous studies contrasting online and face-to-face instruction for K–12 students: none with computable effect sizes through 2006, and only five meeting meta-analysis criteria through July 2008. [~M]

Distributed Cognition

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Prompt them to use the external aid (write it down, look at the board) and show when it would have helped; the prediction-and-feedback check is about under-use, not over-use	Review reports a developmental shift in cognitive offloading: children under-use external aids while adolescents over-rely on them [~W] (one word-pair memory study, reported second-hand)

Dual Coding

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Supply pictures and flow diagrams with the text; have children label or complete them rather than draw freely	Supplied: text with graphics [+M] (effect held across grade levels). Drawing: drawing in STEM [~M] (benefit larger in middle and high school than in primary)

Effective Classroom Management Plan Criteria

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are a young child (preschool or early primary)	Fewer rules (three), shown with pictures; routines rehearsed physically and daily for longer (four to six weeks); immediate, frequent praise; redirection by proximity and a quiet prompt, not warnings; no self-recording yet	the meta-analysis covers K–12 without an age breakdown; taught expectations are supported for grades K–5 (clear behavior expectations [+M]), not for preschool; the pictures, number of rules and length are untested

Emergent Curriculum

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (preschool to early primary)	Use the full sequence: teacher-chosen entry points, daily observation notes, webbing with the children, threads of one to four weeks, and an adult in the activity guiding it toward the webbed ideas (asking, modelling, supplying tools) rather than leaving it as free play.	Guided play [~M]: early-childhood meta-analysis, guided play ahead of direct instruction on early maths, shape knowledge and task switching and of free play on spatial vocabulary, no reliable difference on most outcomes; guided play, not emergent curriculum

Employ flexible error treatment strategies matched to objectives, competence, affect, and correction effectiveness

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age) in task-based lessons	Recast the target form within the task without stopping it; keep explicit rule talk short	Recasts in task-based lessons with grade-5 EFL learners [+M] (pretest–posttest, no comparison group); the classroom meta-analysis found younger learners benefited more (durable effect [+S])

Engagement

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Keep the arrival routine, short work blocks, teacher-held progress chart; avoid tangible rewards for taking part	Expected tangible rewards reduce later free-choice engagement with a rewarded task, while verbal praise does not [~S] (one meta-analysis reports rewards more detrimental for children than college students); block lengths untested

Epistemic Cognition

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
child learners (primary school)	Frame questions as "how does it happen?" and have learners compare a mechanistic and a non-mechanistic explanation of a familiar phenomenon, giving a reason; keep content to what they already know, since they reject explanations that conflict with their knowledge. Do not expect web-source evaluation routines to transfer down.	Elementary students prefer mechanistic explanations [+W]: grades 2–6, observed in interviews, no instruction tested

Error Analysis

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
child (primary school)	Keep correction overt (show the correct answer and how, not only right/wrong); use constructed peer errors after instruction rather than problem-first failure, which reversed for second to fifth graders.	productive failure [~M]; overt correction for young children [~W] (second-hand, 1962 study)

Evidence-Based Teaching and Scientific Reasoning

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child in early grades and the choice is a maths curriculum	Choose by the randomised comparisons available; weight them above endorsements	First-grade math achievement is significantly higher under Math Expressions and Saxon Math than under Investigations in Number, Data, and Space and Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley Mathematics [+M] (first graders in 39 schools; one cohort)

Experience with Languaging Activities (ELAs) guided by a sequence of experience-based questions

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are in grades 6–8, or young child writers	Keep writing short (one or two sentences per step), answer steps 2 and 3 orally, and write only step 4.	Writing to learn [~S]: effects were reduced in grades 6–8 and with longer assignments (a moderator in one meta-analysis, read from its abstract)

Experiential Learning

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are children, or school-age	Use short, concrete hands-on tasks and connect each to its symbol or written form in the same session; tell them what to try, not only to explore	Hands-on learning improves achievement [+M] (mathematics, kindergarten to college); Unassisted discovery produces less learning than explicit instruction, while discovery enhanced with guidance outperforms other instruction [~S] (third and fourth graders)

Experiential Learning Cycle

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are children (under 12)	Shorter loops (experience 10–15 minutes, debrief 5 minutes); concrete materials linked to the written or symbolic form in the same session; tell them what to try rather than only to explore; the teacher states the rule.	Hands-on learning [+M] (mathematics manipulatives, kindergarten to college); guided against unassisted discovery [~S] (third and fourth graders learning a procedure); loop lengths untested

Explicit Instruction: Math Strategies

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
The goal is a procedure, or learners are child (early primary)	Teach the strategy first, then practise; no problem-first phase	Productive Failure Improves Conceptual Learning [~S] (no procedural advantage for problem-first; reversed for second to fifth graders)

Explicit Instruction: Vocabulary

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (pre-K to primary), or are weaker readers	Keep the set small (3–4 words per session), teach orally with pictures and actions, read texts aloud with the words in them; expect taught-word gains, not general reading gains	Vocabulary Instruction Improves Comprehension [+S] (pre-K–12; students with reading difficulties gained most on custom measures); for students with learning disabilities, teach content words as concepts rather than definitions: The concept model of vocabulary instruction produced larger gains… [+M] (six middle-school students); doses untested

Feedback Loops

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Shorter cycles with the adult reading each attempt; praise the strategy or the work, never ability; small groups so attempts can be seen	Praise: Praise for intelligence, rather than for effort, after success undermines children's motivation and performance after a later failure [-M] (fifth graders). Cycle length: untested

