Tag: parenting

Seven Steps to Help Your Beginning Reader

Dyslexia, Learning, Reading, Spelling

A child who can read is a child who can learn. And a child who can learn is a child who can succeed in school and in life.

Secretary of Education, Margaret Spelling.

Margaret Spelling reminds us that learning to read is one of the foundations of life success. Learning to read can be challenging for young children. Many parents and volunteers wonder how the time they spend reading with children can be more productive. The following suggestions are aimed to help parents and volunteers make reading more fun and successful for beginning readers.

1. SET THE STAGE Use the title and cover picture to create enthusiasm for the story. Discuss the picture and how it relates to the title. Ask the reader ,”What do you think the book is going to be about?”

2. LOOK FOR CLUES If this is a phonics-based book, review the phonetic rule for the book. Often the rule is on the inside back cover of the book. Spend a moment with the child playing with the rule. Write the rule down and add sounds. For example, if the rule is long /a/. Write ___a___e and then fill in letters to make words: date, late, mate, kate. Let them have fun, don’t worry if it’s a real word or not, just enjoy the process.

3. WATCH OUT FOR BUMPS IN THE ROAD Scan the book for difficult words before you start reading. Write the words on index cards and read them for the child before you start reading. Pull out the card if the child has trouble reading the word in the text and read it to her again. Then let her read the sentence on her own. This process will help with reading fluency and increase the motivation and enjoyment of reading.

4. GREEN LIGHT, GO! Ask the child to start reading.

5. RED LIGHT, STOP TO CORRECT ERRORS When a child makes an error, break down the word into smaller parts. Ask him to identify the first sound, and then the vowel sound. If he doesn’t know either, give him the sound. If there is a rule, follow the sound with the rule. For example, magic E jumps over one letter to make a vowel say its alphabet name, so late has a long /a/sound. Remember, most beginning reader books have the rule in the back or front of the book.

6. YELLOW LIGHT, CAUTION! Prep for success. If the child has a repeating error, write it on an index card in large letters and show and read it to the student each time she makes that error. This builds sight word vocabulary.

7. WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT? Use visual cues in the book as frames of reference to make sure the student understands what he reads. Question the reader, Why is this picture in the book? Ask comprehension questions such as: What do you think is going to happen next? Who is your favorite character, and why ?Was this a funny story? Why or why not?

Reading is a complex skill that requires strong visual, auditory and attention proficiency. Many times, beginning readers need more developmental time to acquire these skills.

Read the characteristics below and when one is true of your reader check                        all the boxes to the right of that item.

 Column A measures auditory processing skills. If your reader is weak in this skill, she is struggling to match the sound of the letter with the letter symbol.

Column B measures attention skills. Close attention to the details of the letter symbols is needed in order to learn to read.

Column C measures visual skills. The eye muscles need to work together to track the letter symbols on the page fluently. If the eyes are weak, reading will be challenging.

How to build Auditory Processing Skills

  • Help with phonics.
    • When students have trouble with auditory processing, they have difficulty knowing the sounds that go with each letter.
    • Therefore, they rely on their visual memory to read unfamiliar words. When students come to a word they have not memorized they will guess because they don’t know how to sound out a new word.
  • Help sound out new words.
    • Write down the new words used in a story and review them before reading.
    • Refer to the new words with the child while reading.
  • When a child is stumped and starts guessing:
    • Ask her for the vowel in the word and then the sound of the vowel, because it is usually the hardest part of the word.
    • If the child has not mastered a sound, pronounce that sound for her. This allows her to hear the proper sound and make an association between the letter and the sound.
    • Write the challenging word on a piece of paper. First ask for the vowel sound, then ask for the letters that come after the vowel. Write these down and have the child read it. Then ask for the letters before the vowel and write them on the word and have the child read the whole word.

How to build Attention Skills

  • Keep reading periods short. Readers who have trouble paying attention find it difficult sitting still while reading, and staying focused. This can cause them to rush and make careless errors such as skipping words and missing meaning.
    • Begin with 10-15 minute intervals and increase time as skills increase.
    • Slow the reader down.
    • Remind her to focus on the letters.
    • Remind her it’s not a race.
  • Get the reader involved
    • Help build meaning for the story and enjoyment for reading.
    • Look at the cover of the book and read the title.
    • Discuss the picture and how it relates to the title.
  • Keep attention as you read
    • Look at and discuss the picture on each page prior to reading the page.
    • Have the child point to and name the characters.
    • Ask questions about the characters.
      • Do they look happy?
      • Is he nice?
      • Do you know anyone who likes to do that?
  • Ask questions about the topic.
    • Have you ever done that?
    • Do you know anyone who has?
  • Ask questions about what the child thinks will happen next.
    • What do you thing is going to happen next?
    • Why do you think that is going to happen?
  • Create a focus chart
    • Divide the session into 5 minute intervals. At each interval, give the student 1-5 points for careful reading. (1 unfocused, 5 very focused)
    • Ask the student to rate himself or herself. This helps the reader learn about his/her reading behavior.

