Course | Fostering the Development of Executive Functions
Facilitator
Michelle Garcia Winner
Michelle Garcia Winner, MA, CCC-SLP, is the founder and CEO of Social Thinking and a globally recognized thought leader, author, speaker, and social-cognitive therapist. She is dedicated to helping people of all ages develop social-emotional learning, including those with social learning differences.
How Do Students Get Things Done
This course explores the role of executive functions across school and home environments. Social Thinking explains strategies for tackling motivation, time prediction, prioritizing workload, and tracking multiple assignments simultaneously. They review key executive functioning skills and practical metacognitively based strategies to help individuals track and tackle homework and other deadline-based responsibilities.
5 hours of instruction
This Course Explores
Defining the developmental nature of executive functions
Exploring the scope and sequence of organizational tasks: differentiating static organizational from dynamic organizational skills
Organizational skills for homework and classwork start with organized thinking
Goals vs, Action Plans
Practical strategies to explore motivation for complex tasks
The role of time prediction, prioritizing workload, and tracking multiple assignments simultaneously.
How perspective-taking is part of the organized thinking process
Q&A featuring common questions from educators, therapists, and caregivers.
Description
Struggles with executive functioning (EF) can cause turmoil with homework, producing monstrous levels of anxiety and dread in students, parents, and teachers. The tremendous number of details that need to be accomplished in a student's class, school day, or week can be overwhelming for many. And, we are sometimes asked, "If organization is overwhelming, should we just avoid having students deal with it?" The answer is an unequivocal no! Organizational and executive functioning skills are life skills, not just school skills. Similar to social learning, EF strategies are rarely directly taught in schools.
So where do we start? First, we need to understand how complex the human organizational system is and how complex it is by the time students reach middle school. We can only be good educators if we appreciate the demands we place on our students. Next, we need organization as a skill set of both static and dynamic systems.
In the first half of this course, we start by asking educators, therapists, and caregivers to think about their own lives and how they actually get things done, even though there are endless moving parts. We explore concepts including, but not limited to:
Examining top-down versus bottom-up thinking and the impact on an organization
Defining executive functions and complementary supports for teaching
Identifying what needs to be done
Uncovering the power of metacognitive thinking and strategies
Examining how future planning is one key to goal-oriented thinking
Using four key elements for knowing and planning what needs to be done
Uncovering additional steps toward increasing organizational competencies
Exploring the role of motivation in executive functioning and getting things done!
In the 2nd part of this course, we look at key executive functioning and practical metacognitively based strategies to help individuals track and tackle homework and other deadline-based responsibilities. We begin this section by talking about how to help our students “get things done when you don’t want to do them.” In other words, helping individuals find their motivation. We also explore, through many examples, user-friendly ways to help students learn more about the processes and strategies involved in:
Preparing work environments
Chunking and timing assignments
Visually structuring the workload
Prioritizing to plan what to work on
Hunting and gathering materials
Taking perspective
Communicating about it
Persisting and rewarding oneself with pride
This course has been enthusiastically received by educators, therapists, and caregivers. As with most of our courses, hands-on activities help attendees relate their own experiences to the content. While this course was designed to support individuals with social learning differences, difficulties, and/or disabilities, the information is relevant for everyone.
Who Should Attend
The Social Thinking Methodology is used by a wide variety of professionals, including speech-language pathologists, special and general education teachers, social workers, counselors, clinical and school psychologists, occupational therapists, behavior specialists, and school administrators, to name a few. It’s also used by family members and caregivers across settings.
Agenda and Learning Objectives
Agenda
00:00 - 01:18 – Introduction and Disclosures
01:18 - 04:03:44
Defining executive functions and executive functioning;
goal and action plans;
teaching organized thinking;
static vs dynamic organization;
future thinking; motivation
4 steps of EF.
04:03:44 - 04:25:22
Visuals to foster executive functioning;
technology tools;
Prioritizing and planning.
04:25:22 - 04:36:25
Perspective-taking as part of executive functioning;
Perceptions exercise;
Levels of independence;
04:36:25 - 04:43:13
Strategies for getting help;
Persistence;
Self-rewards;
04:43:13 - 05:06:02
Final comments and Q&A;
Closing slide
Learning Objectives
Participants will be able to:
Explain ways that static organizational tasks are different from dynamic organizational tasks.
List the Four Steps of Executive Functions.
Explain how counterfactual reasoning incorporates individuals' imagination of the future and leads them to problem-solve their choices.
Describe two or more of the 10 steps for fostering organization across both homework and home tasks.
Explain the role of perspective-taking as part of the organized executive functioning process.
Credit
5 hours of CE credit is available for select professionals.
Social Thinking is proud to provide access to continuing education credit for speech-language pathologists, educators, and others!
Credit may be available for this course and may vary by country or institution. Please verify eligibility with Social Thinking.
Course | Fostering the Development of Executive Functions
- Paid
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