Flexible Grouping

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Fewer formats, taught as routines with visual role cards; similar-need groups with the teacher for 10–15 minutes; other groups do practice they can check themselves	Contingent scaffolding improves learning more than fixed or absent support. [+M] (fourth and fifth graders, one-to-one); format and timing untested

Free-Choice Learning Environment Design

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Use the responsive cycle on contrasting cases before open building; keep explanations as a short menu to choose from, not free writing	AI-mediated feedback in hands-on exhibits [~M] (median grade 2)

Game-based Learning

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are preschool or early-primary children	Use a simple game whose board or move is the representation (e.g. a numbered linear track); an adult plays alongside naming the numbers or quantities; four sessions of 15–20 min over two weeks	Board-game study [+M]; guided play [~W] (guided play, not games specifically); in K–8 STEM games beat conventional teaching on average (STEM meta-analysis [+M], cognition g = .67)

Game-Based Mastery Learning

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are children (under 12)	No tangible prizes for finishing lessons; points and badges for accuracy and effort, worded as information; no public individual ranking; a teacher sees the level map	Rewards claim [-S]: tangible rewards more detrimental for children than college students, laboratory tasks

Gamification

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are children (under 12)	Prefer verbal, informational feedback and effort-focused badges to tangible prizes; avoid prizes for completion; no public individual ranking	Rewards claim [-S] (tangible rewards more detrimental for children than college students, lab); praise claim [~M] (fifth graders)

Graphic Organizers

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age) reading stories, including learners with learning disabilities	Use a story map (setting, characters, problem, goal, events, resolution), taught by modelling, leading and then testing; withdraw the map once accuracy holds	Story Mapping Improves Comprehension [+M] (third and fourth graders; 22 and 6 students; no standardized effect size)

Guided Practice

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age), or adult / professionals	Child: keep the cue–hint–demonstration ladder with one-to-one or small-group checking, and short rounds. Adult or professional: ask what they already do, and move guided items onto tasks from their own work as soon as the step is stable	Child: Contingent scaffolding improves learning more than fixed or absent support. [+M] (fourth and fifth graders, long division, 8 per condition). Adult: untested proposal

Handouts/Online Guides/Visual Reading Aids

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Shorter aid (one side), fewer blanks (three to five per section), pictures beside the words they illustrate, and the teacher models filling the first section aloud	Pictures: Adding relevant pictures or graphics to text improves learning from it, with a small pooled effect on reading comprehension, though whether dual coding explains the benefit is disputed [+S] (the meta-analysis found the effect regardless of grade level). Blanks and modelling: untested

Harmonize opposites: strike a balance between competing educational ideas rather than embracing one method wholesale

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Beginning readers (child, early grades)	Keep systematic phonics whole as the decoding strand; add whole-text reading and literature around it, and watch individual pupils for those it does not reach	Systematic phonics outperforms unsystematic or no-phonics instruction on children's reading overall… [~S] (contested by one review); Balance Whole Language And Phonics [~W] (an essay); see Phonics

Include parents, teachers, or mentors in any self-regulation intervention and support their own skills and coaching capacity

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (under 12), or have autism or another developmental condition	Train the parent to deliver the practice at home, with coaching and rehearsal; expect larger effects where the parent delivers practice than from information	Parent-mediated intervention [+M] (children with autism, ages 1–6 and school age); parent coaching [+M] (ages 0–7). Both outside this page's 14–25 range

Instructor Accessibility

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Accessibility means routines in the room: the teacher circulates on a set route, learners have a help signal (a card or cup) so they need not call out, and the teacher holds brief informal talks with each pupil over a fortnight	Positive teacher–student relationships are associated with greater student engagement and, more weakly, with achievement [~M] (correlational meta-analyses, preschool to high school; negative relationships mattered more in primary school); the routines are untested

Interleaving

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are children or adolescents (from the wording)	Use interleaving where the condition holds, but do not promise the laboratory effect sizes: they come mostly from university samples, and one review found no high-school study at all. The one school study in the wiki, in seventh-grade mathematics, found a benefit	Interleaving effects are larger in university student samples [~M]; the literature is dominated by laboratory studies of undergraduates [~W]; at a 1-day delay, interleaved practice gave d = 0.42 in a seventh-grade classroom [+M]

Learning-for-Use (LfU) Model

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (second to fifth grade)	Teach the idea first with concrete examples, then use the motivating task as the application; keep the "need to know" opening short and teacher-led.	Problem-first effects were negative for 2nd–5th graders [~M]

Least Restrictive Environment

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child, preschool or kindergarten age	Default to an inclusive preschool or kindergarten class with an aide or specialist in the room; plan the move to first grade as a move to the general class	A state funding report's research review, citing earlier studies, states that inclusive preschool special education benefits students with and without disabilities and that effective early education reduces later special education identification [+M] (a report's review of cited studies, associational)

Minimize student frustration by making feedback clear, legible, focused, and transparent

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Comment on the work and the strategy, never on the child's ability ("you found two reasons; now add an example to each", not "you're a smart writer"); read comments aloud to them	Praise for intelligence, rather than for effort, after success undermines children's motivation and performance after a later failure [~M] (fifth graders on reasoning problems; carried to written comments)

Modeling

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are young children, and the target is play, social or motor behaviour	Model by acting out with materials in small groups, over several short sessions (the study used eight), and let children re-enact straight after	Modeling training improved imaginative play in disadvantaged kindergartners, with gains in imaginativeness, verbal communication, spontaneity, and attention span persisting two months [+W] (80 kindergartners, a 1973 report read second-hand; modelling combined with direct teaching)