How to build Visual Processing Skills

  • Make sure the reader can see the text clearly. When students have trouble with visual processing, they have trouble recognizing fine differences in visual symbols like letters and numbers. This causes them to misread words that look alike.
    • If they have glasses make sure they are wearing them.
    • Begin with larger print books and avoid visually confusing texts.
  • Help focus the reader’s eyes
    • Use an index card to hold under the line being read.
    • When a student has difficulty with a word, use your fingers to isolate one letter at a time to help him read the whole word.
    • Make sure the child can tell you the name of the letter and then ask for the sound of the letter, then go back and help him put the letter into the word.
  • Teach new words.
    • Write the word in big print on a 3×5 card, or another piece of paper.
    • These words can be put in a file box to build the student’s sight-word vocabulary.
  • Help with reversals.
    • Fluent readers must be able to distinguish the visual difference in the letter symbols, such as P vs Q, B vs D, M vs W.
    • When students make reversal errors, write the letters out on index cards at the beginning of each reading session.
    • Have the student trace each letter to increase awareness of the proper formations.
    • Refer to the cards while reading.

Most Common Reading/Spelling rules

The Vowel

  • Most errors are due to the reader not knowing the sound of the vowel.
    • Review all vowel sounds and make sure the child knows his vowel sounds, both long and short sounds.
  • Often, a child does not remember what makes a vowel long or short. Here are the rules:
  • Short vowels need protection from other vowels. Every short vowel is followed by a consonant and there must be two consonants between vowels in two-syllable words.
    • At, it, hat, bat, nut, shut, hot, hut, long
    • Batting, hotter, hitting
  • Long vowel needs to be “tapped” by another vowel to say its alphabet name.
    • Magic “E”: its only purpose is to “tap” the vowel to remind him to say his long sound. The magic “E” can jump over only one letter.
      • Make, date, phone, bone
  • Two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.
    • Each vowel has a best friend who she like to walk with. The best friend “taps” the front vowel and /ea/: mean, dean, bean
    • tells her to say her alphabet name.
    • /ai/; bait, wait
    • /oa/: boat, moat
    • /ui/: suit, fruit
    • Exception: /i/’s best friend is the silent /gh/: night, sight, light

Silent letters

  • Silent letters come after short vowels, you can think of them as protection from the end of the word or from another vowel.
    • /ck/: sick, nick,
    • /dge/: fudge, judge
    • /tch/: switch, ditch

Blends

  • Blends can be challenging for beginning reader because there are more letters to visually process and the mouth movement is harder.
    • R blends: /tr/   /sr/ /cr/ /br/   /dr/
    • L blends: /bl/   /sl/ /cl/ /pl/
    • Triple blends: /str/

 

Bossy R’s

  • A /r/ after a vowel sound is so bossy he doesn’t let the vowel say its name.
    • /er/ /ir/ and /ur/ all say the sound of /r/: her, sir, hurt.
    • /ar/ says /r’s/ alphabet name: car, star, bar.
    • /or/ says same as the little word “or”: born, torn, sort.

There are many more rules, these are just some that often trip up beginning readers.

 

 

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“I want to be like him!”

ADHD, Dyslexia, Executive Functioning, Flexible Thinking, Learning differences, Math, Processing Speed, Reading, Visual Processing, Writing

 

Bryce wants to be like his friend who is excellent at soccer, can memorize anything quickly and always has a witty comment to share. So he asked me to explain how his brain works and what he can do to be more like his friend. We discussed his strengths and weaknesses and how they affect his processing of information. In my explanation to Bryce I realized that he is not as worried about his academic levels as he is about his ability to interact with his friends. The same processing difficulties he is having learning new information in the classroom are hindering him in his social interactions.

Helping Bryce process information quickly will make all learning and social interactions easier for him. Once the brain is smoothly processing new input; social interactions along with reading, writing, and math skills will be mastered more easily.

