Teaching Students with Executive Functioning Problems

How can teachers help students who have executive functioning problems? Psychologists have only recently discovered that children can have problems with their executive functioning. Children with these problems have trouble doing various things including estimating time and distance, mentally solving problems in different situations, and anticipating consequences. Their brains perform the tasks too quickly in the subconscious that they are not even aware it happened. They can also have a problem with their working memory. As a teacher, we are taught to look for signs in our students in case they have a learning disability and there are a lot of signs that teachers will see if one of their students has problems with executive functioning. One of these signs is that the student does not understand how long an assignment will take, therefore has trouble completing it in time. Another sign that a student has trouble with executive functioning is if they have trouble initiating activities and they have trouble coming up with ideas on their own. Although this is a relatively new disability there are still many strategies that can be used for these students that help with their problem. The teacher can give the student clear step-by-step instructions possibly with a visual aid. They can also have the student use planners and timers in the classroom and at home so they can get their work done on time. Now matter what strategies are used to help the student, it is best to have the ones used at school and at home be very similar because people with executive functioning disorders do better if their routines are the same no matter what setting they are in.

I really think that this disability is an important one for teachers to know about because if they don't know about it, and one of their students has a executive functioning disorder, they would just pass the student off as lazy or say that they have A.D.D. Compared to many other disabilities I have learned about, it seems like there are more strategies and ideas about how to teach the people with the disorder effectively. As teachers one of our goals is to successfully teach all of our students what the need to know and with the strategies discovered and the strategies still to be developed to successfully teach children with this disorder, I think reaching that goal has gotten more realistic.