Motivation

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	No tangible rewards for merely taking part; praise the strategy or effort, not the child's cleverness, especially before harder work; the teacher keeps the progress chart; where families are involved, suggest they praise what the child did rather than what the child is	Rewards [~S] (one meta-analysis found rewards more detrimental for children than college students); praise for intelligence [~M] (fifth graders, nonverbal problems); parents' process praise to toddlers [+M] (53 children, associational, from age one to fourth grade)

Multimedia Learning

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
A digital storybook for young children (from the wording)	Keep animated illustrations, sound and music that match the story; leave out hotspots, games and other interactive features	Multimedia-only stories helped comprehension; stories that also had interactive features did not [+M] (meta-analysis, g+ = 0.39 against −0.14). The gain was larger in studies of children the authors classed as disadvantaged (g+ = 0.66): a difference reflecting circumstances, not a property of the children or a cause

Multimedia Learning

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
A digital storybook for young children (from the wording)	Keep animated illustrations, sound and music that match the story; leave out hotspots, games and other interactive features	Multimedia-only stories helped comprehension (g+ = 0.39); stories that also had interactive features did not [+M] (meta-analysis). The gain was larger in studies of children the authors classed as disadvantaged (g+ = 0.66): a difference reflecting circumstances, not a property of the children or a cause

Multimodal Instruction

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary school) readers	Pair text with a relevant graphic, picture or flow diagram. Do not sort children by a style inventory.	Dual coding [+M]: the meta-analysis effect held across grade levels (elementary to adult); learning-styles matching [-M]: no style × modality interaction with 5th graders

Multiple Methods of Assessment

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are young children (child, pre-school or early primary)	Observe the goal in play or with objects and pictures, with a short interview ("show me", "why there?"), alongside any written task; record what each child did	Preschool children demonstrate behavioral knowledge of classification, one-to-one correspondence, and seriation during everyday free play with everyday materials [+W] (one observed play episode, two children); Assessment tasks built on family-identified funds of knowledge elicited computational thinking from K-2 children in a small design-based study that made no comparison with standard assessment [+W] (13 K–2 children, design study, no comparison with a standard test); Post-interviews with props and embodiment revealed understanding of macro–micro particle changes that the multiple-choice post-test did not capture. [+W] (early-primary science in a mixed-reality unit; 12 of the children showed in the interview what 2 showed on the two hardest multiple-choice items; descriptive)

Note-taking

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary) or adolescent with little note-taking experience	Guided notes with few, well-cued blanks; pauses every 5–8 minutes; teacher models notes on the board for several sessions, not one; review in class	Guided Notes Improve Note Accuracy [+M] (meta-analysis reports the benefit "particularly for school-age students", abstract only); timings untested

Observation/Shadowing

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are teacher candidates learning to observe children or classrooms (from the wording)	Run three or four workshops on authentic classroom video (a simplified simulation first if they are new to observing), each with a group observation assignment covering description, analysis and suggested support, and score it	In the initial skill acquisition phase, authentic video yielded higher overall observation assignment scores than virtual simulation [+M]; Analytical competence showed a leap-plateau trajectory across sequential authentic-video workshops, improving mainly between Workshops 2 and 3 [+M] (one design-based study, 8 groups, fixed order)

Pairing Non-examples with Examples

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	One deciding feature per pair, concrete or pictured cases, oral or pointing answers, pairs run with the teacher in a small group	Correct against incorrect examples [+M] (grades 4–5, brief tutoring session); the group format is untested

Peer Learning

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Fixed short scripts (one role card per side), sessions of 15–20 minutes, roles that swap each session, a group reward built from each child's own check	Peer-assisted learning improves elementary achievement [+M] (meta-analysis read as abstract; larger effects for younger, urban, low-income and minority students, and with interdependent rewards, self-referenced evaluation and autonomy); session length is an untested proposal

Peer Teaching

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Kindergarten or first grade, early reading (letter sounds, decoding) (from the wording)	Use a short scripted routine on sounds and words with turn-taking and a simple correction move, three or more times a week, and train teachers with a workshop before starting.	K-PALS on Rapid Letter Sounds [+M] (2,959 kindergarten pupils in 67 schools; significant for workshop, booster and helper conditions alike); PALS on first-grade literacy [+M] (three studies, 1,501 pupils, average effect +0.23); fluency and comprehension effects in first grade were not significant (three domains [~M])

Personalization

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are young children (child), or adult	Child: two options at most, chosen by the teacher from what the child said; personalize contexts more than paths; in kindergarten, expect a small gain from AI-driven personalized practice and do not let it replace the teacher's tailoring. Adult: ask what they already do and want; expect a wider spread of experience, and offer more paths and more choice	Adult: Adult learner groups are more heterogeneous than child groups, calling for individualized instruction and varied learning strategies [+W] (essay, no data). Child: School level significantly moderates effects: AI-enabled personalized STEM education is more effective in junior and senior high school than in kindergarten [~M] (a subgroup comparison across RCTs in one meta-analysis: kindergarten g = 0.118 against 0.42–0.53 from elementary to senior high; between studies, not a test within one); the number of options is untested

Phonics

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child, kindergarten or first grade, beginning to read	Run the full default: daily 20–30 minute lessons through the first school year, with phonemic-awareness work in the first term and decodable text from the first week	Systematic Phonics Improves Word Reading [+S] (kindergarten to grade 6; largest effects in kindergarten and grades 1–2)
Learners with low confidence after years of failure (older children, adults) (from the wording)	Begin with a correspondence they will master in the first session; show progress on their own weekly chart, first as the steps they carried out (said each sound, blended, checked the word) and only once a correspondence is secure as accuracy scores; avoid reading aloud in front of peers until the text is fully decodable for them	untested in reading. Novices given process goals outperformed those given outcome goals in a writing-revision experiment with 84 high-school students, with a shift to outcome goals helping once the skill was mastered (Process goals lead to better skill acquisition for novices than outcome goals. [+M]; carried to reading)
A performance for a real audience (reading to younger children, a class reading, reading aloud at work) (from the wording)	Choose or write a text within the learner's taught code, rehearse it with corrections until accurate, and keep the audience performance after accuracy, not as the practice	untested proposal