Many students come to the K&M Center with diagnoses of a processing disorder, a developmental delay, dyslexia, processing speed issues, ADHD, executive functioning disorder, dysgraphia, language processing issues, and auditory processing issues. Each diagnosis identifies a difficulty in absorbing new information, effectively storing information and/or retrieving the desired information efficiently. The question changes from, “ How do I teach a child to read?” to “What neuro-pathways need to be developed so this child can read fluently?”

How do we build new neuro-pathways? Memory and learning are related but different and it is important to understand their relationship. Memory is dependent on learning because memory takes learned information and stores it so it can be retrieved at a later time. Learning is dependent on memory because the stored information in memory provides the framework used to create associations and inferences to further learning and strengthen memory.

The Process of Creating New Neuro-pathways:

  • The memory/learning process starts with perception and attention, which cause neurons to fire.
  • Once the neurons fire a trace memory is created and the consolidation or stabilizing of a memory begins.
    • This is considered the encoding or storage of information.
    • During this process synapses increase in strength and number.
  • When a group of neurons frequently fire together they form a pathway and the brain “re-wires” itself rearranging its organization.
    • These neural pathways are what make learning possible.

The brain is designed to process information along the path of least resistance. Pathways that are frequently used become stronger and faster, so information that is learned and practiced allows that information to be retrieved more quickly.

Frequent use of neurons builds quick, strong neural pathways. Educating students with learning disabilities requires finding activities that stimulate the desired neurons to develop new pathways. Finding the right activities for each student is the key to successful learning.

How frequently the pathways need to be stimulated is not clear. Most research indicates that intensive intervention requires 60 hours, with daily sessions.

Bryce has a unique and wonderful brain. In our discussion we talked about how every person has strengths and weaknesses that make them valuable. Bryce wants to learn and he is willing to do the work, therefore his brain will continue to build new neural pathways that will help him in his social interactions. We also discussed that he will most likely never be exactly like his friend and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Learning to accept ourselves, while continuing to improve ourselves is what makes life interesting.

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How DO you teach children with learning challenges?

ADHD, Behavioral Regulation, Dyslexia, Executive Functioning, Learning, Thinking Skills

Effective teaching requires a connection between the teacher and the student. This connection allows the teacher to modify and accelerate instruction as the student grows. Understanding the zone of proximal development helps the teacher understand what a child is capable of learning in any given session. The zone of proximal development is a way to visualize the learning zone.

Zone of Proxmial development

Any information above the zone is too difficult for the child to comprehend while anything below the zone she’s already mastered and no longer needs to work on. The tricky part about the zone is it is always moving. On days that the stars are aligned and the child is open and able to learn easily, the child will move swiftly through almost any appropriate material you give. However, if a child has a learning disability, or struggles with emotional regulation, the zone may be different for different subjects or on different days depending on what has happened already before the learning session. It is the role of the teacher to connect with the child at the beginning of the session to determine where the zone is for that day and then moving the child step-by-step though the material to take him to higher levels of comprehension.

Staying in the zone may sound simple, but it is the core of working with any child with a learning challenge. If instructors stay within a child’s zone of proximal development the child will learn. The challenge for the instructor is both staying within the zone and having the appropriate materials so that the child can connect to the new information. Having instructional tools that appropriately address the child’s area of deficits is critical to the learning process. The selection of materials can be a challenge in itself. One reading program may be great for certain kind of student and completely inappropriate for another student. This is where testing and evaluations are helpful. An educational professional can read the testing results and match the child’s areas of weaknesses to programs that develop those specific areas.

Another key component for creating a successful treatment plan is making it fun and motivating for the child. I believe all children want to learn and feel good about their intellectual capability. Our role as teachers, parents and educators is creating the right interventions which stay in the child learning zone, address the specific needs of the child, are fun and guide the child towards his or her potential.

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How to help your child succeed in middle school

ADHD, Executive Functioning, Learning, Learning differences

Communication is the key to success in Middle School

Last week Mrs. Smith came to visit me and discuss her daughter, Sarah. Sarah is in seventh grade and has been struggling all year. Last year in sixth grade Sarah earned all A’s and B”s on her report card.  Sarah has a history of doing well in school. At the beginning of seventh grade Sarah began experiencing difficulty in a class or two, but she promised her mother that she would work harder and handle it. All year long Sarah promised her mother that she would do better. However, Sarah was not able to take control of her schoolwork and pull up her grades.

Teacher comments on Sarah’s report cards consistently stated that she was missing homework and doing poorly on tests. Sarah’s mother trusted her because Sarah had always done well in school. Mrs. Smith did not realize until too late that Sarah needed some academic support to help her to well in seventh-grade.

