Executive Functioning Workbook
Here is a video showing what our Executive Functioning Workbook can do. You can find out more about executive functioning and take a free executive functioning quiz at www.executivefunctioning.com
Tag: Executive functions
Executive functioning skills: How To Get Your Child To Follow The Plan
The coach comes, plans are made, checklists are created with extensive “TO DOs” and then what? Nothing!
Students with executive functioning deficits have difficulty planning, organizing and initiating projects and homework. A tutor or coach can help students fill in their planner and breakdown their assignments to make a weekly “TO DO” plan, but they can not make the student follow the plan once they leave. Creating the plan is one thing, following the plan is another.
Parents and coaches often tell me how frustrating it can be to create a fabulous plan for the student only to find that the student didn’t follow through. Building executive functioning skills and study strategies takes time and practice. Remember back to when your child was learning his multiplication tables? What did the teacher tell you? Learn the concept, then drill and practice, drill and practice, drill and practice! Learning executive functioning skills is no different! To develop an understanding of executive functioning skills, you must first set up goals and explain how the brain works. Once the student understands what is expected, it is time to start the drill and practice, drill and practice, drill and practice!
One of the challenges many parents face is that executive functioning skills become more of a challenge in middle school. Many children are developmentally ready to become more independent and separate from their parents in middle school. However, this is a transitional phase towards independence and many students still need their parents to help them scaffold new skills. The executive functioning skill set is new to many middle school students.
So, what is the best way to get students to follow plan, use checklists, turn in homework, and build their independence at the same time? Most parents and executive functioning coaches / tutors face this challenging question. To help children learn new skills, you have to go back to the theory of scaffolding. Scaffolding new ideas and skills is like building a high-rise. First, you build the scaffolding on the outside the building to support the framework on the inside. The scaffolding stays up until the building is stable. At that point, the foundation is strong and the scaffolding can be taken down. This is what we need to be thinking about with children. We need to create the external structure–the scaffolding–and keep it in place until they have learned the skill. Once the skill is in place the scaffolding comes down.
Checklists, charts, study plans, apps for time management and check-in’s are all very effective scaffolding tools for students. However, we are looking for the external tools that the students can rely on to help them know what to do next and when to do it. It is important to remember that they still need reminders to check their checklists, planners and homework online. I have found that it is best if these reminders are automatic and not given by parents; rather, we use the student’s iPhone, iPad or other electronic device to create reminders and email alerts. There are many tools available now to alert a child to check his or her checklists.
At our center, we create an alert that shows up on the child’s phone, iPad, computer, etc. reminding the students to check their planner and update their study plan. They then have another alert half an hour before bedtime to check if everything has been done and put in their backpack. These alerts can be set to automatically alert the student every day, so they don’t depend on the student remembering to make a note. Once the students setup these alerts with the tutor/coach, it is time to involve the parents.
To help parents monitor their student’s progress, the student explains the plan to the parents. The student can then share their homework plan with their parents. Once this is done, it is updated automatically, allowing parents to use their phones or computers to confirm that their child is updating the study plan. We then ask the parents to set up alerts as well. The parents’ alerts are simple: 10 minutes after the student receives the alert, the parents receive an alert reminding them to check in with the student. We let students know that they will get their alert 20 minutes before bedtime, or whatever amount of time students and parents think is reasonable, and the parents will get an alert 10 minutes after the child’s alert. This allows the students to get started before the parent is alerted to make sure all work has been done for the evening.
Designing a plan is very important, and implementing the plan is critical. It is important to work with both students and parents to create a plan that can be followed up on daily basis. Our center often uses another system—daily emails—to help students develop a daily habit of checking, updating, and completing their study plan. The academic coach can send out a checklist that the student completes each night. The student’s responses are saved and sent to the academic coach where they can be easily compiled. This provides an additional reminder and allows the academic coach to gauge the student’s progress.
