Organising Knowledge: Designing Tasks That Help Children Think Part 1

Task design is about thinking and how we want children to organise their knowledge.

📚 Catch Up on the Series

Missed a part? Here’s what we’ve covered so far:

• 📦 Part 1: Organising Knowledge

  Why organising knowledge makes learning stick — and how it helps shape what children remember.

• 🧱 Part 2: Selecting Task Types

  Choosing the right structure to match the thinking: Compare, Sequence, Cause & Effect, Chunk.

• 🪣 Part 3: Chunking Knowledge

  Six powerful task examples that group ideas into meaningful mental ‘buckets’.

• 🏅 Part 4: Ranking and Comparing Knowledge

  From Diamond 9s to Target Maps — helping children weigh, prioritise, and reason.

• 🔁 Part 5: Sequencing Knowledge

  From timelines to swim lanes — helping children structure ideas, actions, and events so they flow and make sense

• ⚙️ Part 6: Cause and Effect Knowledge

  From fishbone diagrams to consequence maps — helping children understand why things happen and what they lead to.

💡 The Big Idea

From play-based learning in the early years to more structured challenges in Key Stage 2, there’s a huge variation in what teaching looks like. But across all these phases, one thing remains constant:

👉 Children should be organising their knowledge through well-designed tasks.

Whether they’re sequencing a story, grouping animals by habitat, or singing a scientific concept song, the aim is to build mental models and develop schemas that help them store, retrieve, and apply what they learn. These memory structures form the architecture of their long-term memory and so how we design tasks and experiences can directly support (or hinder) that process.

👀 A Closer Look

If I had to choose just three quotes to shape how we should be thinking about task design in primary education, it would be these. Each one shifted my understanding and opened up a new way of thinking about how children learn, and more importantly, how we design tasks that can help them learn better.

‘Memory is the residue of thought.’¹

‘Poorly organised knowledge cannot readily be remembered or used. But students don't know how to organise their knowledge effectively.’²

‘If we can entertain the notion that ideas are objects, then we have a new way of understanding how to organise them.’³

In other words:

• Learning happens when we make pupils think about what we want them to learn.

• Knowledge can be accessed from long-term memory more easily when it is well-structured and organised.

• Novices like primary pupils don’t yet know how to organise knowledge.

• But we can teach and design tasks that help them organise that knowledge.

🧠 Organising Knowledge: Four Powerful Task Types
Oliver Caviglioli’s work on visual representations of learning has massively influenced the way I now think about task design. His quote emphasises that ideas are like objects, we can manipulate, categorise, and connect them in purposeful ways. With that in mind, these four task types can act as cognitive tools for building schema and mental models in the primary classroom:

Copyright: Oli Caviglioli & David Goodwin

🧱 Chunk: Chunking is all about grouping similar pieces of information together so they can be stored as one meaningful unit. In primary, this might look like sorting animals into categories, grouping spelling rules, or classifying materials.

⚖️ Compare: Comparing enables pupils to notice similarities and differences, strengthening connections between ideas. This might be comparing two characters, calculation methods in maths, or ranking historical events based upon influence.

🔄 Sequence: Sequencing involves arranging information in a logical or chronological order. Whether pupils are retelling a story, ordering life cycle stages, or mapping out a process in science, sequencing helps them build linear structures in their long-term memory, which is essential for procedural knowledge.

💥 Cause & Effect: This task type gets children thinking about why things happen and what they lead to. Cause and effect helps them build an understanding of systems, consequences, and interdependence. It shows up in everything from exploring characters’ choices in stories to understanding scientific reactions or the historical impact of political choices.

The 4 task types can give teachers starting points to designing tasks that support deep, organised thinking, whether it be in a tough tray in Reception or a scaffolded sheet in Year 4.

🎭 From Organisation to Performance

Once knowledge is organised, it starts to become available for use in order to perform other activities (sometimes known as application). This is what we see when pupils are asked to write a paragraph using the grammar and genre knowledge they’ve been taught, or when they solve a real-world maths problem using a written calculation method they’ve practised. These tasks aren’t isolated, they’re acts of generative learning, where children draw from their long-term memory and combine their schema and mental models in purposeful ways.

Performance, then, becomes the moment where thinking, organised knowledge and, ultimately, learning is made visible. The outcome depends on how well we’ve helped children organise the knowledge in the first place.

🧠 Why Organising Knowledge Matters

• Task design is not just about keeping pupils busy — it’s about shaping how they think.

• Effective tasks teach children how to organise information mentally for deeper understanding.

• Organised knowledge is easier to understand, remember, and reuse.

• Comparing, sequencing, and grouping help pupils structure information in long-term memory.

• The tasks we set directly influence how children build and store knowledge — so our choices matter.

🧭 What’s Next?

In Part 2, we’ll explore how understanding the type of knowledge can help us select the correct tasks. And yes the activities and experiences that make primary special can still play a part! Singing and dancing included! 💃 🕺

📚 Inspired by Oli Caviglioli & David Goodwin

Much of the thinking behind this post draws from the brilliant work of Oli Caviglioli and David Goodwin, whose books and visual explanations continue to shape how I think about teaching and task design. If you haven’t yet, I highly recommend checking out:

👉 Organise Ideas: Thinking by Hand, Extending the Mind

Their work is a must-read for any teacher interested in cognitive science, task design, or making learning visible.

📝 More from WAGOLL Teaching

• The Ultimate Feedback Toolkit - Your guide to effective feedback that will also save you time!

• 5 Triggers to Boost Classroom Engagement: Harnessing Dopamine and Cortisol for Learning ➡️ Understanding how dopamine and cortisol influence classroom engagement

• Retrieval Practice: 7 Activities That work in Primary ➡️ A handy list of retrieval activities for Primary children

In a bit,
Coops 😎

1.

Daniel Willingham

2. Frederick Reif (2008)

3. Oliver Caviglioli