This story is important. The transition between elementary school and middle school can place an extraordinary load on a child’s organizational, planning and follow-through skills. Many students have not developed, or needed, executive functioning skills prior to middle school. The tragedy of this is when you have a strong student like Sarah who suddenly fails three classes.

It is important for parents to realize what they need to do to help their children succeed in middle school. I wish that Sarah’s mother had come to us in October or November of last year and we could have set up a plan to help her get her work done and turned in on time.

Communication is the key to success.

The communication needs to be between the teachers, the parents and the child. This sounds like a simple task, but as many middle school parents know it is not. If your child is at a school where teachers have an online homework program, that they actually keep up to date, then it is important for parents and students to check that online tool and make sure the child knows what needs to be done and when it needs to be turned in.

Many middle school teachers find it difficult to keep these online homework sites updated.  Without the online homework check it can become a challenge for parents to know what assignments their child has. So what can you do?

  •  Have a meeting with the teacher
  • Find a friend who is a good note taker and is willing to help update your child on what is due
  • Have your child take a picture of the assignments listed on the board
  •  Request that the school give you weekly updates on unfinished assignments and outstanding homework
  • Check in with your child every night, go through the notebook and planner to help them get organized.
  •  Create a homework calendar where weekly and monthly assignments are written down
  • Understand that you are teaching your child the steps to success and that this is a process that will take time.
  •  Don’t wait more than a month if your child begins to struggle in school
  • Ask for help and find a system that works for your family

Middle school is a very exciting and trying time as your child goes through developmental growth, both mentally and physically. It is a time when children require more independence, however they are not always ready for parents to step back completely. This is the time period where parents transition from teacher to coach, guiding their children to develop the skills that they need to succeed.

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Executive functioning skills: How To Get Your Child To Follow The Plan

ADHD, Behavioral Regulation, Executive Functioning, Learning, Learning differences, Thinking Skills

 

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.

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Find your Executive Functioning Strengths and Weakness with our FREE QUIZ

ADHD, Behavioral Regulation, Executive Functioning, Learning, Learning differences, Processing Speed, Thinking Skills, Writing

Executive Functioning refers to the skills that help you organize, plan and execute a task. If you would like to discover your own executive functioning strengths and weaknesses, take our free quiz and then read below to see how each skill affects your thinking.

Click here to take the quiz: EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING QUIZ. When you are done write your results on the chart below.

Find more executive functioning strategies in the TLC Executive Functioning Workbook.



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Mastering Executive Functioning Skills Requires Grit and Resilience

ADHD, Behavioral Regulation, Executive Functioning, Learning, Learning differences, Thinking Skills

 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.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

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.

  1. 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

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Summer and Executive Functioning Skills

ADHD, Behavioral Regulation, Executive Functioning, Learning, Learning differences, Thinking Skills, Writing

 

Summer is a great time to catch up on material your child may not have mastered during the school year. Teaching reading, writing or math concepts will have clear benefits for your child when they re-enter school in the fall. But what about something as elusive as executive functioning? Can executive functioning skills be developed during the summer?  Identifying the areas your child needs to build will guide you in deciding what type of intervention is needed and if that intervention can be done in the summer.

One great rating scale is the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function® (BRIEF®) which consists of two rating forms–a parent questionnaire and a teacher questionnaire–designed to assess executive functioning in the home and school environments. The BRIEF is divided into 2 parts:

  1. Behavioral Regulation which includes the areas of:
    • Inhibit, Shift, Emotional Control
  2. Metacognition which includes the areas of:
    • Initiate, Working Memory, Plan/Organize, Organization of Materials, Monitoring

Initiation

•

starting work

Inhibition

•

stopping off-task behavior

Shift

•

moving from one activity to another

Working Memory

•

remembering information for immediate use

Planning

•

setting goals and the steps to accomplish them

Organizing Materials

•

tracking items in work spaces

Time Management

•

allotting appropriate time for each task

Monitoring

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judging the quality and pace of work

Emotional Control

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regulating stress and distractibility

If your child’s executive functioning weaknesses are in the area of behavioral regulation your intervention is going to be very different than if metacognition is the area of weakness.

Dr. Judy Willis (http://www.edutopia.org/blog/brain-based-teaching-strategies-judy-willis) identifies some wonderful strategies to build executive functioning skills. Here is an edited version of her article.

