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.
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