Your child is bright, curious, and eager to learn… but they don’t care about the assignment due tomorrow, let alone an end-of-year report card. With the move to virtual learning, keeping their attention will be even trickier than before – but not impossible! Executive functioning, or the ability to plan and focus on tasks, can be honed like any other skill. As you prepare your child for school from your dining room, here are five tips to help improve their executive functioning.
Write down where each teacher posts assignments.
Half the battle is figuring out where each teacher posts assignments and announcements – ItsLearning, Weebly, personal websites, the list goes on – so writing a “cheat sheet” with the details about where each teacher typically posts is essential.
Write in a paper planner.
It’s easier for kids to focus on the present if they aren’t trying to figure out what’s coming next, so get them into the habit of writing everything in a paper planner, like The Enrichery Academic Planner (created by executive functioning experts!).
Take notes.
Taking notes during virtual learning will keep kids actively engaged in the lecture – we recommend the Cornell note-taking method!
Praise in millimeters.
Practice makes perfect when it comes to executive functioning, and you will see slow and steady progress over time. Give praise for every millimeter of improvement.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the challenges of online learning, but this is an opportunity for your child to get in the driver’s seat of their education. With more flexibility comes time management and responsibility, and outside of the school building, they can learn from the real world. 2020 is nothing like we imagined, but when it comes to teaching our children, let’s make it better than we imagined.
