Beginning teachers tend to present a lot of cues all at once while, at best, children can attend to only two or three cues while actually performing a task. This does not mean simply limiting the teacher to one cue after each practice attempt. It means choosing a cue and sticking with it for the entire period of time a skill is practiced, or until the cue is mastered. Selectively choosing cues requires the teacher to prioritize. Typically, the choice should be to progress from gross motor to fine motor movements, and from technical to aesthetic refinements.
Applications are challenges related to a task.
The idea is to pique a child's interest in performing a task at a higher level of difficulty. Successful completion of the challenge should be recognized, but should not be turned into a competition. First, intra-task variation allows children to choose a level of participation at which they are comfortable. As long as the teacher acknowledges each child's choices and execution quality, there should be little concern about peer comparisons. Second, the teacher reinforces the same cue with all task variations.