Afternoon lessons

About this visual support

At one in the afternoon the brain is not as sharp as it was at nine. That is not reluctance but simple physiology: attention is a resource that runs down, and schools often place maths or reading in exactly the part of the day when the resource is at its lowest. For a child who has already worked for four hours, the question of how much longer matters more than the subject itself.

Visual support answers precisely that question. A row of three pictures, one per session, makes the remainder concrete and bounded. The child can see that two are left rather than an open sea of lessons, and that changes how much energy feels reasonable to put into the next one.

One tip that works as well at school as at home is to mark where the break sits in the row, not just the lessons. The break then becomes something to work towards instead of something that might arrive. In Routined the afternoon can be laid out as a short sequence with times, and the app can be tried for fourteen days at no cost.