Get Your Complex Learner Ready For The Year!
Katrina Karpeichik, MS, OTR/L and Kristyn Sequeira, MS, CCC-SLP
The beginning of the school year is an exciting time – new school supplies, a chance to meet new friends, and school events. But with all of the fun, also comes new school-related routines that may feel overwhelming for parents and children. This is very common, and even as faculty members, we still need time to adjust to back-to-school. As a speech therapist and occupational therapist, part of our responsibility is helping our students adjust to these new routines and figuring out the best way to support them and their families through this process. One way we can help students through this transition is by working with them to strengthen their executive function skills.
Executive functions are a set of skills that occur mainly in the prefrontal cortex of our brain, and are essential to daily living. These are the skills that allow us to be flexible thinkers, problem solvers, and learners. When we practice using these skills, we have better success at home, in school, and in life. Complex Learners often struggle with executive function skills. This is not due to a lack of effort or motivation; instead, it is impacted by how each brain processes, organizes, and responds to information. Integrating strategies to build these skills from a young age can help teach Complex Learners the tools they will need throughout their lives.
What are these skills, and why are they important?
Inhibition: the ability to stop and think before acting.
Example: refraining from interrupting someone while they are speaking
Working Memory: the ability to hold information in our brain in order to complete tasks or follow a directions
Example: following your teacher’s 2-step direction in the classroom
Cognitive Flexibility: being able to change our mindset and adapt to various situations, “being flexible”
Example: adjusting to the schedule when plans unexpectedly change
Emotional Control: managing our emotions as we move through our day
Example: choosing a strategy to help us stay calm during challenging situations
Task Initiation: getting started on a task in a timely manner
Example: getting started on morning work when we enter the classroom in the morning, so we stay on track
Organization: the ability to keep our materials in order
Example: keeping our desks neat, so we can find our supplies when we need them
Time Management: estimating how much time a specific task may take, in order to plan out our time efficiently
Example: completing homework in a timely manner so we can have outside playtime
Some strategies that we use at school, like visuals, can also be used at home to target the executive function skills needed to complete routines. Incorporating familiar visuals can be a way to help ground your child, help them practice building their executive function skills in a supportive way, and carry over the skills they are working on at school, in their home environment. It is also a great way to continue facilitating the partnership between home and school. Read below for some ideas on how to bring visuals home!
Match the Picture:
- From Sarah Ward, this strategy allows children to visualize what the end goal of a task looks like before starting the task, which helps with planning, organization, initiation, and completion.
- At school, we often use this strategy at a child’s desk, the lunch table, their locker/cubby and in the hallway. Our example shows how we use this tool to represent being packed up and ready to go home at the end of the day. The components of this situation include having a packed backpack on their back and facing the direction to head out of the school. When students finish their pack up plan, their last step is the ‘match the picture’ so we know they are ready to leave. By simply telling them to “match the picture”, they are then tasked to use their executive functioning skills to analyze the picture to see that they need to have their backpack packed up, on their back and facing the door to indicate they are ready to go home. It eliminates a lot of the back-and-forth dialogue that may occur of having to ask what they need to do and have with them so they can focus on task completion.
- At home, this can be posted in the space where they do their homework, it can represent being ready for school and ready for bed.
- At home, if you’re working towards leaving on time in the morning, you can post a picture of your child on the door, completely ready for school. Instead of repeating all the steps necessary to get ready, you simply say “Match the picture.” You’ve now taken the language load off of them and given them the tools to initiate and execute the steps.
Visual Schedules:
- Visual schedules are pictures, symbols, or words that show a child the order in which events are going to take place, helping them feel calm because they know what to expect.
- These can be used for a morning, afternoon, and evening routine. At school, we will post a visual schedule of morning and afternoon routines either on the board so it’s projected for the whole class or at their cubby where their morning routine starts. Visual schedules can be scaffolded to match your child’s reading ability. For example, some kids may have a schedule that is just numbered pictures, others may include both words and pictures or they can just list the steps. Other variations can include a check box at the end of each step or closing a step to visually show your child the step is done and bring them back to the schedule after each step.
If you think your child could benefit from incorporating some of these executive function strategies at home to help with home routines, reach out to your classroom team! Your child’s team will know what style fits your child’s needs and can work with you to create the visuals needed to help support your child at home.
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