Welcome to my Executive Functions in School series, where I am uncovering the ways in which weak executive function skills create learning challenges. Throughout this four part series, I'll provide an in depth look at executive functioning in science, math, English, and social studies. And I'm going to address the difficulties that our young people face and offer you my recommendations.
And these recommendations are things that you can discuss with your child's teachers. Now, if you're new to executive functions in episode 102, I provide an overview of what they are and how they impact learning. And in that episode, I explained executive functions by using three buckets of skills. Bucket number one is all about planning, organization, and time management.
Bucket number two is impulse control and self regulation. And bucket number three is cognitive flexibility. So if you're not familiar with executive functions at all, you might want to just pop into episode 102. In this particular episode, we're going to do a deep dive into how executive function challenges make learning science more difficult.
So let's meet Michael, a 10th grade student who has delayed executive function skills and he struggles in science. We'll start with bucket number one planning, organization, and time management. In this particular bucket, we see Michael struggling with his organization, so he forgets to bring necessary materials to class. His locker and his backpack are a hot mess.
His science notebook, which is required to be kept in a certain format and turned in complete at a certain time, chaotic. Some pages are out of order, some information is missing, and that is really bringing down his grade. I also want to point out that it is really draining when Michael has to sit and organize that notebook, because this is not easy for him.
So we have to have him work in it a little bit every day in microsection so that it doesn't become too big in the same bucket. Let's talk time management. Now, Michael is very intelligent nonetheless. He struggles to complete tasks within an allotted timeframe. He may spend too much time on one section of the assignment, neglecting all the others, and then have to speed up to try to complete it on time.
So there's a lot of incomplete and late assignments as a result of this skill deficit.
Bucket number two impulse control and self regulation. Even when Michael understands expected of him, he may procrastinate or find it hard to begin an assignment. It because he has difficulty in task initiation, which is an executive function skill. Emotional regulation for Michael is pretty challenging. In fact, his frustration with his difficulties often lead to a shutdown.
And it's especially hard because Michael is very intelligent. So he gets really frustrated with the actual production of the work. He gets quickly over overwhelmed, and it's really hard for him to calm himself enough to monitor his work as he goes along. In fact, the longer he works, the more difficulties he experiences and the less motivated he becomes.
Bucket number three cognitive flexibility and working memory. Michael's working memory challenges make it really difficult for him to remember instructions or important details, and this leads to mistakes in executing experiments or labs, and we know that this is going to impact outcomes. Michael has a really hard time retaining information in his working memory, so he forgets key observations or important measurements.
And of course, that can lead to multiple inaccuracies. That also makes it very difficult to write a coherent report. Now, when Michael is given instructions that require multiple steps, he is again easily overwhelmed. So if he has an assignment, such as read a chapter, answer the questions at the end of the chapter, and write a one page summary, it's not going to be very coherent.
He may either forget some steps or mix up some of the steps, or experience such mental fatigue that he just does part of the assignment. And the last thing I want to talk about are lab reports. These are really challenging for our young people because of the planning difficulties.
So that leads to loosely structured reports. They're often disorganized, they have missing information. And because of the emotional frustration, even though he's really smart, he's not going to take the time to really revise and proofread. And that means he's turning in something with a lot of grammatical errors or unclear expressions or lab results that don't have data to back it up.
So what can we do? Well, let's talk to the teachers about offering some of these types of supports. First of all, I would love it if Michael's teacher could talk to him and identify where he feels he struggles the most in science. And then if there are clear written instructions, not just for the assignment, but for the procedures or the sequence of steps, that would be amazing whenever possible, if his teacher could visually.
Sent the sequences of steps required that would be really helpful. And if the teacher can't do it, that's something Michael can learn to create on his own and refer back to it time and time again. If we can get Michael some help in organizing his materials, his binders, his folders, if he can just create a weekly organizing routine, that could really help him.
And we need to work with his teacher and maybe even put this in his IEP or 504 plan that we need some flexibility with that science notebook. There has to be a way for Michael to be able to add information that he has missed in the back and index it somehow.
In this podcast, we talked about executive function, challenges and science. I actually have a free guide entitled Executive Functions and Science and that includes a list of challenges, more than I've talked about here. I encourage you to download a copy and review it with your young person to see if they can identify areas that could use more support.
And then feel free to take that guide into a meeting with your child's teachers and see which of those recommendations are doable. You can also share it with a counselor or even a special education team, and I will put the link to this free guide in the show. Notes.