Physical Activity

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child or primary age, in a classroom	Use the default as given: one or two bouts per session, 5 minutes vigorous or more than 10 minutes moderate-to-vigorous, between segments, with a fixed transition	Classroom physical activity… [+S] (primary-school and 4–17-year-old children; on-task behavior); Energizers improved on-task behavior… [+M] (10-minute breaks, grades 3–4)

Positive Behavioral Interventions And Supports

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Elementary school, child learners (K–5)	Picture-based setting matrix; teach each setting in place with role-play; frequent specific praise and a simple class-wide token, faded to intermittent praise by the second term. Start in kindergarten and keep the system running across grades; expect fewer referrals and small changes in teacher-rated behaviour over years, not a quick drop.	The randomized trial was in elementary schools: fewer referrals [+M], less disruptive behaviour [+M] (ES 0.12), strongest for children first exposed in kindergarten [+M]; clear behaviour expectations [+M] (K–5, teacher-delivered); the token and fade are untested

Pre-reading Questioning

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Readers are primary-age children (child)	Ask two questions aloud and record answers for them; add one question about how they will check they understood ("What will you do if a part doesn't make sense?"), not only questions about the topic	Advance organizers aided learning …, but activating prior topic knowledge did not improve primary pupils' text comprehension in one experiment [~M] (88 primary pupils: metacognitive activation helped, topic activation did not)

Preserve Heritage Language While Acquiring an Additional Language

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Young child in pre-kindergarten or early care, family speaks another language at home	Develop the heritage language orally through stories and play in it; tell the family to keep using it; assess early mathematics and language in both languages before any judgement	Spanish use at home does not limit English learning [+M]; tested in Spanish, bilinguals scored higher in kindergarten mathematics [+M] (Spanish–English children; carried to other languages untested)

Procedural Learning

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Shorter rounds (3–5 items), concrete materials or a physical model of each step, one-to-one or small-group checking during supported attempts	Contingent scaffolding improves learning more than fixed or absent support. [+M] (fourth and fifth graders, long division, one-to-one); round size untested

Process-based Writing

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child in the early primary grades	Shorter texts; plan orally or with drawings; co-write with a partner in structured pairs (the more able writer helping the less able); revise one thing per piece	Collaborative Writing Improves Text Quality [+M] (grades 4–12, and one randomised study of 10–11-year-olds that found larger gains in later individual writing); younger children untested

Programmed Instruction

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (upper primary) or in secondary school	Sessions of 10–15 minutes, a teacher present to see who is stuck, the class working through a unit by a shared date and taking its check together.	Mastery programs raised examination performance [+M] in college, high-school and upper-elementary settings; group-based programs had larger effects [~M]; not frame-based programs

Project Space and Instructional Space

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (roughly second to fifth grade) and a gap is conceptual	Teach the concept first, then return to the project; do not rely on an unaided attempt first.	Problem solving before instruction [~S]: effects reversed for second to fifth graders and for domain-general skills

Provide positive comments alongside constructive criticism when responding to student writing

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Praise the strategy or effort used ("you added a detail that shows how she felt"), never ability ("you're a great writer"); keep comments spoken or very short	Praise for intelligence, rather than for effort, after success undermines children's motivation and performance after a later failure [-S] (fifth graders, reasoning problems); Praise focused on global intelligence has negative effects on future learning behavior compared with praise about effort [-M] (the same experiments, reported by a practice guide)

Quiet Learning Spaces

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age) in one classroom all day	Short blocks (8–10 minutes) with a visible timer; moderate displays; seat focus workers away from group talk; alternate with movement or talk	Classroom Design Affects Learning Progress [+M] (English primary classrooms, observational; noise named in a review)

Redundancy Principle

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are children in the middle-school years (from the wording)	Do not expect a cost from adding written text to narrated animation; remove it if it crowds the picture, keep it if learners rely on it	The redundancy effect did not hold for middle school students [~M] (no detectable difference; equivalence not tested)
Learners are young children still learning to read (from the wording)	Keep the narration; add short written labels only for words the lesson is teaching	untested; no claim here tests redundancy with beginning readers

Retrieval Practice

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are school children, older adults, or the material is visual or spatial (from the wording)	Use it; the benefit has been found across ages and materials, smaller in elementary school than at university, and clearer at about age 8 than age 6 in a few studies	The testing effect generalizes across education levels [+M]; Benefits seen in children, older adults and memory-impaired patients [+M]; Benefits extend to nonverbal and spatial materials [+M]; Practice testing rated high utility across learners and contexts [+W]

Rhetorical Skill Development

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Write or speak for an outside reader they can picture (a pen-pal class, a local business); keep tasks short and oral first; the teacher models one choice at a time	Authentic Audiences Improve Student Work [+M] (second graders wrote higher-quality texts for an external audience; within-subjects, abstract only). The oral-first step is untested

Segmenting Principle

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Children (primary school) (from the wording)	Segment the animation and keep the pacing control simple (one continue button)	Learner pacing helped primary pupils on difficult questions [~M] (one experiment)