1) Provide Opportunities to Apply Learning

When you provide students with opportunities to apply learning — especially through authentic, personally meaningful activities — and then provide formative assessments and feedback throughout a unit, facts move from rote memory to become part of the memory bank.

  • The expanding of related categories of information (Piaget’s schema) through executive function activities will consolidate learning into networks. These networks can be activated when students are prompted to use new learning to solve problems or create new products. This is the transfer process that further promotes network activation with the resulting neuroplasticity to construct long-term memory. Without these opportunities for strengthening, any memories learned by rote are simply pruned away from disuse after the test.

2) Introduce Activities to Support Developing Executive Function

  • Students need to be explicitly taught and given opportunities to practice using executive functions such as how to learn, study, organize, prioritize, review, and actively participate in class.
  • Activities that can support executive function network development include comparing and contrasting, giving new examples of a concept, spiraled curriculum, group collaboration, open-ended discussions. Additionally, executive function is developed when students summarize and symbolize new learning into new formats, such as through the arts or writing across the curriculum. (See The Brain-Based Benefits of Writing for Math and Science Learning.)
  • Consider how to acquire any skills or knowledge they lack to reach desirable goals. This type of student-prompted information and skill seeking strengthens students’ attitude about the value of learning. When motivated to solve problems that are personally meaningful, students apply effort, collaborate successfully, ask questions, revise hypotheses, redo work, and seek the foundational knowledge you need them to learn. And they do this because they want to know what you have to teach.

3) Model Higher Thinking Skills

  • In planning instruction, consider how and when you will model these higher thinking skills and provide opportunities for students to activate their developing executive function networks throughout the learning process.
  • Judgment
    • This executive function, when developed, promotes a student’s ability to monitor the accuracy of his or her work, and to analyze the validity of information heard or read. opinion are examples of promoting the development of networks for judgment.
  • Prioritizing
    • This executive function helps students to separate low relevance details from the main ideas of a text or topic of study. Prioritizing is the executive function that guides students when they plan an essay, select information to include in notes, and evaluate word problems in math for the relevant data.
  • Setting Goals, Providing Self-feedback and Monitoring Progress
    • Until students fully develop these pre-frontal cortex (PFC) executive functions, they are limited in their capacity to set and stick to realistic and manageable goals. As they develop these executive functions, they need guidance to recognize their incremental progress they make as they apply effort towards their larger goals.
  • Prior Knowledge Activation and Transfer Opportunities
    • Plan activities where students can relate what they know from past experiences to their current learning and tie it to the larger concept.
  • Metacognition
    • When you plan for and teach with mental manipulation for executive function in mind, your students will come to recognize their own changing attitudes and achievements. Describe your mental manipulation, challenges, and the executive functions you used to create something new as you found the authentic active learning opportunities that activated the students’ interest, perseverance, and higher levels of thinking.
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Will My Child Always Be Dyslexic?

Dyslexia, Learning, Learning differences, Reading, Spelling, Visual Processing


Research is ongoing regarding the neuro-pathways of our brains and how they can change with time and intervention, so you will get different answers to this question depending on whom you ask. Can a dyslexic student learn to read… YES!  As someone who has remediated learning differences for over 20 years, I can confidently tell you that dyslexic children can be taught to read and spell. To provide the right assistance to your child you need to discover your child’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses.  Then you can more easily find the correct intervention that taps into the part of the brain that needs to be developed.

Brain imaging is being used to highlight the parts of the brain that are active when we do certain types of activities. Research has shown that different areas are active in the “dyslexic” brain than in the typical brain when reading.  What does this mean for “fixing” the dyslexic brain? The theory is that we should help the dyslexic readers build the same brain pathways as the typical reader, so that when reading, the two types of brains use the same pathways.

The most widely accepted definition of dyslexia as accepted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, as well as the International Dyslexia Association, states that:

  • Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin.
  • It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities.
  • These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction.
  • Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge.

What this means is that a dyslexic child’s intelligence is above his reading level and that the reason for the difference is due to difficulty sounding out and manipulating sounds. What I know from my years of teaching reading is that there can be more than a phonological deficit making reading challenging for children. Therefore to teach a child to read you need to step back to get a bigger picture of the child’s learning profile.

If we are going to use the term dyslexia to define all students who have a reading disorder it is helpful to consider the “types” of dyslexia. The goal of understanding “types” of dyslexia is identifying the underlying issues that are making reading difficult for your child.

