Executive functioning skills are incredibly important for middle and high school students. We all want students to be better with planning, organization, self-control, and time management. When you think about it, these abilities are the foundation of so much of what our students do, from initiating tasks to problem-solving through challenges. With all that said, time in the secondary classroom can often be extremely limited. The good news is that these skill can be seamlessly integrated into the classroom. Instead of giving teachers one more task to do, below you’ll find executive functioning techniques that align with what you’re already doing.
Strategy Shares
What it is: A strategy share is a time when learners explain how they’ve solved a problem or worked through a challenge.
How it helps: By sharing their own unique strategies, students can learn from one another. The student explaining is building their metacognition skills, as they think about their own thinking and the strategies they’ve used. Additionally, other students are practicing active listening, perspective-taking, and mental flexibility to consider different techniques.
How to give it a try: For select activities and problems, let students be the teacher. This can be performed in small groups or for the whole class. Encourage students to explain and show how they solved or worked through a particular problem. For example, a student might show their step-by-step work on the board as they walk through how to solve for x in an algebra question. In another instance, a student might explain how they figured out the main idea of a article, pointing out specific points in the text. Give time for other students to share feedback, ask questions, and learn.
Here are some questions to deepen the conversation surrounding strategy shares:
- Can you tell me why you chose this strategy?
- How did it work for you? What worked well, and what didn’t?
- How would you teach this to someone else?
- What steps were the most impactful in solving the problem?
- What did you learn?
Introduce Executive Functioning Skills
Why it matters: Teaching executive functioning skills explicitly helps provide all learners with a strong foundation for success. In order for students to build those skills, it helps to understand what they are.
How to give it a try: Start by introducing the idea of executive functioning skills. Most importantly, focus on explaining how learning about executive functioning skills can help students in their own lives. These skills help us stay organized, get started on tasks, learn new ideas, problem-solve through challenges, and more. They are abilities we use whether we’re writing an essay for an English class or preparing to try out for the soccer team. Note that an introduction doesn’t have to take a huge amount of time! A quick explanation can help learners see that executive functioning skills are in everything we do (and they’re worth working on).
Bonus tip: Keep reading for more ideas about how to introduce executive functioning skills for your learners. You can also get started with a free set of executive functioning worksheets.
Review and Revise
What it is: Reviewing and revising means going back to fix incorrect answers.
How it builds EF skills: By reworking problems or tasks, students are building self-awareness, metacognition, mental flexibility, and perseverance. An important note here is that reviewing and revising our work isn’t about being easy on teens; it is quite the opposite. It helps teach students that it’s okay to get things wrong sometimes, and when we do, we can go back, learn, and do better. This isn’t just an executive functioning strategy, but a life skill.
How to use it: For select assignments, encourage students to review and revise their incorrect answers. One strategy is to allow students to fix incorrect answers on a quiz for partial credit. For instance, if a student gets a 60% on a math quiz, they could re-do the incorrect problems for an extra 20 points.
What it is: Taking time to discuss what executive functioning skills are, why they matter, and what strategies we can use to support them.
Dedicated Organization Time
What it is: Dedicated organization time is a specific time of the day or week to tidy up materials.
How it builds skills: Organization time provides real practice with organization skills. Instead of just encouraging kids to stay organized, you are providing them with actual space and time to put their skills in action. This time also can help with planning and time management. Additionally, organization time also teaches students that organization is an ongoing process. Instead of something we do one time, practicing organization regularly helps us stay neat, reduces stress, and allows us to have the materials we need.
How to give it a try: Set aside specific time each week (or day) dedicated to getting organized. During this time, students can tidy up their work spaces, binders, backpacks, or lockers. You might opt for the beginning of the week (Monday) to help set the week off strong, or you might choose Friday to clean up materials before the weekend. For students who struggle significantly with organization, you might try a 5-minute organization time at the end of class. Use this time to put the day’s materials away, toss materials you no longer need, and review schedules to know what’s coming next.