Self-Directed Learning

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Keep goals and criteria with the teacher; hand over choice among two or three tasks and the order of work within a session; teacher-led planning and review at the start and end of each session	Self-regulated learning improves achievement [~S] (primary and secondary students; training effects larger when researchers delivered it); the narrower hand-over is untested

Self-monitoring

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child or adolescent with, or at risk for, attention difficulties or disabilities, and the problem is staying on task	Self-recording of on-task behaviour at short cued intervals (an app, a vibrating timer or a tone), after a training session; record the behaviour, not the learning, and check separately whether work completed changes	Self Monitoring Improves On Task Behavior [+M] (single-case studies, grades 4–12, on-task behaviour only)

Self-Regulated Learning

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners judge how well they understood a text or solved a problem, children included (from the wording)	Before the judgement, have them score their own answer against a key; generating keywords or a summary first did not sharpen sixth-graders' judgements. Expect less gain for the lowest and highest performers and on harder tasks	Self-scoring improves regulation accuracy, not on division for low and high performers [~W]; Sixth-graders' monitoring accuracy low, no cue-prompt effect [~W]

Sequencing

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are children in the early primary grades (from the wording)	Teach first, then practise; do not put problem solving before instruction	Productive Failure Improves Conceptual Learning [~S] (the meta-analysis's advantage reversed for second to fifth graders)

Signaling Principle

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are children in middle school learning from animation (from the wording)	Signal the written text where the animation is abstract (symbols, schematic); a concrete, realistic animation may need less	The signaling effect holds only for abstract animation [~M] (one quasi-experiment, d = .35 abstract; not significant concrete)

Simulations & Immersive Virtual Environments

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child or school-age in a classroom	Use a teacher-led screen simulation with a goal sheet for each run, pairs at a device, and a whole-class debrief that names the real-world phenomenon; keep runs short (10–15 minutes); where physical materials are scarce, a simulation taught with the same instruction can stand in for them	the format is an untested proposal; the substitution rests on one study of one science skill with fourth- and fifth-graders (Physical and virtual instructional materials are equally effective for teaching fourth- and fifth-graders to design unconfounded experiments when instructional method is controlled [~M], no difference found, equivalence not tested); the guided-VR experiment is the nearest evidence on guidance, and teachers report AI and virtual labs let students "try all materials virtually first, then use real ones" (Teachers report AI tools enable authentic, contextualized science experiences [+W], teacher interviews only)

Social Interdependence

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (upper primary), or at risk of failure	Use pairs with scripted tutor and tutee roles, switching each session; team score = sum of both members' daily individual quiz scores	Group rewards combined with individual accountability [+M] (64 at-risk 4th and 5th graders, maths computation; reward plus structure best; effect figures second-hand)

Social Presence

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child or adolescent	No public photos or personal profiles; introductions through a class activity the teacher runs (what I like, what I am good at); presence comes mainly from the teacher's relationship with each pupil, built in short regular contacts	Teacher–student relationships [+M] (associations; negative relationships mattered more in primary school); the routines are untested

Spaced Learning

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
The learners are preschool children (about age 4) (from the wording)	Rely on repetition itself and do not expect spreading the repetitions within a session to add to it; from about age six (first grade) the spacing benefit appeared under the same procedure. Untested at day-scale gaps for this age in the wiki, so if a programme for young children spaces sessions across days, check recall at a delay before claiming a spacing gain	Preschoolers showed no spacing effect in free recall [~M]; First-graders showed the spacing effect [+M]; Grade and spacing interacted in children's recall [~M]

Spaced Learning

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
The learners are preschool children (from the wording)	Rely on repetition itself and check recall at a delay before claiming a spacing gain; the preschool row under Fitting the design to a situation on the principle gives the evidence and its limits (lag within one list, no day-scale test at this age in the wiki)	Preschoolers showed no spacing effect in free recall [~M]; Grade and spacing interacted in children's recall [~M]

Strengthen ties between teachers and parents rather than pressing for remote sanctions behind teaching

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Children are young (child, pre-K to grade 3)	Lead with a home or chosen-place visit before the year and a partnership programme for any child with behaviour difficulties; keep messages about one concrete home routine	A home visit before the school year reduced the likelihood of a disciplinary incident (effect size = +0.10) [+M] (grades 1–5, matched comparison); A replication trial with 267 preschoolers found greater gains in social skills and stronger teacher-child and parent-teacher relationships than controls [+M] (Nebraska preschools, randomised)

Strengths-based Approach

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Collect strengths through families and play-based tasks built from home practices; name strengths aloud as what the child did, never as "smart"; keep the self-record oral or pictorial	Assessment tasks built on family-identified funds of knowledge elicited computational thinking from K-2 children in a small design-based study that made no comparison with standard assessment [+M] (K-2, 13 children, no comparison); Praise for intelligence, rather than for effort, after success undermines children's motivation and performance after a later failure [-S] (fifth graders, intelligence praise)

Structured Peer Review

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (under 12)	Two criteria phrased as questions, with a picture or worked anchor; review in structured pairs, spoken first and then one written suggestion; the teacher models with a class draft each time; revise in the same or the next lesson.	Collaborative writing [+S]: in one small randomised study, 10–11-year-olds writing in structured pairs gained more in their individual writing; that was co-writing, not peer review. Peer assessment [+M] found no difference by education level

Supporting Students with Intellectual Disabilities

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
The student is a child in primary school	Keep steps short (5–10 minutes of focused practice), practise daily inside routines, name what the student did after each success, and use pictures or objects for each step	Praise for intelligence rather than effort [+M] (fifth graders, general population) for the feedback; the rest untested

