Executive Skills
Executive skills help us manage our choices in life. This is further explained in the passage below.
" Humans beings have a built in capacity to meet challenges and accomplish goals through the use of high-level cognitive functions called executive skills. These are the skills that help us to decide what activities or tasks we will pay attention to and which ones we'll choose to do. Executive skills allow us to organize our behavior over time and override immediate demands in favor of long-term goals. Through the use of these skills we can plan and organize activities, sustain attention and persist to complete a task." (Dawson and Guare, 2010 p.1)
Throughout the year students will be working on the development of skills through focused tasks and daily exercises. The development of executive skills is essential to successful choices in life and require daily practice in order to develop. Development of executive skills can take a couple of decades to fully form.
Class Activities and Practices- see below
Executive Skills
Response Inhibition(RI)- The capacity to think before you act.
Working Memory(WM)- The ability to hold information in mind while performing complex tasks.
Emotional Control(EC)- The ability to manage emotions in order to achieve goals, complete tasks or control and direct behaviour.
Task Initiation(TI)- The ability to begin a task with undue procrastination, in a timely fashion.
Sustained Attention(SA)- The capacity to maintain attention to a situation or task in spite of distractibility, fatigue or boredom.
Planning(P)- The ability to create a roadmap to reach a goal or to complete a task.
Organization(O)- The ability to design and maintain systems for keeping track of information or materials.
Time Management(TM)- The capacity to estimate how much time one has, how to allocate and how to stay within time limits and deadlines.
Goal-Directed Persistence(GDP)- The capacity to have a goal, follow through to the completion of the goal and not be put off by or distracted by competing interests.
* For the goal establish short term, interim objectives so that the students can see real progress.
Flexibility(F)- The ability to revise plans in the face of obstacles, setback, new information or mistakes or an ability to changing conditions.
Metacognition(M)- The ability to stand back and take a bird’s eye view of oneself in a situation.
" Humans beings have a built in capacity to meet challenges and accomplish goals through the use of high-level cognitive functions called executive skills. These are the skills that help us to decide what activities or tasks we will pay attention to and which ones we'll choose to do. Executive skills allow us to organize our behavior over time and override immediate demands in favor of long-term goals. Through the use of these skills we can plan and organize activities, sustain attention and persist to complete a task." (Dawson and Guare, 2010 p.1)
Throughout the year students will be working on the development of skills through focused tasks and daily exercises. The development of executive skills is essential to successful choices in life and require daily practice in order to develop. Development of executive skills can take a couple of decades to fully form.
Class Activities and Practices- see below
Executive Skills
Response Inhibition(RI)- The capacity to think before you act.
Working Memory(WM)- The ability to hold information in mind while performing complex tasks.
Emotional Control(EC)- The ability to manage emotions in order to achieve goals, complete tasks or control and direct behaviour.
Task Initiation(TI)- The ability to begin a task with undue procrastination, in a timely fashion.
Sustained Attention(SA)- The capacity to maintain attention to a situation or task in spite of distractibility, fatigue or boredom.
Planning(P)- The ability to create a roadmap to reach a goal or to complete a task.
Organization(O)- The ability to design and maintain systems for keeping track of information or materials.
Time Management(TM)- The capacity to estimate how much time one has, how to allocate and how to stay within time limits and deadlines.
Goal-Directed Persistence(GDP)- The capacity to have a goal, follow through to the completion of the goal and not be put off by or distracted by competing interests.
* For the goal establish short term, interim objectives so that the students can see real progress.
Flexibility(F)- The ability to revise plans in the face of obstacles, setback, new information or mistakes or an ability to changing conditions.
Metacognition(M)- The ability to stand back and take a bird’s eye view of oneself in a situation.
Activities and Practices
Morning Routine Checklist
Goal Setting(possible obstacles and ways to overcome obstacles)
Following Directions(written and oral)
Agenda
Planning
Coping strategies
Setting goals for using time wisely(independent and in groups)
Creating class expectations together
Task initiation (What to do when I'm unsure about my first steps)- partner check-in
Green thoughts, red thoughts
PE Leaders- creating a multi step plan to achieve an objective in PE. This includes planning on what to teach and how to teach as students lead a PE class..
Active listening requires students to focus their attention. When necessary students use strategies to calm their amygdala which allows information to be passed on to the prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain is important and is needed to analyze and assess information.