In creating a system like this, it is important to remember that success will not be 100% immediately. The entire support team—the academic coach, the parents and the student–must create an achievable goal. Success breeds success. Find out what percentage of homework is being done and use that as your baseline to create a new goal. For example, if the student turns in 50% of the homework now, the new goal would be to turn in 70%. Recognition of success is important for the child to see that he or she is making progress and that this hard work is worth it.
Mastering Executive Functioning Skills Requires Grit and Resilience
by Melissa Mullin Ph.D.
Executive functioning skills enable students to manage their workload and plan for the future. These skills allow students to break down a task and organize it as well as create a time lime for completion. Grit is defined as a passion to achieve a long-term goal, along with a powerful motivation to achieve the goal. Grit entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress. Research has demonstrated that grit may be a more accurate predictor of future success than IQ or talent.
Take a moment to think about how executive functioning and grit play an important role in learning. Executive functioning skills provide the path the student needs to tackle a task while grit provides the driving force to complete the task. Executive functioning skills are the map and grit is the motor that propels the car.
There has been a tremendous amount of information and conversation about executive functioning skills and success. Executive functioning skills are often discussed as the CEO or manager of your thought processes. Here is a quick overview of executive functioning components:
- Initiate: start
- Plan and Organize: stop, think and plan a strategy
- Organize Material: materials available and organized
- Inhibit: able to stay on task and avoid distractions
- Emotional Control: resilient when frustrated and overwhelmed
- Working Memory: able to hold and work on two mental concepts at once
- Shift: can move from one activity to another easily
- Monitor: can check work and make changes as needed
While teaching executive functioning skills is important for any student that lacks them, a common complaint I hear from parents is that students aren’t using the skills they are taught. So, what is missing? There is the old saying, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” I have found that executive functioning skills can be taught successfully, but for some students it takes more than teaching the skills to get the students to use them. This brings us to grit.
Angela Duckworth was a middle and high school math teacher before she became a psychology professor. She noticed that the students who tried the hardest did the best in her class. When she became an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, she focused her work on a personality trait she calls “grit.” She writes that “the gritty individual approaches achievement as a marathon; his or her advantage is stamina.” The research results suggest that grit may be as essential as intelligence to achievement. Take Dr. Duckworth’s Grit quiz at the end of this article to discover your child’s grit level.
Paul Tough, the author of How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character, believes the most valuable thing that parents can do to help their children develop their character, and therefore “grit”—may be to do nothing. He believes that we should let our children face some adversity on their own. Children will learn to persevere when they fall down and are not helped back up. Paul Tough writes: “Overcoming adversity is what produces character. And character, even more than IQ, is what leads to real and lasting success.”
I have seen many students with learning difficulties who struggle, fail, work hard to learn, develop a tremendous amount of grit and go on to do well very in school. I have also seen bright children with learning challenges give up and not develop grit. Building grit is not as simple as letting your child fail. Research on resilience and praise adds another dimension to this issue. Parents and educators can help build resilience, and therefore “grit” by making sure to praise effort towards a task rather than the results.
The American Psychological Association article, Using Praise to Enhance Student Resilience and Learning Outcomes , found that students whose teachers praise effort and work strategies rather than praising intelligence will:
- Apply more, not less, effort when material is difficult for them
- Seek challenges
- Set higher goals for themselves
- Look at failures as opportunities to learn
- Increase their efforts rather than withdraw effort and attention
Learning is a complicated and individual process. Knowing what a child needs to develop to help him succeed can be difficult. The relationship between executive functioning skills, grit, resilience and praise is important when creating a holistic educational plan for students. Teachers, parents and children all need to work together to create the challenges, opportunities and supports necessary to encourage the development of a child’s potential to its maximum level.
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8- Item Children’s Grit Scale
Directions for taking the Grit Scale: Please respond to the following 8 items. Be honest – there are no right or wrong answers.
