Facilitating Executive Skills Development

1. Edward C Taylor PhD Child and Adolescent Psychologist August 18, 2010 Facilitating Executive Skills Development

2. The Millennial Experience

3. The Millennial Environment • Socially and Cognitively, Neither Here Nor There • High Volume of Data Presented Rapidly • Rapid Shifts in Topic or Place • Compressed Speech • Environmentally Directed Awareness • Digital and Visual Data • Multi-Tasking

4. Environment Directed Awareness • Reacting, Not Planning or Reflecting • Someone else is making decisions about what, where, how, how long, and how much • Control over the life experience is externalized

5. What Can The Teacher D0 ? Facilitate Development of the Executive Skills in Order to Internalize Control Over the Student’s Life Experience

6. Executive Skills • Facilitate getting the job done • Facilitate our growth over time as a consequence of our experiences • Allow us to gain greater control over our future

7. Broad Categories of Executive Skills • Self-Activation • Self-Regulation • Self-Awareness • Self-Determination

8. Self-Activation • Lighting Up

9. Self-Regulation • Initiating • Modulating • Gauging • Focus – Selective • Focus- Sustaining • Stopping-Interrupting • Shifting • Inhibiting

10. Self-Regulation • Organizing • Foreseeing • Generating • Associating • Balancing • Storing • Retrieving • Pacing • Timing

11. Self-Regulation • Executing • Monitoring • Correcting

12. Self-Realization • Direct cognitive processes that promote self-awareness, self-reflection, and self-analysis • Cue cognitive processes to use this self-knowledge to initiate, sustain, or alter behavior

13. Self-Determination • Foresight, Long Term Planning, and Goal Generation • Direct cognitive processes to construct visions of the future and to reflect on the past in order to improve or alter behavior in the future

14. Executive Skills Facts • Effectiveness is Domain Specific • Sensation-Perception • Emotion • Cognition • Action • Effectiveness is Arena of Operation Specific • Intrapersonal • Interpersonal • Environment • Symbol System

15. Executive Skills Facts • Development begins in first years of life and continues through the life span • Development occurs in spurts • Natural maturational delays can occur • There is intra-individual unevenness in development • There is inter-individual unevenness • There is gender unevenness

18. Can the environment influence the development of a biologically based set of skills ?

19. The Statue Test 1940 vs 2001 1940 2001 3 year olds 0 minutes 5 year olds 0 minutes 7 year olds 3 minutes • 3 year olds 0 minutes • 5 year olds 3 minutes • 7 year olds long time

22. Imaginative Play and the Executive Skills Play in First half of 20th century Play in Second half of 20th Century Adult organized and directed Toy or object focused Real toys with a specific purpose or theme Rules are given TV, video games, or lessons Schools focus on cognitive skills development to pass the test • Unsupervised • Child directed • In groups • Imaginative • Activity focused • Improvisation • Symbolic toys • Kids made the rules • At home and at school

23. The Play Connection • Imaginative play promotes self-regulatory self-talk • Self- regulatory self-talk promotes • Control over emotions • Impulse resistance • Planning • Plan execution • Execution monitoring and self-evaluation • Task persistence

24. Can the environment influence the development of a biologically based set of skills ? YES

25. The Pathway • Facilitate through play and experience • Modeling • Direct instruction • Environmental engineering • Process awareness • Manage the developmental angst

26. Two Step Intervention Model • Attempt to Generate Internal Growth • Apply External Control When Necessary

27. Two Step Intervention Model • Attempt to Generate Internal Growth • Apply External Control When Necessary

28.      “The greatest sign of success for a teacher... is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist.”

29. A Corry Story: Watch Your Language

30. Never help a child with a task at which s/he feels s/he can succeed.

31. Using Language to Promote Internal Control • Internalize, don’t externalize the dilemma • “You are the boss of the soup.” • What is your priority ? • Not deciding is deciding • How is that working for you ?

32. Techniques to Promote Internal Control • Model and Use Self-Talk • Encourage Self-Talk, Aloud • Model and Use Self-Administered Rewards • Model and Use Self-Regulation Routines • Teach Self-Regulation Skills • Encourage Self-Regulation Behavior • Develop a Common Vocabulary for Discussing and Signaling Need for EF • State the Goals of Learning Activities • Provide Feedback About Performance

33. Two Step Intervention Model • Attempt to Generate Internal Growth • Apply External Control When Necessary

34. The Velvet Gloved Dictator

35. Strategies For Teaching Executive Skills • Classroom routines • Classroom rules • Classroom organizational systems • Learning strategy training • Classroom process meetings • Managing developmental angst • Watch your language

36. Classroom Routines • Beginning the day routine • Hand in homework • Discuss and make plan for the day’s work • Prepare materials for the day’s work • End of the day routine • Homework assignments written in the planner • Backpack materials check • Instructions review • Review plans for next day • Prepare space for the next day

37. Classroom Routines Development • Teach explicitly • Model consistently and overtly • Prepare to spend two months • Use checklists at first and then fade them • Use buddy check system • Periodically count frequency of target behaviors to determine effectiveness

38. Classroom Rules • Establish boundaries and mores • Train in the same way that routines are taught • Post them

39. Pre K and Kindergarten • Teachers are the children’s frontal lobes in many instances • Young children learn and communicate through play

40. Strategies To Facilitate Executive Skills Development • Simon Says • Thinking • Impulse inhibition • Complex Imaginative Play • Sustained for 30+ minutes • Of the 1940’s style

41. Strategies To Facilitate Executive Skills Development • Activities requiring planning • Games with directions and goal seeking • Construction activities • Pattern recognition activities • Cooking • Joint Storybook Reading • Process the characters self-regulatory behavior promoted modeling • Mastery models not Expert models

42. Elementary Years • Environmental engineering • Skills building and introduction of tools

43. Organizational Systems • Folder system • Notebook systems • A place for everything and everything in its place • Gantt charts for projects • Make consistent across classes • Time management aids: clocks, calendars, timers, and schedules

44. Middle School • Pre-Copernican Thinkers

46. Middle School • Pre-Copernican Thinkers • Zen Buddhist Naturalists

47. Learning Strategy Training • Teach explicitly • Discuss content and process simultaneously • Post-mortems on tests, papers, etc.

48. Weekly Process Meetings • The post-mortem • What’s working and what’s not • Identify reoccurring problems • Encourage student brainstorming • Individualize

49. Instructional Strategies • Offer feedback and opportunities to re-work or re-study, based upon a self-assessment of what did not work • Offer multiple choices for demonstrating knowledge and skills • Offer pop quizzes as a self-assessment tool

50. High School and Beyond Take advantage of the capacity to self-observe and self-evaluate