Getting Explicit about Executive Functioning Skills in the Classroom

I can’t tell you how long I taught before I heard the term Executive Functioning Skills, let alone actually understood WHAT they were and WHY I should be taking time to ensure I was teaching them in an explicit, deliberate and structured way to the students sitting in front of me each and every day in the classroom. Let’s just say that over half of my teaching career EF was not a focus for me in my practice. And that is not something I can go back and change, but as I’ve come to terms with the importance of these skills and the plain fact that they are NOT innate (that’s right, you aren’t actually a “born planner” no matter what you might have been told) the more I feel compelled to make a fuss about Executive Functioning, both in general but also as a responsibility for teachers in the classroom.

Why am I starting my blog like this? Because I want to be clear that this is not an attack on teachers for failing to do something. That’s not what I’m about. And frankly, it would make me a massive hypocrite. What I want to do is help other teachers, new and beginning teachers and veteran teachers alike, and by extension the students in their classrooms every day, to identify the importance of Executive Function Skills and support their incorporation into every day classroom activities and practice. Because the impact on our students if we can make this change is significant. Keep reading and see if you agree!

If you are a teacher, here are some questions to get you thinking about whether or not you are providing students in your classroom the opportunity to gain and develop Executive Function Skills:

• Do you support your students to create goals for your subject/class/course each month/term/semester that they loop back to regularly and then reflect on at the end of the designated period? [PLANNING]
• When you hand out a homework task or assignment with a designated due date, what conversation follows with respect to when students might start work, chunk the task, complete various phases, etc? [TIME MANAGEMENT]
• Have you ever verbalised your lesson timing with your students when you are working on tasks? I’m talking like “Ok, we are going to spend about 20 minutes now on writing and in that time we should all get approximately 10 lines completed” as a starting marker and then “Seems like I underestimated how long this task might take, let’s all have another 5 minutes to try to hit that 10 lines” as a model of thinking about how long things might take? [TIME MANAGEMENT]
• If a student is struggling to get started on a task, how do you talk through different strategies or solutions to overcome this? [TASK INITIATION]
• At the beginning of a lesson, what do you expect of your students as a sign of their readiness? Consider things like materials they should have out and ready to go, laptop open, paper or Word/Google document dated with a title. [ORGANISATION]
• At the end of a lesson, how are students directed to act with respect to resources (eg handouts) and work completed (eg notes taken)? Do they have time to neatly put handouts into their binder? Are they supported to save their notes with a meaningful title in an appropriate folder on their device? [ORGANISATION]
• When you assign homework, how do you expect the students to remember the directions and complete it on time in the correct way? I have to admit here – I am guilty of yelling “Make sure you read Chapter 6 before Friday” after my students as they file out the door at the end of the lesson and then wondering why they didn’t achieve the goal on Friday. [PLANNING]
• Are you conscious of providing cues to your students for things they really need to tune in for during lessons, such as “I am going to run through the homework for tonight now” or “This content we are about to discuss will be important for your midterm” to provide opportunities for students to check back in? [ATTENTION]
• How often do you demonstrate more than one approach to a problem or activity so that students can try out different options and see what ‘fits’ for them? [FLEXIBILITY]
• What processes do you undertake when returning graded work to students for them to engage with their results, your feedback and their associated learning of the content? [METACOGNITION]
• Do you discuss problem solving techniques with students when you present them with various tasks? For example – when you give homework, do you outline strategies they might try if they struggle to complete the homework, like asking a parent, watching a YouTube How To video, going back through their notes, calling a friend, skipping that problem and coming back to it rather than staying stuck on it? [PERSEVERANCE]

Ultimately, this list could be absolutely endless, but my goal here is to give you some ideas of how Executive Functioning skills might be explicitly taught and modelled in your classroom. Most importantly, my hope is that you can see this is NOT about adding extra workload to you in the form of separate mini-lessons or anything like that if you don’t want to. This is not about saying “Ok, class, pens down, we are now going to talk about Perseverance…”. Rather, it’s about seeing opportunities to model, discuss and practice these skills as part of activities you already do day in and day out as a teacher.

The real beauty then comes when you see the true benefits start to reveal themselves – rather than these activities taking time from your classroom (which, let’s face it, is at a premium at the best of times) you’ll notice yourself getting time back. If all your students know what needs to be on their desk at the start of the lesson, and you’ve taken 2 minutes to do that check and resolve any issues, suddenly those kids digging into their bags or running to their locker or yelling across the room asking for materials becomes a thing of the past. If everyone embraces the process of writing their homework in their planner (my school used to provide a school planner for every student at the beginning of the year, so this made things a bit easier… assuming the kids brought it, of course) and plotting out how long it will take and when they are going to work on it, you don’t have to spend part of the lesson disciplining those who didn’t do the work, altering your lesson plan so that some kids can do the work or losing your lunch break for them to catch up. Because it is done. Consider that for a minute. Consider each of those points above, how a lack of those skills in your students robs you of class time and how developing and strengthening them can gift that time back to you. Does it make it worth it?

Now, consider those students. Those students who will go on to college, work, living alone, paying bills… adulting! How much easier are each of those things for your students if they start out with strong Executive Functioning Skills? How much better if their life?

So, there you have it… a starting point for getting EF happening in your school. If you need or want more support, professional development, handouts or anything please feel free to reach out any time. I am always happy to work with teachers, schools, departments, businesses and families around strengthening executive functioning to improve outcomes and lives.