  • Phonological/ Auditory Dyslexia:  These students can’t sound out nonsense words, they have weak sound/symbol associations. It is difficult for this student to “hear”, or discriminate, the difference in sounds. “Hat” and “bat” may sound the same. If not identified early, this type of student will learn to read by building a large sight word vocabulary.
  • Visual Dyslexia: Visual processing issues make it hard for this type of student to  discriminate between visual symbols (letters and numbers) quickly and accurately.  Letter reversals are common as are substituting one word for another. “Home” can be read as “House”.
  • Double-Deficit Dyslexia: The connection between the verbal (auditory) portion of the brain and the visual portion of the brain is weak. Tests of rapid naming pick up this visual/language loop.

Once you know the areas of weakness your child has you can select an intervention program that is designed to build the neuro-pathways your child needs to develop in order to activate the parts of the brain that make reading easy. I believe that the unusual brain pattern of dyslexics may offer more benefits and advantages than we previously believed and more conversation is taking place about the benefits of dyslexia.

So perhaps the real issue isn’t whether your child will always be dyslexic, but rather how you can help your dyslexic child to flourish in his or her educational environment and learn to appreciate his/her own learning style. Learning to view dyslexia not as a negative challenge, but rather as a predisposed mental wiring can help teachers, parents and children relax into the realization that different doesn’t mean wrong. As research continues to investigate the brain and how we learn, I am sure we will continue to develop new attitudes and teaching methods to help all types of learners access information easily.

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Metacognition Helps Build Self Regulation and Executive Functioning Skills

ADHD, Behavioral Regulation, Executive Functioning, Learning, Thinking Skills

Metacognition is thinking about thinking, knowing “what we know” and “what we don’t know.”  This means students take time to think about what needs to be done and how to do it. These students understand how the mind works and use this knowledge to help them. They take control over their learning process.

Building Metacognition skills can help build Self-Regulation skills by helping the student focus well. Building Self-Regulation skills can then help build Executive Functioning skills, which will allow the student to plan and organize better.

Gaskins & Pressley’s chapter in Executive Function in Education, 2007 presents a curriculum that teaches metacognitive skills. They describe how a child with strong metacognitive skills approaches a task. Metacognitive Learners:

  • Continually assess what they know.
  • As they read, write and problem-solve they:
    • Predict
    • Question
    • Create images
    • Clarify
    • Summarize
  • They are persistent; if the first strategy doesn’t work they try something else.
  • Have concrete strategies for approaching tasks.
  • Know success is the result of smart effort not just working hard.

Creating a mantra that children can memorize and use when they approach a task is very helpful to building metacognitive skills. Here are 4 steps to help teach metacognition skills:

  1.  STOP
  2. THINK: What am I supposed to do? Create a plan.
  3. DO: How do I do it? Follow the plan.
  4. CHECK: Did I do it? Check the plan.

Once they have memorized and begun using the mantra. Children will be asking themselves questions and talking themselves through tasks, thereby using metacognition strategies to help build executive functioning skills and behavior regulation skills.

Here are some examples of extended questions children can begin to ask themselves.

First, STOP!

Then, THINK. Make a plan before I start the task: When I am beginning a task, ask myself:

  • Why am I doing this?
  • Do I already know something that will help me?
  • What will the finished product look like?
  • What is my first step?
  • How much time do I have?

Next DO. During the task:  When I am monitoring the plan of action, ask myself:

  • How am I doing?
  • Am I following the directions?
  • What do I need to do next?
  • Does this match what I planned?
  • Am I getting enough done in the time I am spending?
  • Is there something I don’t understand?
  • Do I need to ask for help?

Finally, CHECK. After the task: When I am evaluating the plan of action, ask myself:

  • Did the product match the picture I had for it?
  • Is this better or worse than I expected?
  • What could I have done differently?
  • Is there anything missing?

Metacognitive strategies are teaching a child to be aware of his thoughts and control them. We are therefore trying to build behavioral regulation skills and executive functioning skills, which will in turn, activate the frontal lobe and hopefully build it. Brain research has shown that activity in the brain builds synapses, so we are taking a leap of faith (based on research and experience) that this will allow the child to attend better to tasks.

This is not easy; it requires constant reinforcement. Will it be successful? That depends on how well the plan is implemented.  What I have noticed at our learning center is that we get a number of middle school boys (along with some girls) who have weak executive functioning skills. There is a developmental growth in middle school that helps develop executive functioning skills which is evident by around 9th grade. My expectation is that many students who need help with executive functioning in middle school will build (with guidance and support) the skills they need to be successful when they enter high school.

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