Class Discussions
What it is: Class discussions are group conversations that target both executive functioning skills and classroom content at the same time.
Why it matters: Group chats can be be a highly motivational way to help young adults learn skills and ideas. Using guided questions and conversation starters, class discussions pave the way to discuss a big variety of executive functioning skills like planning, attention, time management, self-control, perseverance, and more. As students discuss, they not only build their own self-awareness, but they can learn from each other as well.
How to use this technique: Get together as a group and use guided questions to get the learning started. You can choose to hold class discussions at the beginning of class, end of the day, or in between tasks like a brain break – it’s really about finding the time that works for you and your classroom. Get started using some questions:
- What does it mean to plan ahead? Why does it matter (focus: planning)
- What are some challenges associated with staying organized? (focus: organization)
- When was a time you manged your time well on a task? What strategies did you use? (focus: time management)
- What are some distractions that get in the way of getting started on tasks? How can you manage them? (focus: task initiation)
- What is something new you’ve learned this week? (focus: metacognition)
- Why is it important to be able to manage your emotions? (focus: self-control)
- Having a friend complete a task with you is a helpful way to get focused. Who is a friend you could study with? (focus: attention)
Ready to get started? Grab these 400+ executive functioning skills question cards and slides to get your learners thinking.
Daily or Weekly Routines
What it is: Routines are regular and predictable activities. In the classroom, this might look like starting each day with a “do now” or holding a “Friday Review” at the end of the week.
How it helps: Putting consistent routines in place helps students know exactly what to expect. This takes the guesswork out of activities, making it easier to focus on the task at hand. In turn, this creates the perfect opportunity to target and build challenging skills like organization, planning, and time management.
How to get started: Start by considering the daily and weekly operations of your classroom. Choose one or two activities that are important and turn them into a daily (or weekly) practice. It’s important to discuss the routine, explain why it matters, and practice it often. Choose from some classroom routines below:
- Morning work – Start your day with a worksheet, journal response, or simple activity. As students walk in the room each day, they will know to begin the daily assignment.
- Morning meeting – Begin your class with a daily morning meeting activity. These can be a great way to check in with students and start your day in a calming way. Morning meetings are also perfect for integrating social-emotional skills that teens need.
- Weekly current events – Take time to discuss what’s going on in the community around you. Give time to students to share their thoughts, questions, and concerns.
- Organization time – Plan out daily or weekly organization time (see above) to help kids tidy up workspaces and get organized for the day ahead.
- Weekly review – Take time at the end of your week to review and discuss key concepts you’ve learned. Give kids a chance to be the teachers themselves, as they share their biggest takeaways.
End of the Day Reflection
What it is: Using the last few minutes of class time, students can reflect on how their day went.
Why it matters: An end of the day reflection time allows space to build self-awareness, understand emotions, improve self-advocacy, and work through problems. Additionally, the questions themselves can be specifically tailored to work on a variety of executive functioning skills like organization, attention, and perseverance.
How to use it: Take the last minutes of your class time and dedicate them to an end of the day reflection. Choose a question of the day or provide a list of questions and allow students to choose one to discuss. If talking openly about these questions is a challenge for your students, you can opt for independent journal writing time.
- What are you proud of yourself for today?
- What executive functioning skills did you build today?
- What challenges did you overcome?
- What goals did you work on?
- What strategies did you use to stay focused today?
- What inspired you today?
Use this list of free reflection questions to jump start your end of the day reflection practice.
Teach Executive Functioning Explicitly
What it is: Planning time to explicitly learn about each executive functioning skill and what strategies we can use to support them.
Why it matters: Learning about executive functioning skills helps kids and teens build their personal toolbox for success. This isn’t something that happens overnight! Instead, students need lots of practice as they strengthen their executive functioning skills over time.
How to give it a try: Take a few minutes each day to target different executive functioning skills. Using executive functioning lessons allows you to review each skill, discuss why it matters, and learn some meaningful strategies together.
