Executive Function Skills
The brain-based skills that are involved in formulating a plan of action to accomplish a goal. Strategies to get started, stick with it, and finish the job.
Executive Function Skills: Lagging Initiation Skills
Trouble starting a task? How about having students generate their thoughts or opinions about a topic during discussion or journal writing activities? Is this behaviour consistent across several tasks despite redirection? Does the student often appear disinterested, lost, or avoidant when starting a task? These behaviours are actually skill-based, and can also be tied to emotions that get in the way (such as feeling hopeless, frustrated, and overwhelmed).
Strategies: Please click the title for more information!
Executive Function Skills: Lagging Persistence Skills
On the surface, does the student finish too early, quit easily, need direction at every step, or perceive work to be “too much”, “too long”, or “too hard”? Is this behaviour consistent across several tasks despite redirection? Once more, this can be both a skill deficit (to persist, and adapt to the challenge at hand) as well as a difficulty regulating the big emotions that can accompany the learning process, such as frustration, embarrassment, or anxiety.