Monthly Archives: November 2021

Thanksgiving Executive Function Toolkit

Cognitive Flexibility, Executive Function, Growth Mindset

From all of us on the SMARTS Executive Function Curriculum Team, we wish you a very happy Thanksgiving! We hope you find time for moments of tranquility and reflection while you connect with family and friends. For those of you who host Thanksgiving meals, here are some tips to ensure a successful celebration!

Prioritizing Time

The days leading up to Thanksgiving can be overwhelming. Between work, school, travel, and meal planning, it can feel like there isn’t enough time to get everything done.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, it can help to sit down with a blank weekly calendar to schedule when you will complete certain tasks. (If you are interested in learning more about the SMARTS approach to planning production time, you can sign up for the free lesson here). For example, if you’ve ordered a turkey or dessert, when and where is your scheduled pickup? For all the sides you’ll prepare at home, do you have a time blocked out when you can scan through the grocery store aisles for all the ingredients? Finally, plan time to gather the necessities for your Thanksgiving table including place settings for every guest, extra chairs, and dishes for all the sides. 

Shifting Flexibly

Expect the unexpected. Maintaining a flexible mindset and considering multiple solutions to a problem is essential for getting back on track after a setback. If you find that your turkey is taking too long to cook, consider carving it into smaller sections so that it cooks more quickly. You could also offer guests time to enjoy more appetizers, play a game such as charades, or tell some jokes or riddles!

Schedule Reflection Time

When it comes to teaching executive function strategies, strategy reflection helps students develop a deeper understanding of their strengths and areas of growth. The same concept applies to hosting Thanksgiving! Take some time after the holiday to debrief on what went well and where you could improve next year. Would you go food shopping earlier? Where did you need an extra set of hands? Would you swap out any of the sides you prepared? Write your ideas on a sticky note and add it to your planner to revisit next year.

What strategy is an essential part of your Thanksgiving celebration? We’d love to hear about it!

Build your Executive Function Toolkit

Are you interested in building your Executive Function Toolkit? Join us in February and March to hear from EF experts on topics such as metacognition and motivation, strategies to support students with long-term projects and project-based learning, embedding EF in the general education curriculum, and the intersection of EF and social-emotional learning. Learn more and register here. 

  • Caitlin Vanderberg, M.Ed., SMARTS Associate

SMARTS Executive Function Curriculum: smarts-ef.org

Research Institute for Learning and Development: researchild.org

The Institute for Learning and Development: ildlex.org

Promoting Resilience and Equity for All Students

EF Conference, Equity, Executive Function

ResearchILD’s 36th Annual Executive Function Conference brought together educators, researchers, and practitioners from across the globe to hear from speakers at the forefront of executive function research and implementation in schools. The focus of this year’s conference was on promoting resilience and equity for ALL students.

Connection and Relationships

To promote equity in schools, we must create learning systems and relationships that ensure all students experience a sense of belonging and feel supported in their own learning. Irvin Scott, Ed.D, senior lecturer on education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, shared this statement:

“Bias happens all the time for our students. It happens in a way that sometimes we don’t necessarily see the immediate impact.” 

These experiences compound over time and can impact students’ identities. Therefore, educators must seek to deeply know their students and create space to understand students’ stories and identities.

Putting students first and honoring their identities is key to building the connections that enable change. At the same time, educators must examine the systems and structures that are preventing students from accessing certain opportunities.

Paradigm Shift

Pedro Noguera, Ph.D., Dean of the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education, also emphasized the importance of creating student-centered school cultures that are built upon strong relationships between students and the school.

In this student-centered model, Dr. Noguera emphasized that educators must devise strategies to break stereotypes and acknowledge the barriers that exist in schools and learning environments. Starting at the classroom level, we can support students in building self-awareness and self-management strategies, which can lead to more peaceful interactions between students and their peers. 

Dr. Noguera suggests that the pandemic has opened the door to an opportunity to shift our focus as we rebuild schools. Returning to “normal” is not an option: 

“The schools we have have been designed to get the results they obtain now…Schools reproduce inequality.”

As we create a new educational system, we must place equity, health, and social-emotional needs at the center of our work. This means recognizing that race and place matter when it comes to many issues, such as environmental impacts on children’s development. We know that environmental toxins and toxic stress impact students’ health and learning. Therefore, we cannot only focus on what is happening in schools. We must also consider the context of the communities in which schools are situated. 

Takeaways: Defining Equity

Equity means…

  • Acknowledging and addressing that different students have different needs. 
  • Giving students what they need to be successful both in school and in life.  
  • Examining implicit biases and how they impact day-to-day interactions. 
  • Addressing the barriers that exist in schools and classrooms and working to remove them.   

Build Your Executive Function Toolkit

Are you interested in building your Executive Function Toolkit? Join us in February and March to hear from EF experts on topics such as metacognition and motivation, strategies to support students with long-term projects and project-based learning, embedding EF in the general education curriculum, and the intersection of EF and social-emotional learning. Learn more and register here. 