You can also use the list below as a guideline to help you start on your own:
- Planning is the process of thinking ahead to achieve goals.
- Organization is the practice of developing systems to keep materials, spaces, and ideas orderly.
- Task Initiation is your ability to independent start on tasks, chores, and activities.
- Time Management is having an understanding of time and using your time efficiently to complete goals.
- Attention is your ability to focus on important information while managing or ignoring distracting information.
- Metacognition is thinking about your own thinking. This includes having an awareness of what’s working and what isn’t.
- Working Memory is your ability to hold information in your mind while working with it.
- Self-Control is the ability to regulate your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in order to achieve your individual goals.
- Flexibility is being able to effectively adapt to changes in plans, adjusting your approach when needed.
- Perseverance is the ability to keep working towards a goal, even when challenges come up along the way.
Assignment Break Down
What it is: The practice of breaking down larger assignments into smaller, more manageable tasks. The idea really is to break down assignments with students – not for them.
How it builds EF skills: Practicing breaking down assignments helps students strengthen skills for planning, organization, prioritization, and time management. It also allows learners to build self-awareness as they think about which steps they need to complete along the way. Possibly most importantly, this practice allows students to feel less overwhelmed with bigger assignments. When students feel confident in how to get started on a task, it builds task initiation skills so they can get started on their own.
How to give it a try: Give this strategy a try with your next bigger assignment, such as a research project, lab report, or essay. Encourage students to think about how the assignment could be completed in 3-6 steps. List the steps on the board together. For example, for a research project, students might need to: brainstorm and select a topic, find 5 reputable sources, take notes, write a first draft, and edit/finalize the project. The specific steps are ultimately going to depend on the skills and activities you want your students to complete; the important part is that students are practicing breaking a larger assignment down into smaller, more manageable tasks.
Once students understand the process and you’ve practiced with them a few times, encourage them to do this task independently.
Activate Prior Knowledge
What it is: Thinking about what you already know about a topic before you begin the learning process.
Why it matters: Practicing activating our prior knowledge teaches students to pause and check in about what they already know. This is an incredibly important tool that cultivates metacognition and builds curiosity with learning new concepts. It also paves the way to develop more meaningful connections with concepts and ideas they’ve previously learned.
How to use it: Before beginning a new topic, have students write and/or draw things they already know on that topic. Then, give time to discuss and share. You can list the ideas on the board as “things we think we know.” For instance, if you are beginning a new unit on plate tectonics, students might share that there are plates underneath the crust of the Earth and that when the plates move, sometimes earthquakes can occur.
Bonus strategy: Complete this exercise in a journal or notebook to come back to later once you’ve finished your unit or topic. Students are often amazed at how much they’ve learned in a relatively short time.
Brain-Boosting Breaks
What it is: Taking time for brain-boosting activities between tasks, activities, and assignments.
How it helps: Simply put, learning to take breaks is a life skill necessary for success. By taking regular breaks, students can learn to self-regulate their emotions, strengthen their focus, and manage their time most effectively. This practice also teaches students the “right” breaks to use that strengthen self-regulation and learning, instead of draining breaks like scrolling through social media feeds.
How to use it: Plan to incorporate short breaks of 5 to 10 minutes for every 30-60 minutes of instruction. Explain to students that you are going to take a pause from learning to do a brain-boosting break activity. Discuss with your learners that these short pauses actually help with learning. Some simple (and fun) options to try include:
- Exercise and stretch – Guide your students in some simple exercises and stretches. It may also help to let a student lead.
- Practice mindfulness – Sit comfortably, relax your body, and practice breathing in and out slowly. A mindful practice might take time for students to really settle in, but it can have profound effects on focus and self-regulation.
- Listen to music – Have students sit and listen to a new piece of music. Without talking, just listen and breathe.
- Trivia – Ask engaging trivia questions to get kids thinking. This can also be fun to have students come up with their own trivia questions for the class.
