Have you ever been sitting in an IEP meeting, listening to your school psychologist explain to parents and teachers that their child has problems with Executive Function Skills? Say what??? Do you have a hard time wrapping your head around what that really means? Well I did! I have been known for being the teacher in the room that asks the questions that everyone else is thinking but doesn’t ask. I know that I cannot fully make a difference for these kids if I can’t wrap my own head around it! Lucky for me our Speech and Language Pathologist (who is totally brilliant and has a passion for this) was teaching inclusion in my kindergarten classroom the year that most of the students on speech IEPs were not on IEPs for speech sounds, but rather for Executive Function. We tackled this issue so well (so well, that I can toot our own horns) and what we saw was that EVERY student in the classroom of 25 kindergartens grew tremendously in the area of Executive Function! I wish that every Regular Ed Classroom Teacher had the chance to teach inclusion the way that we did. Our data proved that teaching inclusion with IEP kids in a class that had role models is vital! Our research also proved that working to develop these Executive Function Skills will assist students in the academic areas. Without fully developed Executive Function Skills, students will struggle to feel confident and succeed with today’s rigorous academics. So here is it… the answer to the big question: What is EXECUTIVE FUNCTION? Executive Function is the command center of the brain, it is the conductor of cognitive skills. Executive Function is initiating a task, adjusting to problems, negotiating obstacles, while organizing and prioritizing all of the steps and details. PHEW!!!!!!
HOW DID WE DO IT? We read books, taught lessons, did activities, and role played in the following areas: paying attention, speaking and listening, advocating for themself, working carefully, following step by step directions, problem solving, group roles, and regulating emotions. We taught an inclusion E.F. (executive function) lesson 3 days a week. This time of the day quickly became a favorite. I mean, who doesn’t love to learn how to play, communicate, advocate, regulate, and learn to remain happy!!! We quickly learned that these lessons were necessary for not only the students that were identified with disabilities in this area, but for every kindergartener in the class! As I did more and more research on E.F. I learned that this part of our brains develop as babies, toddlers, and even in early childhood years. Our kindergarteners are just exiting toddler-hood!!! This is something that not only IEP kids need to build and develop it is important for all! I will venture to say that if we find ways in our daily routines in our classrooms to build and develop these skills we will see long term effects when it comes to the success of our students. I believe that we will see a rise in confidence levels, emotional stability as well as success in academic achievement!
Thanks for sharing Erin! I totally agree with you here. Executive Function should not solely be taught to kids that are on IEPs/504s. Executive Functioning is a skill that all children need to learn; the earlier the better. I too think that we need to proactively teach these skills. We cannot sit back and wait to realize that students lack in this area, and then begin to teach the necessary skill. If we can incorporate these skills in our lessons, activities, games, etc, then students will begin to develop and get better at executive functioning as they progress through elementary school. I really liked your last line of your blog. You mention confidence and emotional stability first, before you mention academic achievement. I think too many educators put the emphasis on academic achievement first. Although it is important, it is not, in my opinion, as important as the social/emotional well-being and stability of a child.
I totally agree with you about social/emotional well being and stability of a child being important. When a child is emotionally balanced they tend to be better equipped to progress academically. When they feel confident they are more likely to have that healthy emotional balance. I hope that more teachers and schools begin to place social/emotional well being first. It’s the frontal lobe and executive function skills that provide the ability for a child to regulate their emotions.
I have been teaching for 13 years now, and I feel Executive Functioning is something we observe and work on every single day, but not always knowing and understanding there is an actual name for the lack of skills we work on. Executive Functioning is hard to understand and not all people will ask questions to gain a full understanding of it. So I am glad to hear that you speak up and ask questions!!!
You are spot on! So many are already doing this without putting a name on it. Unfortunately in the past 20 years, many activities that promote E.F. Skills have been replaced with rigorous academics. At my old school the 1st grade team actually said there was no time for centers…What????? There are teachers out there that actually believe that.
Wow! What a great increase in skills you were able to see in such a short amount of time! I would love to be able to help my own students improve by even a fraction of your improvement! Across the school we are seeing that students cannot follow directions and they cannot regulate emotions. I would love to be able to teach lessons on a regular basis to really focus on these areas. That would be fantastic if we could help our students do these two things because those could be major game changers with increasing their success in all areas of their lives. Thanks for the motivation!
We are trying to help kids with executive function skills now on a regular basis, compared to the way we would teach even a few years ago. I have been teaching for 25 years and it is amazing how much kids have changed over the years. My lunch group was discussing today that next year we think we will create a beginning of the year set of activities- with the title being “How to be a 7th grader.” We are planning on teaching many executive function skills for the kids to have a crash course in behavior that would be acceptable. We want to do this for all of our students- not just the IEP/504 kids. We are seeing everything from daily meltdowns to stapling in the center of the packet of papers instead of the corner to tell us that something needs done. I have loved reading your posts to get ideas for the kids! Thanks!
This is such a good idea! I’d love to hear how it goes next year if you do those activities!