Executive Function

Hello Family and Friends of Wheelock School, I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving break!  I am writing a blog post today inspired by Executive Functioning.  This is definitely a 'trending term' these days and I'd love to take this opportunity to share with you some brief information and a great local and FREE workshop!

The Medfield Public Library is hosting a workshop titled "Natural Solutions to Executive Function Struggles and ADHD" by Dr. Jolene Ross sponsored by The Foundation for Wellness Professionals on Thursday December 11th at 7pm.  I have not personally attended this workshop (nor am I necessarily endorsing this); however I am always a fan of 'free' development opportunities and the chance to learn something to help our students!

Executive Function is a set of mental processes that help us do such things as; plan, organize, remember details and sustain attention to name a few.  The National Center for Learning Disabilities has a more detailed explanation found here: What is executive Function?  Executive Function is associated with the prefontal cortex, a part of the brain that may still be developing up until an individual is 25 years old.

The good news is there are still things we can do at a young age to help Executive Function.  Here at Wheelock we use several strategies to help develop this skill set for our students such as providing graphic organizers, visual checklists and helping to get kids started by breaking multi-step tasks into smaller 'chunks' (just to name a few).

There are also ways you can work on Executive Function at home.  I saw an interesting article highlighting some games that kids not only enjoy playing but also promote these skills and you might even already have some of these games (chess is included); Five Games to help improve EF.  There are also some great affordable Apps out there to support executive functioning at home; such as the Time Timer to help with time management and another one called the Picture Scheduler.  I also have a couple good books listed in the resources section.

Thanks for taking the time to visit my blog and I hope I was able to shed some light on Executive Function. 

Spoon: cute book- IMPORTANT message

What a wonderful new discovery of a book I couldn't believe I did not own!  A wonderful parent lent me this book and I was thrilled to present it to a third grade classroom, thank you Mrs. Sheehan for a great opportunity! Thank you as well for sharing your images! Here is a short synopsis:

He's always been a happy little utensil. But lately, he feels like life as a spoon just isn't cutting it. He thinks Fork, Knife, and The Chopsticks all have it so much better than him. But do they? And what do they think about Spoon? A book for all ages, Spoon serves as a gentle reminder to celebrate what makes us each special."

We had some great discussions about the message of the story and all the students understood we all have special skills/traits that makes us unique!  I tied this message into a hands on activity where the kids each spent time coming up with 5 things they like about themselves and makes them unique.  I was amazed at the examples the students came up with.  Examples like such as: "I like my hair color" to "I like my enthusiasm", too cute!

I hope to reach many more classrooms with this story and would encourage that this book be added to your collection at home :)

On Monday September 8th, Mrs. Olson and I helped to present the first good character assembly with all the students of Wheelock.  We talked about the word of the month, Responsibility, and Mrs. Olson showed a really cute video clip.  I then read one of my favorite books, 'Have you filled a bucket today?' to teach the kids that we all have a responsibility to be 'bucket fillers'.  We can all be 'bucket fillers' by being nice to others.  Being nice and doing kind things helps to fill other people's buckets and in turn fills our own buckets.  I was thrilled to have the opportunity to connect the message in this story with the unveiling of the new 'Buddy Bench'.  The 'Buddy Bench' (as seen above) was donated by the CSA and spearheaded by the Fontana family.  With some help from a few third grade friends, we presented this exciting addition to the Wheelock playground.  Some people may remember this story trending on different websites last year. There is an adorable back story found here.  We hope to create a fun way to help promote inclusion and build friendships here at Wheelock!

Lunch Bunch at Wheelock

Hello Families of Wheelock, several classes received a letter last week from myself and Karen Alberts (the Speech Lang. Pathologist), about a program we offer here at Wheelock called 'lunch bunch'.  I just wanted to take a minute to make some clarifications.  Children who participate in lunch bunch have the opportunity to invite friends from their class to join them for this lunch bunch group.  The purpose of this letter was to ask permission to have your child be invited by a class mate every now and then.   This is a nice way for the students to work on social/friendship skills in a smaller, quieter setting. It's usually a big hit with the students and we are looking forward to starting the program!  If a parent does not wish their child to participate this will be respected and these parents are encouraged to contact myself or Mrs. Alberts (kalberts@email.medfield.net).  Thanks for your time!

Welcome Back!

Hello and Welcome Back/To Wheelock!  What a quick summer we had, I hope everyone enjoyed it!  It has been so fun to see all the students back again and meet lots of new students as well.  I enjoy utilizing this website to share some information about what we work on as a school to maintain a pro-social and positive school environment.  Today I made new 'expected' and 'unexpected' visuals (Thumbs up or Thumbs down) for teachers to have on their lanyards.  This is the same language taken from the social thinking curriculum to help create a universal approach to let the students know whether their behavior is expected in a certain situation.  This language was used at Wheelock last year and was well taught throughout Memorial School as well.  Soon, Mrs. Alberts (the Speech Language pathologist) and I will be conducting 'Social Thinking' lessons with all the second and third grade classes about being 'social detectives', giving others good/comfortable thoughts by using expected behavior and learning coping strategies taught through the 'Zones of Regulation' (see website section).  Stay tuned for more information about these lessons!

I hope to be a resource for any of the families here at Wheelock who may have a student who needs some help/support with worries, frustrations, anger, social skills, teasing etc.  I look forward to meeting and/or seeing many of you again this year!

       

  

  

Test Taking Strategy

3 Steps to Help with Test Taking

If students get a little nervous or feel stuck they can.....

1. Take a quiet and relaxing deep breath.




2. Tell yourself something positive and encouraging!

3. Do something quiet at your seat to get your brain energy going, like a brain gym activity.


- a chair push up
- a hook up move
- a stretch

How Big is My Problem?

Happy Valentine's Day and Happy February Vacation!  Over the past few weeks, I have been going in to several classrooms to conduct lessons about "How big is my problem"?  using a very developmentally friendly 5 point scale.  This lesson helps kids to identify the urgency of different types of problems and also helps to give them tools and language to identify which problems they can solve on their own (i.e. 1 and 2 point problems and sometimes 3).  A 1 point problem is very tiny, like getting cut in line.  A 3 point problem is a medium size problem like getting teased; which we talked about as something the kids could try to solve on their own at first and if this does not work they need to find a trusted adult.  A 5 point problem is a HUGE-emergency like a tornado or broken arm, problems at the 4-5 level cannot be solved by students and require adult help.  This lesson was inspired by the Incredible 5 Point Scale  which can be adapted for various topics like stress, worries, anger, etc.

Thanks for visiting my blog and have a great break!