Teach response precision and new associations with minimal errors, using mediators and stimulus fading

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are young children (child)	Keep cues and mediators ready-made; correct every error overtly by showing and saying the right answer and having the child repeat it; short blocks (5–8 minutes)	Overt correction of errors speeds young children's learning compared with knowledge of correctness alone [+W] (second-hand; block length is an untested proposal)

Technology should augment, not supplant, learning processes in student-centered environments

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (early years or primary)	Keep hands-on exploration first; use digital tools for practice and for what the classroom cannot provide; do not give open generative AI for the core task	Digital tools complemented hands-on investigations by providing opportunities not possible in the classroom and letting children easily practice what they learned in hands-on activities. [+W] (pilot report, early science); The impact of AI on learning, motivation, and meaning differs by life stage: AI functions as a supplement for those with established skills but risks bypassing foundational experiences for younger learners [~W] (theoretical)

Understanding must be cultivated through exploration, not described or told

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (about 7 to 11)	Name and show the idea first, then a short guided exploration with the teacher at the table; keep critique to two or three works	Productive Failure Improves Conceptual Learning [~S] (problem-first reversed for second to fifth graders); Age moderates discovery-learning effects: the explicit-instruction advantage over unassisted discovery is larger for adolescents than adults, and the enhanced-discovery benefit larger for adults than children [~M]

Use computer tools that let students explore hypotheses and solutions faster so they can test many ideas without frustration

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Fewer variables (two or three), shorter rounds (10 minutes), the teacher reading predictions aloud with the group; allow a prediction to be drawn or pointed at rather than written	Supplementing simulation-based inquiry with learner guidance has a modest effect on learning outcomes (d = 0.49) and inquiry skills (d = 0.41), independent of guidance type (review attribution to D'Angelo et al., 2014) [~M] reports that age moderates the effect but not how; the specific changes are untested

Validity, Reliability, and Bias in Classroom Assessment

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are young children (child)	Use pictures, objects and spoken instructions; short sessions; observe the performance rather than relying on written answers; more occasions, fewer items per occasion; for dispositions such as curiosity, interest or self-regulation, use an observed behavioural task, not a questionnaire the child completes; expect a single sitting to be unstable, and repeat a measure before acting on one result	Achievement moves untested; a short behavioural self-regulation task (Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders), video-scored with inter-rater reliability of .95–.98, related to teachers' ratings of first graders' social skills and problem behaviour (HTKS validity for first graders [+W]); a preschool number-sense task correlated only .46 with itself three months later, which its authors read as too unstable for young children (moderate test-retest reliability in preschoolers [~W]); both research tasks, carried to classroom observation; a review argues questionnaires are hard to use validly with young children, who have limited reading and cannot yet self-assess abstract states (questionnaires poor fit for young children [+W], about curiosity measures); an argument that on-demand standardised tests alone are problematic for young children (standardised tests problematic for young children [+W], argument)

Video Replay Analysis

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Use very short clips (under two minutes) of the children's own work or play; ask what they notice in their own words before any focus; an adult runs the device and keeps the recording	Young children's video interpretation of their own mathematical play reveals both mathematical and social-affective sensemaking [+W] (four children, no comparison; shows what they notice, not a learning gain)

Wise Feedback Across Racial and Ethnic Difference

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Give the three parts spoken, short and about the work; praise the strategy or effort, never "smart"; the assurance in plain words ("I know you can get this part right; let's try it again now") and an immediate second attempt	Praise for intelligence, rather than for effort, after success undermines children's motivation and performance after a later failure [-M] (fifth graders; tests the praise, not the framing)

Blended Learning

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (pre-k-12)	Run the online part in school time under supervision (rotation between stations or groups) rather than at home, and keep online segments short; give the teacher a view of who completed what.	untested proposal; the recorded synthesis is mostly higher education and professional training

Cognitive Styles

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Never tell a child, or their parents, what style they "are". Teach the structure or check as a tool for a kind of task ("for lab reports we use this frame"), with shorter rounds (5 minutes of modelling)	untested proposal

Compensate for age-related sensory impairments by combining audio input with visual presentation

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
child or adolescent learners with a hearing or vision loss	The same moves apply (the digest notes these problems are not only older learners'); coordinate with the learner's specialist support and any amplification they use	untested; the evidence above is from adults

Criterion- and Norm-Referenced Testing

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are young children (child) in screening or readiness testing	Do not use one sitting for a placement; use an individually administered criterion-referenced check with pictures and spoken instructions over two or three occasions; re-check within the year	untested proposal

Debriefing

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are children (primary age)	Five minutes, oral, teacher-led, three questions (what happened, what was tricky, what we will do next time), straight after the activity; one class change written on the board and read out next time	untested proposal

Deliberate Practice

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	The teacher chooses the component and writes the goal in the child's words; drills of five to ten minutes; a visible chart of attempts that met the standard; whole-task attempt at the end	untested proposal

Develop Understanding

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (under 12)	Keep explanation prompts short and oral or pointing-based; use concrete, visible cases; check each child's prediction individually rather than by show of hands.	Untested proposal; the self-explanation meta-analysis spans levels of education but the claim page does not report results by age

Disciplinary Literacy

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Use one or two questions per source; let learners draw a picture or make a collage captioned with a quotation from the source; keep the rule that each picture points to its source	untested; from the folded page's strategy (two-question-set strategy, no claim). The tested studies were with high-school students

Discussing Race

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Use picture books and short stories as the shared object; keep sessions to 15–20 minutes; the adult names race plainly and answers questions honestly; drawing or play as the private response; tell families what will be discussed	untested proposal; see Talking to young children about race and racism

