Building Blocks for Success: How Executive Function Skills Support Learning and Life
What are some of the main components of executive function skills? Success in learning, living, and leading starts with strong executive function skills, and without this building block, many students struggle academically, personally, and socially. Executive function skills help us stay organized, manage our time, control our emotions, and make good decisions. These skills are important for getting work done, handling challenges, and doing well in school and with friends. Many students (and adults) struggle with developing these skills without intentional guidance. Edutopia sums it up nicely with this quote: “Executive function is the brain’s air traffic controller, intercepting a tangle of thoughts and impulses and steering them toward safe, productive outcomes.” What Are Executive Function Skills? Five key components of executive function include planning, organizing, time management, emotional regulation, and flexibility. Planning: Setting goals and figuring out steps to achieve them. Organization: Keeping materials and thoughts in order. Time Management: Using time wisely to complete tasks. Emotional Regulation: Staying calm and focused under pressure. Flexibility: Adapting to new situations or solving unexpected problems. These key components help us be successful in learning, living, and leading throughout our lives. Why Are Executive Function Skills Important? Executive function skills impact schoolwork,…
4 Classroom Organization Tips
Need to tackle some clutter in the classroom or office? Keeping up with classroom organization is part of classroom management. Often we ignore a cluttered space because we do not feel we have time or energy to tackle a whole project. Part of my master strategy in Clean the Chaos: At Home involves sweeping out a space, sorting, and storing the items in a tidier or more useful way. This same strategy is useful in the office or classroom organization; bringing order to some chaos. Here are 4 classroom organization tips to help you tackle clutter in the classroom today. First, choose a drawer, cabinet, or corner and begin to clean the chaos in the classroom. Start small with classroom organization Ten minutes gives just enough time to empty a drawer, wipe it out, sort/toss/recycle/relocate/store the items back into the drawer in a more useful and neater way. Once you do a drawer or two, your motivation will build and you will find more pockets of time to continue the project. And the more you clean the chaos, the more useful the space becomes. Keep reading for ways to maintain your space once you have cleaned the clutter. This will…
4 Classroom Management Tips
How consistent are you in your classroom management? Classroom management is hard to learn from a textbook, even if you have read Harry Wong’s First Days of School. Until you are actually in a classroom, it is hard to know exactly how you will respond and react to certain situations no matter how prepared you are. Here are 4 classroom management tips to point you in the right direction to calm the chaos: in the classroom. Develop Your Classroom Management Learning classroom management is an essential skill for teachers and substitutes and will help calm the chaos in the classroom before it gets out of control. In college, I learned great ideas and tips for classroom management, but nothing truly prepares you for those first few minutes and days like actually being in the classroom. You do need to have some basic ideas of how you want your classroom or tutoring sessions to run, but also be flexible as you hone this skill. You will continue to hone your classroom management system over the years and in different settings. So many of my good ideas are a bit outside the box and came out of situations that needed a bit…