Courses

Sarah Ward: Executive Function Skills: Success in the Classroom – Summer Institute 2024

Please note that you may register for this course individually or as part of the 5-day elementary or middle & high school Executive Function Academy.

What skills do students need to learn to be organized and successful in managing their own time and tasks in the classroom? This multidisciplinary workshop will provide practical, hands-on strategies to develop students’ executive function skills for success in school. The term “executive function” is used to describe the skill set required for setting goals, carrying out organized steps, and modifying a plan to complete a task successfully in the classroom. Difficulty with executive function isn’t a diagnosis or learning disability on its own, but it’s a common concern for students with learning and attention issues. All students benefit from instructional strategies that foster executive function skills; however, students with traumatic brain injury, ADHD, and specific learning disabilities frequently experience difficulties with these particular skills.

Special education teachers, general education teachers, and ancillary staff will learn specially-designed instructional strategies for “Being a Beat Ahead,” “Building an Internal Sweep of the Sense of Time,” and “Get Ready-Do-Done.” Beginners and advanced participants will learn and practice these strategies to improve students’ awareness, working memory, hindsight and forethought skills, impulse control, cognitive flexibility, organization, and time/task management.

Upon completion, participants will be able to:

• State the functional working definition of  what is meant by the term “executive function skills”as it pertains to therapeutic interventions.  
• Identify the typical developmental course of the executive function skills and define Executive Dysfunction 
• Define how situational awareness (the ability to read a room), self talk, forethought , gesture/movement and episodic memory are the foundational skills for successful task execution 
• Develop an intervention program to foster a student’s ability to form more independent executive function skills by describing therapeutic activities to improve: 
  • Situational awareness and forethought 
  • Task planning, task initiation and transition within and between tasks 
  • Active self management of the factors related to the passage of time – sequence, duration, analog time, time markers
  • Organized thinking of self, space, tasks and materials
  • Internal self-talk for initiating tasks

LEVEL

This course is appropriate for educators at all levels (elementary, middle, secondary).

MATERIALS

Materials will be provided on-site.

ADDITIONAL COURSE LOGISTICS

• Delivery mode: In-person.
• Attendance: Live, on the date and time listed in the course information section.