Strengthening Your Special Needs Students' EXECUTIVE FUNCTION SKILLS: Strategies for Organizing Tasks, Time, Materials, and Behavior Presented by Kathryn Phillips Outstanding Educator, Author and Internationally Recognized Speaker

Specifically Designed for Special Education Staff, Speech Language Pathologists, Occupational Therapists, General Education Classroom Teachers, School Psychologists, Counselors, and Other Educators Working with Students in Preschool - Grade 12 Who Have Trouble Organizing Themselves for School Success

Practical Ideas and Strategies

There has been a marked increase in the diagnoses of our students who have weaknesses in executive function skills. Common characteristics can include difficulty with task initiation, prioritization, completion, and the ability to think in an organized way to manage belongings, schedules and assignments. In this fast?paced seminar, Kathryn Phillips will demonstrate how to recognize and assess the impact on behavior and learning and most importantly, give you a toolbox filled with practical strategies to help your students with executive function difficulties.

You won't want to miss this day filled with highly effective ideas and interventions to help your students become more independent and develop greater executive control of their time, tasks and materials.

Ten Key Benefits of Attending

1. Practical Strategies to Address Executive Function Weaknesses that Prevent Students from Finding Success in School
   What skills should we expect at certain ages and how can we help students who don't gain these vital executive function skills? Learn how you can recognize and strategize to teach your students who struggle to think and act in an organized way to manage their time, tasks, schedules, assignments, and behavior
2. Strategies to Help Your Students Improve in Key Executive Function Areas
   Executive functioning helps students to complete assignments, manage time, control impulsive behavior, have appropriate social behaviors, and organize their brains for learning … Learn strategies to help your students who have difficulty in these areas so they can experience success and become more independent
3. Practical Ideas for Your Late, Lost and Unprepared Students
   Your students may appear to be unmotivated and apathetic, but we now know that many lack basic executive function skills … Learn practical strategies to build executive functioning skills in students who lack them
4. Executive Function Skills to Increase Student Success in Reading, Writing and Math
   Learn how executive function skills impact specific academic areas … Strategies you can use immediately to develop skills that will help students organize information for learning
5. How Executive Function Skills Impact Student Behavior and What You Can Do About It
   Understand and learn practical solutions for impulse control, self?regulation and self?management … Help your students develop situational awareness to stop, think and plan before they respond negatively
6. Discover Practical Strategies to Organize, Plan and Prioritize
   You can help students process information in a more organized and logical way to select the tools and strategies they will need in order to plan for success
7. Ways to Adapt Your Instruction and Classroom Structure
   Special Designed Education, Sample IEP goals, apps, tools, and accommodations for students who struggle with executive function demands
8. Discover the Connection to Brain Research: What it Teaches Us about Best Practices for Instruction
   Executive function work is all based on current research about how the brain takes in, processes and stores information … Learn the practical application of this research and how it will greatly benefit your students
9. Tools and Strategies to Teach Independence and Emotional Regulation
   Learn how to help students become more independent with strategies that teach steps in planning, implementing the plan and self?evaluating when finished … Strategies students can use for emotional regulation
10. Receive an Extensive Resource Handbook
    Each participant will receive a comprehensive resource handbook developed specifically for this seminar filled with strategies, ideas and research?based techniques that will support you when you return to your classroom and school

Outstanding Strategies You Can Use Immediately

• Strengthen your students with special needs EXECUTIVE FUNCTION SKILLS
• Dozens of practical strategies designed to increase attention, focus and impulse control
• Recognize and strategize to teach your students who struggle to think and act in an organized way to manage their time, tasks, schedules, assignments, and behavior
• Strategies for co?teaching, inclusive and general education classrooms
• Executive function skills to increase student success in social emotional functioning
• Flexible problem?solving strategies to fit the needs of specific students
• Emotional regulation strategies you can use immediately
• Simple yet effective systems for study skills
• Memory strategies for studying, test?taking, homework, and long?term project planning
• Clearly define key executive function skills and how they impact academic and social success
• Low?prep strategies you can use immediately in the classroom or resource room
• Proven ideas to help students plan their homework, manage short? and long?term projects/assignments and carry out tasks to completion
• Set up all your students for success in an inclusive classroom
• Dozens of practical strategies to teach students to remember, manipulate information, self?monitor, and self?check

A Message From Your Seminar Leader

Dear Colleague:

Do you ever hear any of these statements about your students?

"He's just not motivated."
"She doesn't seem to care about anything."
"He's smart enough but he just won't do the work."
"If only she would pay attention …"
"He explodes over anything!"

If you have heard, voiced or thought any of these, you will want to join your colleagues for this seminar that will provide a specific toolbox of strategies, ideas and solutions for these issues.

Over the past decade research has exploded in the diagnosis and treatment of students who have difficulties in executive functioning. Executive dysfunction is thought to be the underlying neurological difficulty in disorders such as ADHD, autism spectrum disorders, traumatic brain injury, drug and alcohol exposure, behavioral and emotional disorders, as well as learning disabilities. The exciting news is that current research clearly indicates that this deficit can be effectively addressed with proper interventions.

In this stimulating and interactive seminar, designed for Preschool?Grade 12 inclusive and special education settings, you will learn how to recognize executive functioning deficits, assess their impact on learning and behavior, gain a toolbox of practical strategies for working with students, and learn how to integrate these strategies into core curriculum areas. You will leave with dozens of next?day ideas for writing, math, reading, study skills, long?term projects, and test?taking. Strategies in self?awareness, work completion, task initiation, planning, organizing, and goal setting will also be shared as well as ideas for impulse control, motivation, self?regulation, and more!

Don't miss this opportunity to understand how executive functioning or dysfunction makes or breaks students' ability to be successful in school, both academically and socially. Come and learn new strategies and interventions that will make a significant difference for all your students.

Sincerely,
Kathryn Phillips

P.S. I know you have the choice in choosing a professional development day that will meet your needs for the year. I promise, you will not be disappointed!

Who Should Attend

Special Education Staff, