The Secret Instruction is an activity that develops children’s cognitive flexibility and improves the brain’s ability to be flexible by requiring the children to perform seemingly unrelated tasks and activities that do not fit into the normal daily classroom/lesson routine. Adapting to this apparent “chaos” (creating by Secret Instruction) helps the children adapt to changing rules, which is an important requirement for flexible behaviour.

Routines are very important for children of this age, and teachers pay special attention to this. However, over-dependence on routines makes it difficult to deal with unexpected changes. Instead of always following the same sequence, it is necessary to change a few things from time to time. So, the teachers need to create opportunities for flexible thinking, reward it with praise and positive feedback. It is important that teachers introduce regular collaborative thinking about alternative solutions to develop cognitive flexibility, and that they incorporate fun activities into their lessons to practice flexible thinking.

This activity develops students’ flexibility by:

• They must adapt to unexpected situations while primarily carrying out their own classroom tasks,
• having to time and carry out their own task,
• fostering cognitive and emotional adaptability, since they do not know exactly when and how their turn will come,
• needing to stay open, react quickly, and manage uncertainty,
• learning to adjust their behaviour flexibly according to external circumstances, which forms the basis for adapting to unexpected situations.