Teaching children to think — clearly and efficiently — is a universal goal of parents and teachers alike. Thinking skills such as planning, goal setting, organizing, prioritizing, self-monitoring, accessing working memory, inhibitory (impulse) control and sustaining focused attention are critical to academic success at every age. Most important, the development of these skills allows children to mature into independent, healthy and functional adults.

Despite the importance of these “executive function” skills, these thinking processes are not systemically taught at home or in schools and are not the focus of the curriculum. Rather, schools emphasize the content or the “what” of learning. Executive function skills are the “how” of learning. When a student has poor or underdeveloped executive function skills, they can appear disorganized, unprepared and unmotivated. By providing explicit instruction in executive function processes, parents and teachers can significantly elevate the thinking abilities in their children and students. Interested in learning more about this new workshop and how you can understand and help to teach executive function skills in and out of the classroom? Contact Tonya Redman, UDO Director, for more information at 443-829-6155!