In December, Lower School Learning Specialist Jamie Radwan led a workshop for Lower School parents/guardians on executive functioning—the set of cognitive skills that help individuals plan, focus, and control their behavior. The goal of the workshop was to educate Lower School parents/guardians on how they can support the executive function development of their children at home, in partnership with the learning that takes place at school. 

My hope is that exposing kids to executive functioning skills at school, as well as at home, will help them to begin transferring and applying these skills in real-life settings. When we can make learning fun, it is less daunting and the new skills feel more attainable for students, and their grown-ups!
— Jamie Radwan, Lower School Learning Specialist 

As Ms. Radwan explained to Lower School families, executive functioning skills enable young children to develop their self-regulation, organization, work habits, challenge management abilities, and independence. 

These critical skills can be grouped into three domains: 

1. Working memory (holding information in the mind)
2. Inhibitory control (thinking before doing something)
3. Flexible thinking (shifting mindset or perspective)

During the workshop, Ms. Radwan led parents/guardians through sample activities for strengthening each of the three categories. She emphasized the importance of consistent routines when practicing EF and self-reflection—what strategies work and how they can be applied in other circumstances. 

The first activity—aimed at improving working memory—was a guessing game. Ms. Radwan asked parents/guardians to guess an animal based on five clues. With each clue she offered, the parents/guardians needed to retain new information, while modifying their guess to pick an animal that fit the collective criteria. Simple clue-based guessing games can help young children strengthen their ability to hold several pieces of information in their mind, which is a vital executive functioning skill for academic and non-academic settings. 

In discussing inhibitory control, or self-regulation, Ms. Radwan referenced the Stroop effect. One popular example that highlights the Stroop effect is reading a word whose meaning does not match its appearance (e.g. the word “green” is printed in red ink). Because the reader’s brain is in receipt of two conflicting pieces of information, it is harder to name the color when the ink does not match the printed word. Stroop effect activities help young children practice self control and think carefully about parsing information.

Lower School families thoroughly enjoyed the final activity, which involved playing the game Spot It! that strengthens flexible thinking. Ms. Radwan created several circular playing cards decorated with various images, including Willy the Wildcat, a butterfly, a soccer ball, and more. Players “win” cards if they can quickly scan and identify a matching image between their cards. Spot It! helps to improve the ability to shift perspective and adapt to new visual stimuli. [Families can download Ms. Radwan’s RCDS version of Spot It! here.]

Executive function encompasses a great deal of life skills, including the capacity to plan ahead and meet goals, exercising self-control, following multiple-step directions even with interruptions, and staying focused despite distraction. Ms. Radwan reminded parents/guardians that everyday life offers many opportunities to strengthen executive function (for example, planning what to bring for a trip to the park can help with improving planning and organization). She also summarized the ways executive function is strengthened in the Lower School to illustrate how parents’ efforts at home can be complimentary in this important developmental work.