  • Caitlin Vanderberg, M.Ed., SMARTS Associate

SMARTS Executive Function Curriculum: smarts-ef.org

Research Institute for Learning and Development: researchild.org

The Institute for Learning and Development: ildlex.org

Quick Tip: SMARTS Curriculum Extensions

Executive Function, Quick Tip

Struggling to make time to teach executive function? SMARTS Curriculum extensions are an easy way to embed executive function strategies in natural moments within instruction. 

Extensions require little to no preparation, and they can either stand on their own as a quick mini-lesson or serve as a way to review and reinforce a strategy taught in the full lesson.

You’ll find extensions located at the end of each SMARTS lesson plan.

  • SMARTS Secondary has over 400 extensions, which are organized into six categories: creating strategic learning communities, reflection/self-advocacy, test strategies, projects, math/science, and ELA/social science. These categories offer a way to easily align strategy instruction with your teaching setting and learning goals.
  • SMARTS Elementary, updated in August 2021, features extensions for every lesson. Teachers can also use the new lesson sorter for SMARTS Elementary to curate lessons by areas such as active reading, flexible thinking and problem solving, self-understanding, perspective-taking, and more.

With SMARTS Curriculum extensions, you can address executive function explicitly in small pockets of time during the school day to establish meaningful routines that set students up for success.

Join us this November for the 36th Annual Executive Function Conference, which will focus on promoting resilience and equity for ALL students.

  • Caitlin Vanderberg, M.Ed., SMARTS Associate

SMARTS Executive Function Curriculum: smarts-ef.org

Research Institute for Learning and Development: researchild.org

The Institute for Learning and Development: ildlex.org

36th Annual EF Conference Spotlight: SMARTS Strand Concurrent Speakers

EF Conference, SMARTS strategies, Teaching EF Tips

This post is part of a series that highlights the events and speakers of this year’s 36th Annual Executive Function Conference, which will focus on promoting resilience and equity for ALL students.

At ResearchILD’s conference this November, you can learn practical strategies to bring into your classroom on Monday morning. SMARTS experts are offering three pre-recorded concurrent sessions that will be available starting on November 5. Conference attendees will have unlimited access to all concurrent sessions and the recordings of the live plenary sessions through January 31, 2022.

Concurrent Presentations: SMARTS Strand


Executive Function and Organization: Unlocking Students’ Ability to Stay Organized
Michael Greschler, Ed.M. and Shelly Levy, M.Ed., M.S.

Michael Greschler is the director of the SMARTS program for ResearchILD. Over the past 7 years, he has worked to develop and grow the SMARTS program, collaborating with teachers and administrators in schools and leading a nationwide pilot of SMARTS Online in its first year. Shelly Levy is the SMARTS curriculum coordinator, teacher trainer, and educational specialist at the Institutes of Learning and Development. She has over 25 years of experience in the field of Special Education. 

The session will emphasize practical classroom approaches that integrate strategy instruction and self-understanding into day-to-day classroom activities through the organization of materials and time management.

Flexible Thinking: Practical Strategies to Improve Academic Performance and Reduce Stress
Donna Kincaid, M.Ed.

Donna Kincaid, M.Ed., is the assistant director and director of outreach and training for ILD and ResearchILD. Donna holds certification in Elementary/Special Education K-9, a Master’s Degree in Curriculum and Instruction, and a Supervisor/Director Certification in the area of Special Needs.

In this session, participants will learn about the importance of cognitive flexibility, one of the cornerstones of executive function, and its critical role in school performance, growth mindsets, and reduced stress in school and life. This session will also focus on evidence-based strategies for promoting students’ cognitive flexibility so that they learn to shift and think flexibly in academic and social situations. 

Self-Monitoring and Self-Regulation: From School to Home and Back
Mindy Scirri, Ph.D.

Mindy Scirri, Ph.D., is a learning (dis)ability specialist and consultant in private practice and former chair and professor of education. Dr. Scirri also homeschools her daughter and is a content writer for homeschooling curriculum and resource websites.

In this workshop, Dr. Scirri will explore how expectations impact self-monitoring and self-regulation, how different contexts affect these expectations, and how various executive function components play a role. Participants will learn strategies from the SMARTS Executive Function Curriculum, as well as other strength-based strategies, to help students build self-monitoring and self-regulation skills both at school and at home.

Learn More

You can learn more about the concurrent speakers and their work by attending ResearchILD’s 36th Annual Executive Function Conference on November 11th and 12th. 

  • Caitlin Vanderberg, M.Ed., SMARTS Associate

SMARTS Executive Function Curriculum: smarts-ef.org

Research Institute for Learning and Development: researchild.org

The Institute for Learning and Development: ildlex.org