- New ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones.*
- Very much like me
- Mostly like me
- Somewhat like me
- Not much like me
- Not like me at all
2. Setbacks (delays and obstacles) don’t discourage me.
- Very much like me
- Mostly like me
- Somewhat like me
- Not much like me
- Not like me at all
3. I have been obsessed with a certain idea or project for a short time but later lost interest.*
- Very much like me
- Mostly like me
- Somewhat like me
- Not much like me
- Not like me at all
4. I am a hard worker.
- Very much like me
- Mostly like me
- Somewhat like me
- Not much like me
- Not like me at all
5. I often set a goal but later choose to pursue (follow) a different one. *
- Very much like me
- Mostly like me
- Somewhat like me
- Not much like me
- Not like me at all
6. I have difficulty maintaining (keeping) my focus on projects that take more than a few months to complete. *
- Very much like me
- Mostly like me
- Somewhat like me
- Not much like me
- Not like me at all
7. I finish whatever I begin.
- Very much like me
- Mostly like me
- Somewhat like me
- Not much like me
- Not like me at all
8. I am diligent (hard working and careful).
- Very much like me
- Mostly like me
- Somewhat like me
- Not much like me
- Not like me at all
Scoring:
- For questions 2, 4, 7 and 8 assign the following points:
5 = Very much like me.
4 = Mostly like me.
3 = Somewhat like me.
2 = Not much like me.
1 = Not like me at all - For questions 1, 3, 5 and 6 assign the following points:
1 = Very much like me
2 = Mostly like me
3 = Somewhat like me
4 = Not much like me
5 = Not like me at all - Add up all the points and divide by 8. The maximum score on this scale is 5 (extremely gritty), and the lowest scale on this scale is 1 (not at all gritty).
Duckworth, A.L, & Quinn, P.D. (2009). Development and validation of the Short Grit Scale (GritS). Journal of Personality Assessment, 91, 166-174. http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/Duckworth%20and%20Quinn.pdf
Duckworth, A.L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M.D., & Kelly, D.R. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9, 1087-1101. http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/Grit%20JPSP.pdf
What Does It Mean To Have Weak Executive Functioning Skills?
Many middle school children have difficulty with executive functioning skills. What does this really mean? For many of the students that we work with at the K& M Center this means that they are missing assignments and they are not adequately prepared for tests. Students who have done well in elementary school, but now struggle with the increased demands of middle school, often have weak executive functioning skills.
So what do you do to help these students? The first step in building executive functioning skills is becoming aware of the areas that need to be developed. To help build awareness in our students we have them take our executive functioning quiz. We have posted this quiz on the K & M Center website and you are welcome to take the quiz, which is free. The results of the quiz help our students get an understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. Below is a sample of a student’s results.
Take the EF Quiz
Looking at these results, we can learn about how the student approaches his work. The important thing to know about this quiz is it is not a definitive profile of the student, rather it is a comparison of his strengths and weaknesses. We are only looking at how this student has rated himself. It is interesting to have the parents and teachers take the quiz as well, and get their perspective on the student. Then, you can have a conversation with the student comparing how everyone sees his executive functioning skills.
The student above rates himself with strong emotional control and a good ability to shift between tasks. The student sees himself as average in working memory, inhibiting behavior, and monitoring his workload. This student has rated his areas of weakness as organizing material and initiating work. Once a student has taken the quiz, the perception of how he sees his strengths and weaknesses can be compared to how he is studying and achieving in school. This conversation between how the student perceives his study skills and how he is doing in his classes can lead to creating goals to help increase his performance in school. I have attached a page from our executive functioning workbook so that you can see a sample of what it might look like to set goals with a student.
Executive functioning is an umbrella term that covers a wide range of skills. By taking the EF quiz and discussing the results, students can focus in on the areas they want to develop. Executive functioning skills allow a student to be able to look at an assignment, read the directions, gather the materials that are needed, estimate how much time it will take, do the assignment, finish it and turn it in. It sounds so simple for those that have strong executive functioning skills, yet it is extremely difficult for any student who is struggling in this area. Remediating an executive functioning issue requires pinpointing the area of difficulty and helping the student learn the steps to follow. Executive functioning skills are not needed just for school, they are skills we all use every day. Taking the time to help a child build executive functioning skills is definitely worth the effort.