10 Classroom Activities to Enhance Executive Function and Improve Task Completion – Lynne Kenney

We’re back to school and soon children will be bringing home loads of homework. For many children academic tasks such as worksheets, projects and homework can feel overwhelming!

In Dr. Lynne Kenney’s new book, 70 Play Activities for Better Thinking, Self-regulation, Learning and Behavior (2016), she shares over 40 executive function skills. Teachers, clinicians and parents can easily implement these activities to improve sequencing, initiation, execution, task management, attention and memory skills.

Dr. Kenney will provide you with key research findings relevant to your everyday work, and transform that research into practical activities and worksheets to help your students:

• Improve pacing and memory
• Learn encoding and retrieval
• Improve motivation and attention
• Learn preview and planning
• Maximize homework approach, initiation and execution

1. Describe the cognitive science behind learning and memory in a practical, activity-based manner.
2. Explain how to become a “Cognitive Detective” to better see what executive functions might be road blocks to a specific student’s achievement.
3. Model how to have “Cognitive Conversations” with students to help them move from feel distressed about their learning to feeling like empowered thinkers.
4. Show how to fill your tool-box with 10 activities that will immediately transform your students’ learning.

• Today’s Landscape
  • Current Issues
  • Simple Activities
  • Current Research
• Managing Disruption vs. Time Teaching
• Teacher Attrition
  • Facts of teacher dissatisfaction
• Economic Costs
  • Teacher turnover
  • Drained Resources
• What Counts
  • Attitudes and Behaviors
  • Teacher-student involvement
• Activities
  • It all begins with you
  • I believe
  • I will connect
  • I will BEE authentic
• What is SEL
• 5 Core Competencies
  • Self-awareness
  • Self-management
  • Social awareness
  • Relationship skills
  • Decision Making
• How does SEL make a difference
  • Case Study
• Simple Actions to Make
  • Planning
  • Applying structure
  • Student mentoring and teaching
  • Being Present
• Activities
  • Create Cognitive Conversations
  • Kindness Can
  • Bloom Kindness Keeper
  • Classroom Culture Agreement
  • Classroom Mission Statement
  • Kindness Poem
• Cognitive Conversations that Improve Self-Awareness