Executive Functioning Skills

Introduction to Executive Functioning

Hi, my name is Susie Fahrer, and I am the Executive Director of Rainbow Community School and Omega Middle School. One of the topics that is often discussed with our teachers and families is supporting a concept called “executive functioning skills” in the classroom. This is a term that has come to light to really embrace a set of skills or habits of learning that support a young person and their capacity for long-term planning, flexible thinking, motivation, task organization, prioritization, all of the tools that really end up being life skills, regardless of their choice of career path. They’re the tools that help us all move through the world, particularly a world now with such a high-paced level of information, to process and attend to with a level of confidence and capacity.

Classroom Structures that Support Executive Functioning

So what does that look like in the classrooms at Rainbow? Well, for many of our students, all the way starting in preschool up through our middle school, the structure of their classroom is designed for clarity of time management, scheduling, and expectations. So that looks like having some type of daily schedule visible for the students, typically one that they often engage with and dialog about with their teachers. This step alone helps our students anticipate the flow of their day, prepares them for times when a change in their typical schedule is coming and helps them understand, the general first, then nature of their school experience and helps us move through both really desirable tasks with a level of anticipation and challenging tasks with a level of capacity that we understand they are a period in time throughout a more global experience of our day.

Using Timers and Visual Tools

Equally, many teachers use timers and visual tools like a sand timer or a timer that might show a countdown of a block of time. Now, again, this is not to build a sense of urgency, but quite the opposite: to help students recognize and plan for the amount of time they have for a particular task.

For a child who is facing something that they are struggling to be motivated to participate in, maybe because it’s a challenging task or one that requires particular skills that they’re still developing, a timer can be a real relief. We might suggest, “Okay, all I need you to do is work on this task for the next five minutes, and then I’m going to check in with you and see how you’re doing.” That alone creates a relationship with the teacher and a response that offers a level of support, recognition, and affirmation that, yes, this task is hard, but “I also believe that you are capable and can do it.”

For our students that sometimes get lost in a project, seeing that there is a timer that is counting down the amount of time can help prepare them for that transition that’s coming. Most likely, when we are deep in learning, it might mean that we aren’t going to completely finish a project, and understanding how to pause in the midst of something, close it out, and prepare it for the next time you have the ability to drop deeply into that work is another skill that we grow in our students.

Building Planning and Organization Skills

We use things like calendars and planners, and as students get older, this might even be, engagement with digital platforms that help them see the scope of a week, the scope of a month, both with, due dates that they’re in charge of, as well as, the amount of time they might be given both in school and expectations outside of school for completing large projects.

This type of planning is a critical skill that they’re going to need far beyond our doors.

Equally, students spend time in conversations about prioritizing tasks. A highlighter can be a student’s best friend, a very simple tool, but it can help note which aspects of a larger project are necessary right now. Or how many problems of this math activity are critical for you to finish in “this amount of time that we have together.”

Those kinds of tools, again, can help students prioritize where they’re putting their energy and learn that skill, where initially it’s coming with the facilitation of a teacher or an adult in the classroom. Eventually that tool, those tools are being taken with the students so that they can apply them on their own as they engage in tasks with a little bit more autonomy in the future.

Technology, AI, and Executive Functioning

It goes without saying that the skills of executive functioning are also ever-evolving, particularly with the inventions of AI and the capacity to start to engage technology as a tool. At Rainbow, we are conscious consumers of technology and recognize that the role of AI in supporting students with efficacy in breaking tasks down and chunking their larger project-based learning activities is a real asset.

Yet at the same time, we want to ensure that the heart of what they’re learning, the sensation of pushing through the capacities for rigor, the thought process it takes to prioritize and plan, that those tools are still being built in them, regardless of the aids that are available and continue to become available in the future.

Supporting Executive Functioning at Home

If you have questions about executive functioning, that’s something that our teachers are experts on, and we look forward to talking with you.

Also attached are some suggestions on how to support your child at home with executive functioning skills. As always, we welcome you to our campus and look forward to connecting with you soon. Be well.

Learn More

Continue exploring ideas from our Director’s Kaleidoscope series, including topics like executive functioning, student autonomy, and project-based learning.