Saturday, January 17, 2015

Executive What?

Side Note

Everyday I wake up, go to work, and at some point engage in conversation, email, or text around the topic of executive functioning. As an educator, I certainly believe these skills exist and are critical for children to succeed in school and life. Executive functioning has become a bit like seat belts, helmets, and preschool, where we look back and reflect on how life existed in their absence. How did so many of us learn to organize our materials, do homework, study, and engage in goal-oriented behavior? Were we taught these skills, without a fancy name? Have our expectations of children change? Have children changed? Perhaps it’s a combination of everything? This will become our story to write.


Nuts & Bolts of Executive Functioning

Metacognition
Initiation:
The ability to begin a task, persevere, generate ideas, and problem solving strategies

Planning:
The ability to manage current and future oriented task demands

Working Memory:
The ability to hold onto information with the intention of completing a task

Organization:
The ability to impose order on work, play, or storage spaces

Monitor:
The ability to compare one’s performance against a standard or expectation

Behavior Regulation
Shift:To move from one situation to another, or be flexible in your problem solving and perceptions

Inhibition:
To control one’s thoughts and actions

Emotional Control:
The ability to modulate emotional responses to fit the environment, and apply reason and self-control to those emotions 

Helpful Strategies
Metacognition

Strategies For Organizing At Home:
  • Quiet room free of distractions (people & technology)
  • Paper, pencils, calculator, etc. should be kept in work area
  • Keep a timer handy to determine how long to work before a break
  • Have water and a snack to maintain hydration and blood sugar
  • Easy parental access to check in on progress- ask to see completed assignments
  • Check portal and backpack regularly Organizing Materials
  • Use a planner (paper/pencil or electronic)
  • Place all folders/planner in one place
  • Binder should have a folder for every class or at least a separate folder for homework
  • Class folders can have in class work on one side, and homework on the other side
  • Use a pencil case that can be put in the binder (3 hole punched) with materials
  • Sit with your child and go through folders every week to get rid of things
  • Most textbooks are online, make sure to get the password and check that it works
  • If a teacher, or teaching team, has a website, check it regularly
  • Own a library card
  • Have your son/daughter identify two children who are consistent resources
  • Ask your child to take pictures of worksheets

Strategies For Remembering: Materials & Information
  • Use technology (email, scan, voice memos, take pictures of docs)
  • Write it down
  • Make routines into laminated lists
  • Repeat the directions to self and other
  • Silly Sentences (Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally)
  • Wacky Words (Roy G. Biv)
  • Make a visual chart
  • Visualization cards (picture and concept)
  • Rehearsal
  • Association



Strategies For Initiating:
  • Let student choose order to do assignments
  • Visual schedule, with breaks included
  • Cognitive Credit Card (CCC) with strategies
  • How Do I Get Started?
      • I have my material
      • I have set a goal for what needs to be finished
      •  I have scheduled a break
      •  I have decided to do the easiest/hardest problems first
  • Build in an incentive that is highly motivating, and attainable
  • Monitor over activity and under activity to provide appropriate interventions

Helpful Strategies
Behavior Regulation

Self-Monitoring:
  • Create a daily chart to use at school
  • Link results of the chart to a reward at school & home
  • Incorporate shared online documents for easy collaboration



Modeling:
  • Identify and practice the problem solving cycle
  • Think A Loud- talk through solving your own problem
  • Role play situations that may be potential triggers



Thinking Ahead:
  • Front load information about various environments
  • Be clear regarding expectations, rewards, and consequences prior to encountering the situation


Journaling:
  • Have your child/yourself journal about upsetting situations
  • Allow your child to document his/her coping mechanism, and what should happen
  • Over time, look for patterns of triggers and responses

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