How Does Executive Function Affect Learning ?

2. How Does Executive Function Affect Learning ? In school, at home or in the workplace, we're called on all day, every day, to self-regulate behavior. Normally, features of executive function are seen in our ability to: • make plans • keep track of time • keep track of more than one thing at once • wait to speak until we're called on • seek more information when we need it

3. meaningfully include past knowledge in discussions • engage in group dynamics • evaluate ideas • reflect on our work • change our minds and make mid-course and corrections while thinking, reading and writing • finish work on time • ask for help • wait to speak until we're called on • seek more information when we need it

5. Problems with executive function may be manifested when a person: • has difficulty planning a project • has trouble comprehending how much time a project will take to complete • struggles to tell a story (verbally or in writing); has trouble communicating details in an organized, sequential manner • has difficulty with the mental strategies involved in memorization and retrieving information from memory • has trouble initiating activities or tasks, or generating ideas independently • has difficulty retaining information while doing something with it; e.g., remembering a phone number while dialing.

6. Why are organization skills important ? • Think about what you do all day. You are constantly needing organizational skills to negotiate the demands of living. • Is your home organized? Can you find what you need? • Can you prioritize your list of things to do? If something changes your plan can you cope? • Did you give yourself enough time to complete tasks? • If you need help with something do you know who to ask and what to say to them? • What if you don’t want to do some of the things you have to do, how to you get yourself to do them.

7. Organization Skills • Need to be taught explicitly at school and home. • There is no “ quick Fixes” • We need to understand what we do intuitively to organize ourselves in order to assist our students. • Organizational skills are difficult to measure.

8. Gestalt: organization • Your Brain Has To Figure It Out, Before Your Body Can Help Out! • Prioritizing…can’t happen without Brain Organization.

9. Problems students have • Over-focus on details; don’t see the whole picture • Don’t account for contextual cues • Plug into a specific instruction but don’t see how it relates to the next item (constant strugglers) • Very weak ability to organize/prioritize

10. List what you had to do this morning.

11. Organization Skills • This task comes from Michelle Garcia Winner . • Most people will chunk the information and not break down them into very small parts. Such as we may say “Eat breakfast”. • The reality is that “Eating Breakfast” is actually a great number of smaller steps • Organizational skills start from the moment that you wake up in the morning.

12. Breaking Down Tasks • We need to respect the tremendous amount of steps we are truly asking our students to accomplish • Many students with ASD have difficulty with organization and we need to be able to separate out the tasks into the smaller steps for them. • Even some of the organizational strategies that schools do try to implement such as homework planners, we don’t teach the students HOW to use the planner.

13. Michelle Garcia Winner Factors impacting Organizational Skills • Motivation • Time Management • Segmentation of Tasks • Prioritizing/ Postponing • Allocation of Resources • Communication of Assistance • Planning Ahead

15. The 10 Steps of Organization • Know what needs to be done • Move it with motivation. • Prepare the environment. • Chunk it and time it. • Visually structure it. • Prioritize and plan it daily.

16. 7. Hunt and gather it. 8. Take perspective. 9. Communicate about it. 10. Persist and reward it.

18. Flexibility A key to organization is also to be flexible enough that if something else interferes with the plan you will still be able to function and make adaptations to the plan. What else does the student need to do at home?

19. List what you think a student needs to remember to do their homework.

20. Persistence • Some things are easy to persist at • Name them • Why are they easy? • Some things are hard to persist at • Name them • Why • What can make it easier?

21. Environment • Write assignment in same place everyday. • Give clear time period to write homework down. • Develop a school wide organization system so students don’t need to learn a new one every year. • Color coded binders • Homework folders • Do regular binder checks.

22. Ideas • Make checklists of common things you do in your class. • Instead of nagging a student if they have not initiated a task hand them the checklist. • Use a time timer or other timer to assist in understanding time.

23. Ideas • Use color markers and highlighters • Grammar • Painted essay • Types of information.

24. Chunking • Teach chunking • Take an assignment • Get the main ideas and key elements • Break it down to smaller chunks that you can do

25. Involve the student • Set goals • Give a defined objective • Have student assist with measurement.

28. Time management • Write out a schedule for the day • Have students estimate the amount of time it will take them. • Compare time it took with estimation. • Do this regularly so student gets better about estimating.

29. Rob By April 1, 2010 I will be able to write a sentence with a subject, verb and a prepositional phrase.

30. Long Term Calendar

31. Calendars/Planners • Weekly planners • What to do today • Stickers • Cueing systems

32. Perception Worksheet • What grade do you think you will get • Good things you did in class • What was hard in class • What grade did you get • Teacher’s comments about what was good • Teacher’s comment about what was not going well

33. Teaching how to ask for help • Social stories • Social Detective • Biographies • Difference between help and clarification • Who to ask what

34. Teaching about Rewards • Why you reward yourself • When to do this

35. Strategy • Once you have found an organizational strategy make it visual by writing it down. This can be the student’s “ strategy dictionary’. • This allows the student to take ownership of their learning. • It is critical that we not only give the organizational strategies to the student but that we teach the PROCESS of organization.

36. Intelligence does not equal Organized • A student may indeed know a great deal of information about a subject but may have such poor organizational skills that they have tremendous difficulty on a task.

37. Homework • For many students with ASD it is much more important for the student to learn the process of doing the homework rather than the product of the homework • It will be more important for the student to learn the skills that will make them more independent. This is especially important for the high school student planning on going to college.

38. Homework We need to consider that school and home are two very different environments so that what a student might be able to do at school he truly may have tremendous difficulty doing at home. We need to have our students feel good about doing their work independently.

39. Homework • Students often do better with static organization ( Homework that is done in the same way every time like writing spelling words) • They have more difficulty with dynamic organization ( long term projects, shifting workload).

40. What do I Need to Do? • We need to let the students think about what they need to do • It is not enough to have them write the homework in the planner they need to have a process to follow • What books do I need to have • What other supplies do I need to have • Create a visual plan for how to do the homework • Visual planning sheets and chunking

41. How to continue to do the work when you don’t want to. • Charting feelings and strategies to assist keeping at work. • Sometimes the student doesn’t realize that they NEED to persist at a task. • What is your motivation to keep you on task.

45. Organization of the Process using Ziggurat

47. ASSESSMENT PROCEDURES • Parent and teacher interviews • Behavior rating scales • Formal assessment • Behavior observations • Informal assessment

48. ASSESSMENT OF EXECUTIVE SKILLS Informal Measures • Parent interview (look for specific examples of problems in areas likely to be affected by executive skill deficits, including problems with homework, chores, following directions, social interactions, organizationalskills, etc.). • Teacher interviews (again, look for specificity of examples in relevant areas, e.g., following complex directions, task initiation, handling long-term assignments, response to open-ended tasks, social interactions, responses to classroom/school rules, etc.).

49. ASSESSMENT OF EXECUTIVE SKILLS Behavior Rating Scales • Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF).Available from PAR (www.parinc.com). • Child Behavior Checklist/Teacher Report Form. (www.ASEBA.org) • Brown ADD Scales. (for adolescents). (Available from Psychological Corporation)

50. Modify the environment • Change the physical or social environment • Modify the tasks we expect children to perform • Provide prompts or cues