Educators should act as mediators and facilitators of learning rather than content disseminators

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child in preschool to grade 3	Use concrete materials they can act on, introduce one variable at a time with ample repetition, and question rather than tell; keep the routine and the choice of activity with the teacher; model an action a step beyond what the child does alone and let them imitate it; use pretend and role play as a context where children attempt more than they do in routine tasks	untested; from the Piaget handbook folded into this page. Mead's argument (method of thought cannot be transferred [+W]) is theoretical, as are the Vygotskian claims that children can imitate actions beyond their independent capabilities and profit from instruction [+W] and that in pretend play the child behaves beyond her average age and daily behaviour [+W] (one review paper restating Vygotsky, no data)

Elaboration Theory

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child or adolescent	Make the epitome concrete (a picture, a story or a model of the whole), keep levels to one lesson each, and have the teacher lead the synthesis aloud before asking learners to arrange items.	untested proposal; the study tested college and advanced high-school physics students, untested with children

Elaborative Reasoning

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (under 12)	Ask why-questions aloud in a small group, one statement at a time, accept spoken answers, and give the reason after each answer	untested proposal; the experiments recorded here are with grade 6 and 7 students and older

Epistemic Games

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child or young adolescent	Choose a practice whose decisions are visible and concrete (planning a park, running a shop); shorten sessions to 30–40 minutes; keep an adult in the mentor role; check the content separately.	Untested proposal

Evaluating Sources

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
child learners (primary age)	Use a curated set of sources and a single question ("who made this, and what do others say about them?") asked with the teacher; do not expect the full routine	Untested; no claim here tests source-evaluation teaching with children

Explicit Instruction: Internet Search

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
child learners (primary age)	Use a child-safe engine or a curated set of sites; teach two steps only (pick the key words, try a different word when it does not work) with the teacher at the screen; no operators	Untested; no claim here tests search teaching with children

Explicit Instruction: Online Reading Strategies

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Curated sites only; one question; two or three links; an adult-made record template with boxes to tick and one line to write; the teacher checks paths one-to-one or in small groups	untested for online reading; contingent help with children is carried from one-to-one long-division tutoring (Contingent scaffolding improves learning more than fixed or absent support. [+M])

Flipped Learning

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Do not set pre-class video as homework; run the exposure in class at a station or as a short whole-class video, then move to guided practice with the teacher circulating ("faux-flipped")	untested; Contingent scaffolding… [~M] (fourth and fifth graders, one-to-one tutoring) supports the circulating teacher, not the flip

Functional Behavior Assessment

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learner is a young child (preschool or early primary)	Rely on adult observation and family interview, not the child's report; use a picture card or gesture as the replacement response; keep consequences immediate and the reinforcer frequent; check sleep, hunger and illness first	untested proposal; the only functional-analysis claim here is one 4-year-old in a feeding programme (escape and attention [+W])

Goal Setting & Monitoring

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Teacher sets the goal with the child, one proximal sub-goal at a time, made visible on a chart; monitor with a simple tally or check-in rather than a written plan	untested proposal; the self-monitoring evidence is from students in grades 4–12 with or at risk for disabilities and measures on-task behaviour, see self-monitoring [~M]

Holistic Learning

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child or adolescent	Make the whole concrete (a picture, story or physical model of the whole), keep each part to one lesson, and have the teacher lead the placement aloud before learners do it	untested proposal; the hierarchy studies used college and advanced high-school students

Journaling

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
child (primary school)	Entries of a sentence or two, or a drawing with a label, at the end of a lesson; one specific question at a time; the teacher reads and replies orally to a few each day.	untested proposal; the writing-to-learn synthesis covered elementary to college but reports no age-specific result except smaller effects in grades 6–8 (Writing To Learn Improves Understanding [~M])

Keep the learner in control of the information flow with on-demand tools and supports

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Fewer helps (a picture glossary and replay), large on-screen buttons, and an adult or peer nearby to prompt help use; shorter sessions (20–30 minutes)	untested proposal; the pacing experiment with primary pupils (Letting learners pace instruction helped on complex material in one experiment, while learner control in general showed almost no effect across 18 studies [~S]) tested a pause control, not content helps

Knowledge Organization

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Use story-like or picture-card organizations of two levels, sorted physically; for narrative content, organize around goal, events and outcome	untested for organization design; narrative recall is better when stories follow a familiar story structure (Narrative memory is superior when content follows stereotypical story grammar structure, and goal information is critical to comprehension [+W], second-hand review, narratives only)

Learning by Producing (multimedia production as learning)

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	One medium (narrated pictures, a poster with audio), roles named with pictures, the teacher scribes the storyboard, sessions of 30–40 minutes, and an audience they know (another class, families).	Untested; the audience comparison with second graders (authentic audiences [+M]) concerned writing, not media

Memory Consolidation

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are children (child, adolescent)	Keep recall items short and low-stakes, read aloud where reading is weak, and space returns across days in class time rather than homework	untested; the spacing evidence comes mostly from young adults and is thin for children's long-term retention (Spaced Practice Improves Retention [~S])

Mentoring and Coaching

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child or adolescent school students	A named adult or near-peer who meets the learner regularly about their own schoolwork, with the teacher's knowledge; keep sessions short and frequent	untested proposal; the wiki's mentoring evidence is about adults (teachers, college students, trainees)

Mindfulness Activities

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (pre-K or primary)	Under one minute; movement-based (breath with arm raises) rather than sitting still; adult-led with the same words each day; a picture cue for the steps	untested; the claims are about adolescents, young adults and seventh graders

