Teaching EF Skills

"Interventions yielding even small improvements to individual capacity for EFs could dramatically improve society"

(Faith, Bush & Dawson, 2022)

The adolescent brain requires experiences, practice, and feedback in order to develop EF skills. This page describes the qualities of an EF supportive classroom and provides strategies for the explicit teaching of EF skills.

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Teach Students About Neuroplasticity and the Adolescent Brain

Knowledge is power. Empower students with the knowledge about how their brain works and why it is important to practice EF skills, particularly during adolescence. The resource on the left provides teachers with slides, videos, lessons, and activities designed to teach students about the brain-mind-body connection.

Teacher-Student-Strategy-PDF.pdf

Smaller-EF-Posters-with-Pictures-PDF.pdf

2. Use Anchor Charts & Posters

An absolute necessity, particularly for people who are still developing working memory. Just because you teach it, doesn't mean they will remember it... unless it is right in front of them! Anchor charts are notes on the wall to which you and your students can refer to regularly. It is important to note that teachers often forget that these are skills in development, rather than skills adolescent learners already should know. It is easy, and a natural response, to become frustrated when a student has difficulty showing up to class on time and prepared, doing their work or following classroom expectations. These anchor charts not only help students focus on skill building, but remind the teacher to be patient and supportive, rather than become frustrated.

3. Teach Personal Strategies

The video is specifically for teens. It provides usefull tips on how can they can practice and improve EF skills.

Activities+Guide+-+Promoting+Cognitive+Development+Through+Play.pdf

Play Games!

Board games, group games, word games... nearly all games inherently promote the development of executive functions skills with the added benefit of increasing engagement by harnessing the over-active reward center and providing dopamine to the adolescent brain. Games also increase relatedness and decrease stress threats!

Games are a perfect way to develop EF and SEL skills and can even incorporate specific learning outcomes too!

For more information and resources, visit Building Brains Together a research based initiative in which a curriculum of activities was developed in order to improve children's EF skills and improve kindergarten readiness has expanded to include games for adolescents too!

5. Lesson plan: What are EF skills? Why are they Important?

This video is a good way to launch the idea of EF skills and ways to develop them. Students are also provided graphic organizers to take notes and make personal connections. These notes will then be used for the Kahoot and short quiz to follow. While a summative assessment may not be a curricular necessity, it is important that students practice the EF skills described in the video by taking notes and assessments give the act of learning some relevance (why take notes if you don't need to remember the information?).

Personal narratives help students make connections and, when they realize other people struggle too, they may be less inclined to internalize shame and adopt a growth mindset.