Executive functioning (EF) skills are viewed as the control center of the brain, much like a conductor “instructs” an orchestra when instruments are to play. These cognitive processes and mental skills are based in the frontal lobe and are essential to helping us manage and achieve goals. Additionally, they play a significant role in various aspects of our daily life, including academic success, work performance, and social interactions. Since these skills take about 25 years to fully mature, kids/students need help, and sometimes someone to “act”, as the frontal lobes. At Wolcott, Learning Specialists ensure that students develop their own executive skills by providing numerous opportunities for them to practice.
Why Executive Functioning Skills Are Important
Executive functioning skills are essential for success in school, in relationships, and in the workplace. They help manage tasks of all types, such as regulating behavior, decision-making, sustaining attention, and setting and achieving goals. EF skills help dictate what information enters our working memory/cognitive working space, and are influenced by what we attend to (attention), our emotional state (how we feel), and current motivation level (interest and engagement).
How Executive Functioning Challenges Can “Show Up” at School
It’s important to remember that no two students are alike. Thus, those experiencing executive functioning challenges will not “present” in exactly the same way. The following is a list (but not exhaustive) of difficulties students may face in the classroom:
- Managing time: over/underestimating the time a task will take; leaving work until the last minute
- Organization: messy folders/backpacks; disorganized writing
- Planning and prioritizing: daily work; long-term projects
- Thinking flexibly: may get “stuck” on one topic
- Sequencing: details, steps to solving a problem
- Become upset when things aren’t “perfect”
- Thinking before acting/speaking
- Self-assessing/self-reflecting
- Prediction and inference skills
- Handling criticism and frustration
Growing Executive Functioning Skills in Learning Strategies
Throughout students’ four years at Wolcott, learning specialists utilize mini-lessons to provide direct instruction in executive functioning skills, including, but not limited to, time management, goal-setting, prioritization, planning, and self-monitoring. Taking each student’s unique needs into consideration, learning specialists present numerous strategies to strengthen EF skills, encouraging students to “test drive” and evaluate their effectiveness. Through these methods, students develop skills such as breaking down longer assignments, tracking progress using planners, and adjusting strategies with teacher support. Our focus is not on “fixing” students’ EF challenges; rather, it’s to equip them with strategies that allow students to manage their challenges.
Providing Best Practices
To implement best practices in the classroom, learning specialists often find themselves in the role of student. After attending a workshop led by Sarah Ward, MS, CCC/SLP, this past spring, Learning Specialists Carrie Joy Lash, Becky Perlman, and Janelle Reese took time over the summer to create tools to support students’ executive functioning skills. Modeling after Ward’s 360 Thinking Executive Function Program, they developed resources to help students develop stronger spatial and timing awareness through her “Get Ready, Do, Done” method, which involves visualizing and planning time, organizing materials, and breaking assignments into manageable steps. Asking students to select the type of planner that best meets their needs, reflect on their “time robbers” during independent work time, and plan backwards, provides a path for long-term academic success.
Helping to Visualize Time
Backwards Planning with “Get Ready, Do, Done”
Examples of Student Planners
Examples of Time Robbers
What’s Next?
Building upon their new knowledge, Becky Perlman and Janelle Reese attended the Dynamics of Dyslexia Conference, sponsored by Everyone Reading Illinois, where Sarah Ward presented How Reading Builds Executive Function and Executive Function Builds Reading. In her keynote, Ward shared examples of how reading can be used as a tool for strengthening executive function skills, particularly with printed texts, where students can practice slowing down, simulating, and self-regulating. Practical strategies and new tech tools to help students visualize, stay focused, and adjust their approach for deeper engagement and stronger comprehension were also detailed. A few examples that Wolcott’s learning specialists will try out readermode.io, a Chrome extension that removes distractions from webpages, and Beanote, another extension for note-taking on webpages using virtual sticky notes. While learning new strategies was amazing, the highlight was meeting and speaking with Sarah Ward herself! Ms. Lash, Ms. Perlman, and Ms. Reese look forward to continuing adding to their “toolbox” when they attend Ward’s Beyond the Basic workshop in March 2026, where they will be Building on participants’ foundational knowledge of the 360 Thinking Program to improve executive functioning, this workshop dives deeper into the specific strategies that educators and specialists can use to foster truly independent skills in students from grades 4–12. Stay tuned!