- Journal writing – Provide a question and give students a chance to write independently. If time allows, you can have students share their responses.
Project Self-Reflection
What it is: After completing a project or assignment, students can evaluate their own learning and performance.
Why it matters: Self-reflection fosters metacognition and self-monitoring skills. It’s an extremely helpful strategy kids can take with them and use on activities throughout the year.
How to use it: For the next project, make it part of the assignment for students to reflect on how they did. It’s important for students to complete this process before a teacher grades their work. This gives an unbiased opinion, allowing students to think critically about how they did. Have students write a short reflective essay answering some reflection questions:
- How did I do on this project?
- Did I meet the expectations for this project?
- What went well? Why?
- What did I struggle with? How did I work through those challenges?
- What would I grade myself? Why?
- If I could go back now, what would I change or add?
- What did I learn from this project?
- On a scale from 0-10, how proud am I of my performance on this assignment? Why?
Ultimately these questions can help them understand how they did, what they learned, and how they could do better in the future.
Independent Work Time
What it is: Independent work time includes blocks of time dedicated to individual work on assignments or projects.
How it builds EF skills: Working independently gives learners the chance to use executive functioning skills on their own. For instance, students decide what to work on (planning and prioritizing), get started on their own (task initiation), stay focused (attention), and problem-solve through challenges along the way (perseverance).
How to use it: Set aside blocks of time each day and week for independent working time. It helps to provide some clear instructions so students know exactly what they should be completing. Then, give independent time to work on their own. Examples of independent work time include finishing a math worksheet with practice problems, reading a chapter book, or taking notes on a research topic. Start with smaller blocks of time and work your way up to longer ones as you students build their stamina over time.
Bonus tip: Some students are going to need more support with independent work time. Consider adding a guided study hall to your middle or high school to help students build the skills they need for independence.
Journal Writing
What it is: Journal writing is a reflective practice where students can share their thoughts, feelings, and experiences on a regular basis.
How it builds EF skills: Writing is an evidence-based technique to strengthen many executive functioning skills. Students use planning when deciding what to write and organization by choosing what to write in a logical and cohesive way. In addition, carefully crafted prompts allow you to target any executive functioning skills you need to.
How to give it a try: Create a daily (or weekly) journal writing time for your students as a habit, such as first thing in the morning. Use focused prompts to target the skills you want your students to learn. Give students independent time to write. Then, allow time to share and discuss responses. Get started with some of the questions below:
- When are times when you need to focus your best? What strategies help you focus your attention in a way that works for you? (attention)
- What does it mean to use self-control skills? Why is it important in your everyday life? (self-control)
- When was a time you worked through a challenge? How did you persevere? (perseverance)
- What is a goal you would like to accomplish this year? What are some steps to help you get there? (goal-setting, planning)
Bonus tip: Try journal writing a complete self-management journal focused on skills like self-control, attention, goal-setting, and taking initiative. It’s a great place to start.
Academic Check-Ins
What it is: A check-in is a time for teachers to meet 1:1 with students to review grades, discuss goals, and identify strategies for success.
Why it matters: By participating in a check-in session, students are building self-awareness and self-monitoring skills. When challenges come up, this also gives the chance for students to work on their problem-solving skills with an adult for support.
How to use it: Allow students to get started on a task during independent or group work time. As kids work, sit in a designated area and call up individual students one at a time. During this time, you can ask students how they feel they’re doing and review grades together. Encourage students to take charge by asking them guided questions: How are you doing in your classes? What is going well for you right now? What is something you’ve been struggling with? What are some ways teachers can help you? What are some ways you can help yourself?
It also helps to keep a check-in binder or log for each student. Have the student record a brief summary of what you discussed and at least one action step the student can take moving forward. For example, the student might write: On 2/5, I met with Mrs. James in study hall for my check-in. I’ve improved all my grades since the last meeting, but I’m still missing a few assignments in math. My action step is to print out my missing assignments and complete them by next week.
