Executive Functioning Skills

Executive Functioning Skills
by: Katie Winstead

A couple years ago I participated in an Executive Functioning Skills workshop that discussed interventions and tips that can be done at home and at school to help students. In this workshop we discussed some essential things that I think could benefit us all to know.

What are executive functioning skills? To put it simply, executive functioning skills are things like organization, time management, etc. It is the ability to manage what is around you in order to achieve a goal.

Examples:

• Managing time in the morning to brush your teeth, get dressed, eat breakfast and get school things ready in order to make the bus on time.
• Planning out what you need to do a research project and how it will look before you start.
• Planning what to pack before going on a trip.

How it affects learning and daily life:

• Initiating tasks
• Keeping track of time
• Finishing work on time
• Asking for help
• Being organized

When you think about it, we use skills like these every day in our lives: as learners, workers and members of the community. The skill of keeping track of time is necessary in school when you have 10 minutes to finish an activity before lunch, at a job when your boss says something is due by the end of the day, or in daily life when you only have so much time to run an errand.

As a special education teacher, I work with students on these skills when students have major deficits that impact their learning and future goals. At Elk Grove High School, we even have an Executive Functioning class for our students in special education to help prepare them for life and what's to come. But is it just those students who really need the help?

This past Monday at our Elk Grove Lead Learners meeting, the English department started to talk about a variety of students who were struggling to organize and time-manage their school work and lives. We realized that from instructional to AP classrooms, students across the board were not being explicitly taught these executive functioning skills which was greatly impacting their academics as well as their ability to manage activities outside of school (jobs, clubs, activities, sports, relationships).

As a school, we have helped our students in special education as well as the Freshman class during Freshman First Days. Our thought: how do we continue to help students, especially those that are overbooked with classes and activities?





A little more about Executive Functioning Skills:

A Sample Complex BIP Form

Student Name:  Student Name       ID:  #######

COMPLEX BIP FORM

Team Members: ______________________________________________________________________________________

Functional Behavior Assessment:

Strengths: What are the student strengths as they relate to school?

Environmental Factors we can mitigate: What factors outside of school contribute to the student’s problem behavior?

Trigger: What happens immediately before the problem behavior?

→

Problem Behavior: Describe the problem behavior in objective and measurable terms (for example:  “Susie makes academically unrelated comments to peers 10 times per class period”, instead of “Susie is off-task”).

→

Consequences: What happens after the problem behavior? Removal from class? Students give attention student?

Function of Problem Behavior: What is the “reward”/payoff of the student’s behavior?  What are they gaining/obtaining from engaging in the problem behavior?

BIP Strategies

Minimizing Trigger Strategy: What strategies are there for minimizing the impact of the student’s trigger?  Meaning, how can I either avoid the trigger all together or how can I make the trigger less threatening or alarming to the student. For example, if the student’s trigger is a teacher made request to engage in independent work, a helpful strategy may be first asking the student what which questions the student knows the answer to.

→

Replacement  Behavior Strategy: What is the replacement behavior? (a more socially appropriate alternative behavior that obtains the same function as the problem behavior) How do we teach them the alternative behavior?  What strategies can be taught that would allow them to obtain the same function, but through socially appropriate means? How can the teacher teach the replacement behavior? How can the support staff (counselor/social worker, etc) teach the replacement behavior?

→

Consequence Strategy: If student uses replacement behavior student gets… What are the rewards and positive consequences for using the replacement behavior? If student exhibits problem behavior… What can I do to redirect the student? How will problem behaviors be documented?

Goal:

Current Frequency/Intensity/Duration of the Target Behavior:  How often does the problem behavior occur?

Goal: By [Date] of the 2015/2016 school year, [Student’s Name] will reach their goal (Which will be a reduction in either the Frequency, Intensity or Duration of the Current Target Behavior).

Crisis Plan

Escalation: Observable Signs: What observable signs that will signal the student is beginning to escalate? Teacher Response: What can the teacher do to minimize this escalation?	→	De-Escalation: Observable signs: What are the observable signs that the student is beginning to calm down and de-escalate? Teacher Response: What should the teacher do to help them calm down?	→	Calm: What should the teacher to do help them transition back into the classroom or prepare them to enter the classroom in the immediate future?
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		Crisis: Observable Signs: What behavior will you see when the student is in a crisis? Teacher Response: How should the teacher respond when the student is in crisis?

Support Personnel

• Who are the team members? (Case Manager, Social Worker, School Psychologist, etc).

Data Collection/Methods:

• How will the team collect data?

Provisions for Coordination with Caregivers:

• How will the team contact parent/guardian with updates/information.

Tech Tuesday: POG round-up

Peer Observation Groups started up today!  Thank you to everyone who presented and everyone who was able to stop down.

5th period: The POG had representation from almost every department with over ten participants! Colleen Mullaney and Ami Heng were gracious enough to showcase the checklist feature in Schoology.  They explained the creation process to the group.  The POG discussed the positives and the negatives to the use of checklists.  Colleen and Ami highlighted the student centered learning that can take place with the use of checklists.   If you want to know how to create a checklist in Schoology click here!  Kirsten Fletcher also briefly shared how she is using Media Folders in Schoology and different ways teachers could use them in different subject areas.

6th period: Dr. Karen Simon-Leff and Dr. Marla Carson presented to the group on working with students with disabilities.  One of their main messages was the idea that the goal of public education is that the students leave school with a proper understanding of what it means to be a citizen, including how to successfully hold a job.  So once we have ensured that all appropriate accommodations are made, it is important to hold all students to the same expectations.  For example, the standard of due dates, following directions, and adhering to school and classroom rules should not change as this is not what these students will experience out at a store or at a job.  There were very interesting conversations and questions covered by the group throughout the session.

Gamify Vocabulary Learning: A Favorite Flashcard App!

Today the Collab Blog welcomes guest blogger Katie Owen, a Special Education teacher at Elk Grove.  She can be reached at @MsKatieOwen

Growing up, and for many years of teaching, I have studied vocabulary on note cards. We did games with them, wrote sentences with them, categorized them, used them for seating placement, etc. It was tough to keep it new and fresh (fun fact: index cards were first invented in 1760 by Carl Linnaeus - a Swedish botanist, zooligist and physician). Once I started to get students that had accommodations to receive material digitally and iPads trickled into my room, I decided that could change. One weekend I decided to go through 15+ flashcard apps on my iPad. I tried Evernote Peek, Chegg Flaschards, StudyBlue (which I did use for a while), Flashcards Deluxe, Flashcards+, Flash-Cards, Cramberry, A+ Flashcards Pro, and eventually found the one I am in love with: Flashcards [⁛] by NKO Ventures, LLC.

Flashcards [⁛] allows you to create a class (in the free version you can have up to 30 students and 5 decks at a time). The students can join your class for free and copy the decks you have created. I start all of my decks with the root word on the front and the definition on the back. Students then add a reminding word on the front. On the back, they add a sentence and a picture (they can choose to draw or find a picture from their camera roll).

That is just where the vocabulary practice starts. Once students are done, there are many games the students can play. In the free version, that can be games like matching, true/false, and a crossword. In the paid version ($29.99), you get 100 Students and 75mb of server space - along with games like Flappy Dog and Ninja! Students can also do Q-Battle and practice their vocabulary words in a competition.

 

When students practice on their own deck, they get to see the sentence and drawings they created. After they feel like they know the words, I have them practice on the class deck where they just see the root word and definition. This also allows them to compete and be on the top of the class leader board:

Oh! We also made little avatars using Buddy Poke!