That is the whole method

You now have a system that works in fourth grade and in a lecture hall, in every subject, with a pen and a sheet of paper. It is the same five moves every time.

The five moves

• Before: two lines, three parts.
• During: the big box only. Short lines, arrows, abbreviations.
• After, same day: a question in the left strip for each chunk.
• After, same day: two sentences at the bottom, your own words.
• Later: cover the notes, answer the questions out loud.

What comes next

Notes are one piece of executive functioning. The others are the same kind of thing — a small system that replaces willpower: getting assignments into one place you trust, breaking a project into pieces that fit in an evening, and working out where the time actually went. A coach works through those with a student over a few sessions, using their real classes rather than examples.