Hope you all enjoyed the snow this week! I know I loved being snuggled up at home and the short week we had. Much needed rest for ALL!
I spent time on Wednesday going over our data slides and that included our behavior for our school over all. From what I am hearing in PLCs and what the data shows we have many students struggling with some Executive Functioning Skills. I know we are striving for Rigor and Relationships in our district but we can't ignore that our students may not be ready for learning to happen due to developmental, pandemic or outside repercussions.
What is Executive Function AGAIN?
In a nutshell, Executive Functions are cognitive skills that aid in thinking and self regulation. They call on your prefrontal cortex to help with decision making and goal setting. Executive Functions help us manage our feelings and actions during day to day life.
Executive Function is broken into 2 strands. Sounds familiar right?????? (SOR and the reading rope.)
Makes me think this is something that we REALLY NEED to pay attention too!
Check out what EF skills are developed at certain ages. This is very interesting in seeing exactly where your students may lie in their development.
(Give it a CLICK to make it bigger!)
Take a look at the EF skills below. I bet students in your classroom that are struggling academically also struggle in one or more of these areas.
This blogpost from The Pathway to Success is incredible!!!! It walks you through each skill and what it looks like in the classroom & what your can do to support it.
There are even separate posts about interventions that can be put in place to help support the specific skill development.
This video is one of my favorites!
EF is like an air traffic controller!
As educators, we always know that we have to focus on the whole child and not just the academic piece. I want us to keep this in mind when we dig into our data. Title 1 will be supporting students but we know there will be a chunk of students in our classrooms that will need more support than ever.
Love the idea of offering information to parents about what they can do at home to help strengthen their students EF skills. Grab this freebie!
I know this may seem like another thing to teach but I encourage you to look at embedding these skills in your lessons. Such as teach planning skills when you are doing a research paper. Or use games! Check out the link below!
I love this video to share with students about EF and how they work for them!
Here are some simple things that you can do to help explicitly teach and support the development of these skills in the classroom.
Don't forget about our Behavior Problem Solving website! So many incredible resources for you to use with your students to help support EF skills.
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