Day 1 – FOUNDATIONS – OVERVIEW
Learn it Today, Use it Tomorrow! Practical, Cutting Edge Interventions for Improving Executive Function Skills in Individuals
Executive function skills refer to the brain functions we use to manage our attention, our emotions and our behavior in pursuit of our goals. Young children rely on these skills to follow a sequence of instructions for daily tasks while older individuals need these skills to “break a task down” into a sequence of steps and organize a timeline as the demands for independent learning increases.
Day 2 – A DEEP DIVE: ADVANCED IMPLEMENTATION OF EXECUTIVE FUNCTION SKILLS
This Advanced Class is for the professional who wants to learn more strategies and techniques, have advanced treatment examples, and become more knowledgeable of the scope and sequence to implement executive function strategies. Immerse yourself in the entire 360 Thinking Executive function curriculum.
TOPICS COVERED OVER THE TWO DAYS INCLUDE:
Self-Regulation and Situational Awareness
- Improving self-regulation: Understanding and treating the underlying executive control skills for task motivation, initiation and output.
- Practice teaching individuals to develop situational awareness skills so they can “stop and read a room” and self-regulate their behaviors for a given situation.
- Learn how individuals can think in an organized and flexible way about systems and then self-initiate to manage their personal belongings in personal and shared spaces.
Teach Individuals to be a Mind MIME
- Learn how to help individuals create mental visual imagery for the future and to perform a mental dress rehearsal to sequence actions towards a goal and hold that prospective memory in mind while they execute and self-monitor through tasks. Learn how to increase a student's spatial temporal window or how far into the future they can see and sustain prospective planning.
- Improve speed of information processing and cognitive flexibility.
Being a Beat Ahead: Following Routines, Initiating Tasks, Making Transitions
- Teach student to develop a “memory for the future”.
- Decrease prompts! Increase the independence with which individuals can self-initiate, transition, control their behaviors and impulses to complete tasks with less supervision and fewer prompts. Increase a student’s ability to fluidly transition from one mental mindset to another and to switch from a current task to being prepared for a new task.
Time and Task Management
- Teach individuals to internally sense the sweep of time and to self monitor to sustain concentration, manage pace and complete tasks in allocated time frames.
Space Makeover
- Learn how to organize the classroom and home spaces to promote independent executive function skills with less supervision and fewer prompts. Learn new ideas on how to organize the classroom environment to promote self-regulation.
- Ideas on how to help individuals stay organized, manage materials in the classroom, record homework and access resources when they are 'stuck' or need help initiating.
- How to help individuals evaluate their work and use their prior performances to create future goals.
The Get Ready, Do, Done Model
- Teach individuals the process of how to visualize simple multi-step and complex tasks and assignments and then sequence and plan the requisite steps to fully complete work.
Close the Homework Circle
- Innovative techniques for teaching individuals to adopt a mindful approach to record, bring home, complete and return assignments in a timely manner.
- Teach individuals in school how to set up, create and generalize to home a positive and productive environment for studying and independently completing their work.
What you will learn
After completing this program, you will be able to:
- State the functional working definition of “executive function skills” as it pertains to therapeutic interventions
- Identify the typical developmental course of executive function skills and how to assess and identify Executive Dysfunction
- Define how situational awareness, self talk, forethought, gesture/movement and episodic memory are the foundational skills for successful task execution
- Develop an intervention program to foster a student’s ability to form more independent executive function skills.