Executive Function
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This school year so far, I have noticed that my Biology students do not seem to have as high functioning executive skills when compared to students of past years. This may be due to many factors, but I believe one factor would be that many of my students attended school virtually the prior year and therefore had a looser structure to the school day. At our school, we have noticed lower academic performance and decreased motivation. It became apparent early in the school year that many of my students are struggling with time management. "Clearly, there is a need for explicit training for planning and prioritization, especially to prepare students to manage the blocks of unscheduled time..." (Addressing Executive Function at the Secondary Level).
While reading the module resources, particularly the article Executive Skills in Children and Adolescents: A Practical Guide to Assessment and Intervention, the idea for my implementation of executive function came to fruition. The authors described ways to improve students' time management and planning in the context of studying for tests. One strategy they suggested for the week of a test was for the teacher to create a study plan with the students and/or have students create a study plan. The artifact I have designed for the executive function competency is a study log given to my students the week of their test. Though the use of a study log is the core strategy I used, other strategies were implemented as well.
All 9th grade teachers (including myself) conducted lessons on time management, study skills, and academic success in advisement classes.
My students created a written reflection on their first unit test score, their feelings on the score, and detailed how they prepared for that unit test.
I modeled an exemplar study log using the template. As stated in the Executive Function brief from Harvard University, "children are more likely to build effective executive function skills if the important adults in their lives are able to...model the skills."
The study log template (shown to the left) includes the date, along with areas for students to summarize what unit topics they studied, resources used to study, and how much time they spent studying. There are also two reflection questions for students to respond to at the bottom. Prior to using this study log, students have received instruction on study skills and time management in advisement class, an exemplar log has been modeled for them in class, and it has been suggested by the science department that they should study for at least twenty minutes per day outside of class time during the week of a test.
In the image carousel to the right, there are five student samples. Some of these samples are from ELLs and some are from traditional students in my college-prep class.
As shown by the samples, most students did not study for the department-recommended twenty minutes or more per night. Some students chose to focus more on enzymes, which is the content we were learning that week. Students used a variety of resources including their notes (in the binder), Google Classroom resources, and Quizizz.
During this module, I found an article titled Using a Learning Log to Support Students' Learning in Biology Lessons. In this article, rather than using a study log, the teacher used a learning log on which students reflect on multiple facets of learning including homework, study, difficulty of work, relevance of work, and practical/communication skills. Similarly to my study log, the learning log prompts the student to describe how they can improve or change.
In the article, Stephens and Winterbottom assert that "the learning log was effective at stimulating student awareness and critical analysis of learning," which is what I believe my study log began to spark within my Biology students. An anonymous survey concluded that after the test, many students felt that they should have studied more. Using a log is an executive function implementation that I will continue to use, but I will likely modify the template to be more detailed and include more of the features from the one used by Stephens & Winterbottom. I plan to keep logs for all students to see how their study skills change over the course of the semester and school year and cross-reference these logs with their test scores so I can more accurately assess whether they have grown in their executive function.
Sources
Addressing Executive Function at the Secondary Level. ECRA Group, Inc., Aug. 2011, www.atlantapublicschools.us/cms/lib/GA01000924/Centricity/domain/8535/correspondence/White%20paper%20-%20Addressing%20executive%20education%20at%20the%20Secondary%20Level%2008.11_1.pdf.
Center on the Developing Child (2012). Executive Function (InBrief). Retrieved from www.developingchild.harvard.edu.
Executive Skills in Children and Adolescents: A Practical Guide to Assessment and Intervention, by Peg Dawson and Richard Guare, Guilford Press, pp. 75–97.
Stephens, Karen, and Mark Winterbottom. “Using a Learning Log to Support Students' Learning in Biology Lessons.” Journal of Biological Education, vol. 44, no. 2, 2010, pp. 72–80.
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