The Effect of Executive Functioning Defecits on Task Completion of Fourth and Fifth Grade Students

The Effect of Executive Functioning Deficits On

Task Completion of Fourth and Fifth Grade Students

The National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) defines Executive Functioning as a set of mental processes that help link past experience with present action. It can be used to organize, plan, strategize, pay attention to and remember details, and also to manage time and space. (NCLD, 2013) In school today all students face internal and external distractions. An increase in the use of technology in the classroom has benefits, i.e. more interactive learning on a Smartboard, and drawbacks, i.e. students easily distracted by tablets. Every student also faces internal distractions. Some students lack the ability to inhibit responses and call out in class interrupting their peers, and other students zone out for periods of time, in which they are not listening to the teacher and unaware they have lost focus. For students with a tendency to be easily distracted it is very hard to focus on their work and complete their assignments in a timely manner.

As Dawson and Guare have noted in Smart but Scattered, It can be incredibly frustrating for parents to believe that their child is smart and capable of being more successful in school if they could just focus, not forget their homework, and have the stamina to complete long term tasks. Parents don’t always realize that what their child lacks is discrete skills. The child may want to and have the potential to do what’s required but she may not know how. Researchers who study child development and the brain have discovered that most children who are smart but scattered simply lack certain habits of the mind called executive skills. (Dawson and Guare, 2009)

The researcher has ...

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.../planning, task initiation, flexibility, transitioning, problem solving, sustained attention, emotional control and goal directed persistence.

Why learn these skills?

These are skills that all children can benefit from learning and practicing. We sometimes use games, art, music, and books along with discussion to practice these skills.

When does Study Skills/Early Risers Club meet?

Study Skills Early Risers will meet once per week for 30 minutes from 8:05-8:35am in Room 101. The Study Skills/Early Risers club is time limited and will meet for 8 sessions. The group will start the month of October and run through the second week of January, just after the holiday break.

** The group will meet every Tuesday promptly at 8:05 AM.

Please sign the attached permission slip and return it as soon as possible to your child’s teacher.

Sincerely,