Mnemonic Device

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Supply the cue, as a picture with the words; one mnemonic per lesson; children unpack it aloud; do not ask young children to invent keyword images	untested proposal; the disabilities claim is for school-age students and does not separate ages

Pre-training Principle

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Children (primary or lower secondary) (from the wording)	Use the primer with real objects or pictures and spoken names; the experiments recorded here do not report child samples	untested for pre-training; Vocabulary instruction improves comprehension [+M] (pre-K–12, comprehension of texts using the taught words)

Pretesting (Prequestions Before Study)

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are children (from the wording)	Two or three questions read aloud, answers by pointing or choosing; answer each straight after	untested; every pretesting study whose learners the claims name used adults

Reflection

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
child (primary school)	Reflection is oral or drawn, led by the teacher, one specific question at a time, immediately after the task; no written journal.	untested proposal; the school-based meta-analysis in structured reflection [+M] used written tasks and the claim page does not report ages

Responsive Teaching

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age), or emergent bilinguals	Elicit by doing, drawing or pointing as well as speaking; accept home-language explanations; read the idea, not the wording	untested; from the earlier page (reasoning may be ahead of expression)

Self Affirmation

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (under 12)	Use a spoken or drawn version: the child picks a picture card of something that matters to them and tells or draws why; 5–10 minutes	untested; the tested learners were seventh-graders

Self-Directed Learning

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Keep the teacher setting goals; hand over pace and the order of two or three tasks, with a daily visible tracker; release one further choice per term.	Untested proposal; SRL strategy instruction [+S] included primary pupils, but tested training, not handing over control

Shared power: previously excluded students, families, and communities co-create and shape educational systems, policies, and practices

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
The group is child learners (under 12) and the target is the classroom environment	Co-create a small number of class norms or one routine with the children (15–20 minutes, revisited every few weeks); the teacher states in advance which decisions are the children's.	Untested; from the folded principle Co-create learning environments with and for students from identity groups that most frequently experience inequities, which cited no claim

Skills Sprint

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child or adolescent	Shorter blocks (20–30 minutes), a deliverable finished within one or two lessons, criteria given as a short checklist with pictures or examples, teacher at every checkpoint, explicit roles	untested proposal; the goal and feedback evidence above is from adults, older students and work tasks

Standardized Test Fairness and Bias

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are young children (child) taking a screening or readiness test	Do not use one sitting for a placement; observe over several occasions; use pictures and spoken instructions; re-screen within the year	untested proposal

Structured Academic Controversy

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Age child (upper primary)	Use concrete, local questions (a class or school rule), pairs of two not four, sentence starters for restating ("You think… because…"), an oral synthesis recorded by the teacher, and shorter turns (about 2 minutes).	untested; from the earlier page ("topics can be chosen to match learner maturity", "sentence stems"); argumentation [~M] reports larger effects in K-12 than higher education for online science argumentation, untested for SAC with children

Summative Assessment

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Judge over several short occasions and observed work rather than one long test; read questions aloud where reading is not the outcome	untested proposal

Supporting Gifted and Talented Students

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
The student is a child in primary school, well ahead in reading or number	Compact by pre-check within the class; give harder texts or problems in the same topic for the freed time; keep the student in class routines; review the arrangement every unit	untested proposal; the earlier page's example of the advanced kindergarten reader who stops progressing

Teach the conceptual underpinnings of L2 forms rather than only their structural aspects or formulaic units

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child	Fewer verbal explanations: act out the core scene (stand at the door, walk to it), use pictures, and keep explanations in the language the children understand best; short choice games rather than written reasons	untested; no claim here concerns children

Text Chats

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
child learners, or adolescent learners in school	Keep chats teacher-visible and within a class platform; dyads or groups of three; 10 minutes per segment; one closed task	untested proposal; the chat studies here are with university students or adult learners

Transfer of Learning

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Use concrete, familiar surface forms; give the comparison prompt every time and state the principle yourself; keep to two cases per session	untested; the case-comparison and retrieval-transfer evidence here is mostly with undergraduates

Treat talking and writing as means to learning through dialogue-based, student-centered instruction

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Keep turns short; model each move first; use talk partners who stay the same for several weeks; write with frames and drawings	untested proposal; the writing evidence includes elementary grades (Writing-to-learn activities improve content learning in Grades 1–12, with effects in mathematics indistinguishable from those in science and social studies, in one meta-analysis [+M]), the talk evidence here is from grade 4, grade 9 and college

Universal Design For Learning

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child (primary age)	Fewer, concrete choices (pick one of two); the teacher demonstrates each support; read-aloud and picture supports by default	untested proposal; the learning-styles experiment with fifth graders shows only that matching to a reported style did not help (Learning Styles Matching Does Not Improve Learning [~S])

User-Centered Design for Learning

Principle

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Learners are child	Test with children of the age, in the setting, with a teacher or parent present and consent from both; watch rather than ask (ratings questionnaires are written for adults); keep sessions to 15–20 minutes; adults' ratings on a child's behalf do not replace a test with children	untested proposal for the session design; adults rating a tool for children: Adults rated the LLM-powered iCub storytelling system as usable, with a total SUS score of 76.70 indicating good product usability [~W] (25 adults rated a storytelling robot that most of them judged suited to children under 10; no children were tested, so the rating says nothing about whether children can use it)

Workshop Model

Pattern

If the brief says…	Then change…	Basis
Young children (about 5–7) (from the wording)	Mini-lesson 5–10 minutes on the carpet; work block starting at 10–15 minutes and building stamina across weeks; oral rehearsal (tell a partner) before writing; shares in pairs.	Untested; from the earlier page's guidance on processing time