Education Station

What are Executive Skills Disorders?

Many students, particularly students with learning disabilities, ADHD, Dyslexia and Dysgraphia, struggle upon entering middle school and high school. All at once, the student must shift from learning the specific academic skills of reading, writing and math to applying their academic skills in the content area. They now must be prepared to do literary analysis, report writing, and the reasoning of higher level math. Tackling this next learning step requires the student to draw upon the executive skills of prioritizing, multi-tasking, and time management. The struggle to garner one’s executive skills is frequently observed in these types of behaviors:

• Does homework, but forgets to turn it in
• Loses assignments
• Forgets materials
• Gets good test scores but loses points on daily homework grades
• Ignores or dreads homework

If this sounds familiar, the child's executive skills are likely not up to these tasks.

The executive control needed to handle these organizational demand increases dramatically upon entering middle and high school. Yet, the organizational support a student needs to learn these skills actually decreases. Consequently, many children with weak executive skills require direct instruction and individualized instructional support to manage the routine of studying, note taking, and homework.

Educators at Child and Family Development are experienced in working with these middle school and high school students who struggle.