IN THE CLASSROOM | collaborativeclass

Think about these two children...

They hear the sentence:

The brown dog the cat bit quickly ran away to the house.

Jon

Jon has a working memory impairment. He fails to understand longer complex sentences that are outside of his working memory capacity. If the teacher repeats and simplifies the message (the dog the cat bit ran away) he is likely to understand.

Andrea

Andrea has a language impairment. She does not understand the linguistic rules that are applied to complex sentences. If the teacher repeats and simplifies the message (the dog the cat bit ran away) she is still not likely to understand because she does not understand the language rules.

Working Memory Capacity

The dog the cat bit ran away.

Repeated and Simplified

Understood

Working Memory Capacity

The dog the cat bit ran away.

Repeated and Simplified

Not Understood

The brown dog the cat bit

quickly ran away to the house.

The brown dog the cat bit quickly ran away to the house.

EF Difficulties in the Classroom

The core components of EF skills are inhibition, working memory and cognitive flexibility.

But, there is so much more that affects a child’s ability to learn.

Stress, lack of sleep, loneliness and lack of exercise can impair EF skills.

So what would a child with impaired EF skills look like in your classroom?

May have difficulty with:

Transitions
Time awareness
Planning ahead
Thinking outside the box
Multitasking
Completing schoolwork and/or homework
Inferencing and reasoning
Asking for assistance (awareness that help is needed to complete a task)
Initiating a task
Paying attention and staying on task
Following directions
Problem solving
Making appropriate decisions

Many EF skills rely on language skills. Language is the code by which we think!

We need language skills in order to hold things in memory, recruit others to help with our goals and engage in self-talk. That means that a child with a language impairment is likely to have difficulty with executive functioning tasks.