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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 13, 2021)
Wednesday, January 13, 2021 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon Commentary... GOAL — OBSTACLE — PLAN — DO — REVIEW Executive skills and your child’s success By Mitchell Luftig Columnist According to Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University, “executive func- tion and self-regulation skills are the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus atten- tion, remember instructions, and juggle mul- tiple tasks successfully. … the brain needs this skill set to filter distractions, prioritize tasks, set and achieve goals, and control impulses.” Executive Skills enable your child/adoles- cent to: • Set meaningful goals. • Develop a plan (roadmap) that lays out the steps to take to complete a goal, materials that will be needed, and how much time each step should take. • Recall directions. • Start work right away. • Organize resources (e.g., papers, assign- ment sheets, books) that are needed to com- plete assignments. • Decide how much time and effort to allot to each assignment. • Complete work in a logical sequence. • Monitor their work to ensure that they’ve completed assignments correctly. Referring to the following chart, are there weaknesses you can spot in your child/ado- lescent’s executive skills? SMART GOAL: Ask your child or adolescent to formulate a smart goal. Is the goal they selected... • specific? (I will improve my addition skills) • measurable? (I will complete three math worksheets each day) • attainable? (I can complete worksheets independently) • relevant? (addition facts will help me solve story problems) • time-bound? (I will practice addition skills for three weeks) Write Smart Goal here: ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________ IDENTIFY OBSTACLES: EXECUTIVE SKILL POSSIBLE SIGNS OF EXECUTIVE WEAKNESSES Goal Setting Living in the moment, children/adolescents may be “blind” to the future and the need to develop and complete short-term and long-term goals. Plan Children/adolescents may start a project without having gathered the materials they will need, they may not be able to break goals into a series of manageable steps, or they don’t give themselves sufficient time to complete a project. Children/adolescents may find it difficult to get started, leading parents and teachers to conclude they are just being oppositional. Initiate 13 Brainstorm with your child/adolescent what obstacles might keep them from achieving their goal? (e.g., They procrastinate on starting assignments, they get easily distracted). Write Obstacles Here: ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________ PLAN OF ATTACK Organize Children/adolescents may be disorganized, losing important papers, turning in incomplete work, or creating unrealistic schedules. Brainstorm with your child/adolescent, Prioritize Children/adolescents may spend too much time on small projects while neglecting big projects. They may not be able to pick out “key ideas” when note-taking. Children/adolescents may “skip steps” in an assignment, may have difficulty telling a story in chronological order, or they may “jump the gun” socially. • What materials and resources will they need to achieve their goal? __________________________________ ___________________________________________ Sequence Working Memory Self-Monitor Children/adolescents may find it difficult to recall instructions, juggle multiple tasks, and retrieve relevant information from memory. Children/adolescents may not check to see if they’ve completed each step of an assignment, they may not pace themselves so they finish a project on time, they may not check an assignment for accuracy before turning it in. Adapted from “overview of executive dysfunction,” Leslie E. Packer, Ph.D. The following table lays out a powerful strategy that you can use to help your child/ adolescent strengthen their executive skills. It follows the Goal—Obstacle—Plan—Do— Review format. Goal: Ask your child or adolescent to think of a short-term or long-term goal they would like to accomplish. The goal may be academic (improving math skills, writing a book report), social (asking someone to a school dance, making a new friend), or behavioral (sitting quietly while the teacher is talking, raising a hand before speaking). The next step is to ask your child or ado- lescent to rewrite their general goal as a smart goal, so that it meets all of the following criteria. THE GOAL SHOULD BE: • How will they deal with obstacles? ______________ ___________________________________________ • Is there someone they might need help from? ______ ___________________________________________ Break Goal into a Manageable Number of Steps: Step #1 _______________________________________ Time Frame_____________ Step #2 _______________________________________ Time Frame_____________ Step #3 _______________________________________ Time Frame_____________ Step #4 _______________________________________ Time Frame_____________ DO Your child or adolescent should cross out each step as they complete it SPECIFIC: Exactly what does your child or adolescent need to do? MEASURABLE: How much needs to be completed before the goal is achieved? ATTAINABLE: The goal should be realistic. RELEVANT: The goal should lead to an improvement in academic, social, or behavioral skills. TIME-BOUND: The goal should be accomplished within a specified amount of time. REVIEW Ask your child, Did you achieve your goal? What did you find helpful? What did you learn from your success? Or What didn’t work and why? What would you do differently next time? What did you learn from the experience? MATH SQUARES Use the numbers 1 through 16 to complete the equations. Use the numbers 1 through 25 to complete the equations. Each number is only used once. Each number is only used once. Each row is a math equation. Each column is a math equation. Each row is a math equation. Each column is a math equation. Remember that multiplication and division are performed before addition and subtraction. Remember that multiplication and division are performed before addition and subtraction.
