Happy 4th of July from all of us here on the SMARTS Executive Function team! We wish you a happy and safe holiday. After a challenging school year, we hope that your summer is full of rest and relaxation.
Summer is also a great time to reflect on the year and set meaningful goals for the future. Many of your students may also be tackling their summer reading lists; here are some strategies that can help.
As you contemplate the new school year, we hope you will find ways to incorporate executive function into your work. Get an early start with our Executive Function Summer Summit and SMARTS Executive Function Summer Workshop.
Executive Function Summer Summit July 27, July 29, August 3, August 5 The Executive Function Summer Summit will cover topics such as metacognition, organization, flexible problem solving, motivation, engagement, and even math and dyslexia. The four sessions of the Summer Summit (July 27th, July 29th, August 3rd, and August 5th) can be purchased as a bundle for a special price and will be recorded in case you cannot attend live.
SMARTS Executive Function Summer Workshop August 10, 12, 17, 19 If you will be teaching SMARTS next year, join us for the SMARTS Executive Function Summer Workshop on August 10th, 12th, 17th, and 19th. Come spend time with the SMARTS team to explore the curriculum, dig into SMARTS strategies, learn with your peers, and develop a customized implementation plan for a new year. As always, there are discounts for SMARTS users.
Wherever your summer plans take you, SMARTS is here to help. Here’s to a great summer!
Caitlin Vanderberg, M.Ed., SMARTS Program Associate
The past year has been a real cognitive flexibility challenge for everyone! One big shift for us was moving from in-person to online professional development workshops. The benefit—now you can access our FREE executive function webinars on your own time schedule.
Why do so many students seem to struggle with executive function? And how can teachers and parents support students as they manage the executive function demands of everyday life? In this one-hour webinar, we explore how understanding executive function and working to provide strategies at school and at home can support students across grades and content areas. The presentation features strategies from local educational therapists as well as resources and materials from the SMARTS Executive Function curriculum. https://www.youtube.com/embed/XaplK5jN7fk
Whether at home or at school, students need executive function strategies to handle challenging tasks as they set goals, shift flexibly, organize materials and information, and self-monitor and check their behavior and their work. When executive function expectations and supports are different at home and at school, executive function difficulties may arise. To truly support the executive function needs of students, executive function expectations and strategies must be clearly defined and accessible to everyone involved (teachers, parents, and students). In this one-hour webinar, educational therapists from the Institute for Learning and Development share strategies they use to help parents understand and support their students’ executive function needs.https://www.youtube.com/embed/9CozPKVB6yE
Students begin using executive function processes in literacy in the preschool years and continue as they progress through middle and high school and are expected to master complex skills in reading comprehension, summarizing, note-taking, and multi-stage writing projects. Beyond decoding spelling and vocabulary, successful reading requires that students be able to identify main ideas, topics, and supporting details in order to summarize and analyze what they are reading. Without strategies that help students meet the executive function demands of reading, students will struggle with reading comprehension, note-taking, essays, standardized tests, and more. In this one-hour webinar, Michael Greschler, M.Ed., director of the SMARTS Executive Function Programs, is joined by Wendy Stacey, M.S., director of Reading at the Institute for Learning and Development, to explore how executive function strategies can be used to help students tackle challenging reading material. The presentation features strategies developed at the Institute for Learning and Development and used in the SMARTS Executive Function curriculum. https://www.youtube.com/embed/IgvU1V3TgtM
In this one-hour webinar, Joan Steinberg, M.Ed., director of Educational Therapy and an educational specialist at the Institute for Learning and Development, explores how executive function strategies can be used to help students tackle math. The presentation features strategies developed at the Institute for Learning and Development and used in the SMARTS Executive Function curriculum.https://www.youtube.com/embed/HhLAcp6j9VM
The rapid shift to remote learning last spring turned students’, and teachers’, executive function strategies on their heads. As schools cycle between virtual, in-person, and hybrid instruction, it is becoming increasingly challenging for teachers, students, and parents to keep up. This webinar, led by Elizabeth Ross, M.A., SMARTS media manager, ResearchILD, and Caitlin Vanderberg, SMARTS intern, explores how various instructional models impact executive function demands and create executive function difficulties that undermine academic achievement. Through hands-on activities, attendees will learn strategies to help students shift flexibly and meet the executive function demands of virtual, in-person, and hybrid learning. https://www.youtube.com/embed/EjISXth80pw We love sharing executive function research and strategies with you! Stay tuned for upcoming executive function trainings and webinars. If you enjoyed our trainings and want to find out when we post new ones, subscribe to our SMARTS YouTube channel.
During these difficult times, we know that many students are feeling anxiety and intense emotions, especially about school. It can be hard for parents to know how to help their children. That’s why we felt it was important to share information about an upcoming webinar that McLean Hospital is presenting: Managing Emotions and Expectations Around School.
From the McLean website:
Everything You Want to Know About School and Anxiety
Whether children are returning full-time in person to school, part-time, or fully remote for their year, this uncharted territory for education has caused anxiety for kids and parents alike. Regardless of the environment they’ll be learning in, it’s important to manage the expectations of kids and help with their transition into a new school year. How can we help support them and lower their anxieties while also balancing work and parenting?
Join us live on Wednesday, August 26 at 12pm EST as Dr. Macht-Greenberg will share ways to support the new educational experience, methods to successfully balance the many demands that come with parenting, working, and teaching kids during a pandemic, and answers your questions about child development and returning to school.
Recently Dr. Lynn Meltzer, president of our sister organization ResearchILD, participated with Sucheta Kamath, CEO and Founder of ExQ, in a webinar about executive function.
They shared their insights from the science of learning how to learn that can empower learners to connect with strategies that matter to them.
“The brain’s Executive Function skills provide tools for effective self-assessment and intentional capacity for self-redirection. Considering that every child and educator is going through unprecedented times with looming unknowns, it has become even more critical that we highlight the process of intentional learning and strategic thinking so that educational experiences for our children become more meaningful.”
Apply the science of metacognition to develop strategies based on self-understanding and self-assessment
Cultivate a community of learners who can adapt their learning approaches and subsequently enhance their learning experiences
We hope you find this webinar useful and look forward to hearing your comments. And be sure to check out EQ, a research-informed system designed to enhance the brain’s executive function through game-based personalized training.
During this time of distance learning, executive function learning strategies are more important than ever. We’ve heard from many teachers (and parents and students) that their executive function is on overload! Never fear, our sister site, SMARTS Online, is here with strategies you can use whether via remote learning or in a classroom.
You can now access all of the free executive function webinars on the SMARTS Webinars playlist. These in-depth webinars cover the basics to understanding executive function, specific strategies for organizing and goal setting, as well as how executive function relates to important skills like reading (shown below) and math.
More webinars will be added to this playlist, so check back for new resources in the future!If you’ve watched these webinars, did you find them useful? Which webinar was your favorite? Let us know the comments!
