Session Description: Executive skills refer to the cognitive processes required to plan and organize activities, including task initiation and follow through, planning/organization, working memory, performance monitoring, inhibition of impulses, and self-regulation. Youngsters with poor executive skills are disorganized or forgetful, have trouble getting started on tasks, get distracted easily, lose papers or assignments, forget to bring home the materials to complete homework or forget to hand homework in. They may rush through work or dawdle, they make careless mistakes that they fail to catch. They don’t know where to begin on long-term assignments, and they put the assignment off until the last minute, in part because they have trouble judging the magnitude of the task and how long it will take to complete it. Their workspaces are disorganized, and teachers may refer to their desks, backpacks, and notebooks as “black holes.”
Learning Objectives: As a result of this workshop, participants will:
1. Understand executive skills within the context of brain development.
2. Be familiar with assessment strategies, including interview, rating scales, and standardized tests used to assess executive functioning.
3. Be able to identify how executive skills impact school performance and daily living.
4. Have access to a repertoire of strategies to improve executive skills in students. These will include how to design environmental modifications, how to teach executive skills, and how to use incentives, as well as a brief introduction to coaching as an intervention strategy to support executive skill development.
Cost is $50 per person which includes the book, Smart but Scattered and lunch.