Executive Skills Pro-D: Peg Dawson

Today I had the pleasure of learning from Peg Dawson, a renowned psychologist who works with youth and adults with learning and attention disorders. She has written several books in her Smart, but Scattered series as well as others on executive skills. Some of the take aways from the sessions we had with her are as follows:

  • Mindfulness: Students need to be taught to reset and re-engage. We should be teaching them to recognize when they are off task and bring themselves back. Some tools mentioned are:
    • Headspace app
    • Insight Timer
  • Involving the students:
    • Ask them how long they can work for before they need a break.
    • Plan out their school day with them rather than for them
    • help students find multiple pathways to avoid obstacles
    • i-connect: self-monitoring app
  • Other Strategies:
    • Teach them to wait and stop-think time
    • pair a visual with verbal instructions
    • "name it to tame it"
    • movement breaks
    • music: screens out large more unpredictable distractions
    • scaffolding and chunking assignments. 

https://www.smartbutscatteredkids.com/


Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 14, 2024 at 3:15 PM

    Dear Brandi,

    It is great to see another post about mindfulness! I have found that the mindfulness readings in the course have really rekindled my interest in the topic. The headspace app is excellent, one downside is the cost of the subscription though. The technique of “noting” in headspace, the non-judgemental ability to notice and redirect, I would imagine is particularly helpful for students with attention challenges. With my grade 1 students, I often have several movement activities throughout the lesson. If there are not many movement activities that day, I often have them take a short 2 minute yoga break where we do deep breaths and 1 or 2 poses to stretch out muscles and refocus. The benefits are quite apparent following our movement breaks.

    Thanks,
    Michael Volk

    ReplyDelete

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