Bring A Wolf School Favorite Home
Maddie LaPlante, Special Educator
Anyone who works with Complex Learners knows that executive functioning is an ongoing challenge for these students. Managing time, especially, can feel nearly impossible when also trying to organize materials, work through academic tasks, regulate emotions, navigate social interactions, and keep track of all the other components that come along with existing in a classroom. As a special educator, I know that any way that I support my students in managing their time and their plan is allowing them to more successfully access the actual learning I’m trying to cultivate. Similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we can’t expect students to be able to master academic concepts if they’re spending all of their energy stuck on how to initiate a task and figuring out the steps needed in order to work to completion.
In comes Sarah Ward! Co-Director of Cognitive Connections LLP, Sarah Ward is a self-proclaimed executive function guru who’s developed practical, research-based strategies that work to support and improve executive function challenges in students. One of Ward’s most well-known tools is the Get Ready, Do, Done model, a “methodology designed to teach students to develop situational awareness, create forethought of an end result, and then integrate all the materials, time, and actions to complete a future task” (Ward & Jacobson, 2014). This system helps students visualize the end goal and see the passage of time over the course of a task, allowing them to adjust their performance as needed in order to reach task completion. Implementation of this model is often done using a clock to visually mark how long different parts of a task should take. You can read more about this specific methodology in this article here.
While the Get Ready, Do, Done model is an effective strategy for many students, making it even more concrete is helpful for our youngest students who are really still sorting out how to function in a classroom and take part in structured learning. Instead of using an actual clock face, I’ve found it to be really effective to use a similar tactic on a visual Time Timer, a ubiquitous tool amongst special education classrooms.
Whether teaching an entire class, working in a small group, or instructing a student one-on-one, it is essential to lay out a concrete plan before beginning an academic block, activity, or task. This is where the Get Ready, Do, Done model meets the Time Timer – bonus points if you can color code it! If my small group is going to last 45 minutes, I set my visual timer for that long and then go over the plan with students so they know exactly what we’re going to be doing and how long it’s going to take. My agenda might look like this: 5-minute warm-up, 15 minutes of direct instruction, 5-minute break, 10 minutes of independent practice, and a 10-minute review activity. Using my visual timer, a whiteboard, and different color dry-erase markers, I shade in the sections of my timer, matching the colors on the timer to the colors I used for each agenda item I’ve listed on my whiteboard. It ends up looking something like this:
This visual helps students clearly see the plan laid out in a format they’re already familiar with (the Time Timer). Not only does this help students understand exactly what is going to be expected of them and for how long, but it can ease anxiety by letting kids know what’s coming next. For example, if a student is completing a nonpreferred activity, it can be helpful for them to explicitly see that they’ll have a break soon or that they can look forward to a fun game at the end of their session.
This strategy can be applied in the exact same way to help children manage routines at home. For example, a nighttime routine might look like this: 20 minutes for dinner, 15 minutes of TV time, 10 minutes to get ready for bed, 10 minutes of reading. This plan could easily be marked on a visual timer as such:
Executive functioning challenges can get in the way of a student’s ability to access their full potential, both academically and at home. If a student can’t map out their plan, we can’t expect them to be able to execute it! Using this strategy can help children begin to visualize their time and understand how long it takes to complete a task. With practice, this skill becomes more and more natural, allowing students to work through executive functioning challenges and be able to put their energy towards more meaningful things. Try it out at home, adults can benefit too!
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