A tidy list of prompts can help teach terminology. It cannot decide the order of support for every learner, skill, and situation.

Examples are not a ranking

Visual cues, gestures, models, verbal cues, and physical guidance are examples of support. Writing them in a column does not make the same ranking appropriate everywhere. Begin with the specific skill, opportunity, context, learner history, communication, and safety needs.

Choose the starting support

Least-to-most prompting may fit an individualized plan. Beginning with an independent opportunity is not automatically appropriate when errors, delay, distress, safety, or learning history call for more support.

Plan how to adjust

Specify how support may be faded or changed and what means stop or pause. Physical guidance is not a default endpoint. It requires appropriate planning, training, consent and assent considerations, safety protections, and a fading plan.

Try First, Then Help offers a place to document the selected prompts, response interval, conditions for more support, and reflection. It is a clinician-led planning worksheet, not a universal hierarchy or treatment protocol.

Added to the archive October 28, 2026.

Educational planning guidance for clinicians. Individualize clinical decisions with the learner and family.