Study Sessions
What it is: Using class time to study, practice, and re-learn classroom material.
Why it matters: Study sessions give students the chance to learn and study collaboratively. Besides strengthening study skills, a study session can help build skills for planning, organization, flexibility, and perseverance.
How to use it: Schedule regular study sessions into your week, focusing on specific skills or topics that your students need the most.
- Teach and practice study techniques – Have students engage in evidence-based study strategies, like writing our flash cards for vocabulary, coming up with mnemonics, or creating your own practice tests before an assessment.
- Play study games – Make studying more fun with engaging games and activities. You can pull out board games and have students quiz each other before taking each turn. Another option is to play Jeopardy or a trivia game with content-related questions.
- Practice studying with a partner – Pair students up and have them review notes together, practice quizzing each other, and discuss what they’ve learned. Partners can then share out their experience with the class.
Classroom Clean-Up
What it is: During a classroom clean-up session, students work independently or with teams to tidy up the classroom around them.
How it builds EF skills: Taking time to clean up materials and working areas strengthens organization skills in real time. It also builds responsibility as students take ownership for the environment around them.
How to use it: Use classroom clean-up as a break from academics. Note that this can also be the perfect activity for students in a study hall who need something to do. Start by establishing some clear expectations. Tell students that you are pausing from their work to hold classroom clean-up time. Assign specific tasks to students such as restocking supplies, sharpening old pencils, organizing a bookshelf, cleaning the whiteboard, and picking up scraps on the floor. When finished, take time to recognize students for contributing to the classroom as a whole.
Catch Up Time
What it is: Catch up time is a designated time during the week for students to catch up on missed work, finish current assignments, get organized, or review material.
Why it matters: Providing a time dedicated to catching up encourages students to take ownership for their learning. Students can prioritize and choose which assignments or projects they want to work on. Ultimately, this allows practice with lots of executive functioning skills like planning, time management, task initiation, flexibility, and self-control.
How to use it: Set aside 10-20 minutes for catch up time in your classroom. You can add this into the schedule each week or just whenever you notice your students need extra time to get caught up on things. It’s important that this time is largely student-directed, but you can give some guidance by keeping a list on the board of activities for students to do:
- Finish missing assignments
- Check and review grades
- Work on current projects and assignments
- Review and study material
- Organize binders
Visuals and Graphic Organizers
What it is: Graphic organizers are visual tools that help students organize ideas, concepts, or information in meaningful ways.
Why it matters: By using graphic organizers, students are practicing skills for planning and organization. They provide the foundation for activities, essays, and assignments, allowing students to get started more effectively (task initiation).
How to use it: Add visuals and graphic organizers throughout your curriculum and content when appropriate. For instance, students might benefit from using a flowchart during a science experiment or a concept map to brainstorm ideas before an essay. Experiment with different types of visuals and graphic organizers to help students find what works for them.
Planners and Calendars
What it is: Planners and calendars are tools that help students keep track of assignments, prioritize tasks, stay organized, and meet important deadlines.
How it builds EF skills: Planners and calendars are specifically designed to support organization, planning, and time management. While planners and calendars are helpful in the classroom, using these tools also teaches students real-life skills they will use outside the walls of the classroom.
How to use it: Start by providing each student their own individual planner that they can use throughout the school year. Teach, model, and practice how to use the planner together. You can practice writing down daily assignments in the planner, such as a nightly homework activity or a reminder to study for a quiz. Students can also write their own personal tasks in the planner – everything from a note about a friend’s birthday next week to weekly soccer practice. The idea here is that students are using the planner to build independence in managing their own responsibilities.
More Executive Functioning Practice
Teach skills that matter with a yearlong executive functioning skills set of lessons and activities. It comes with everything you need – lesson plans, workbook pages, posters, discussion cards, engaging activities, and much more. Get started building executive functioning skills together!
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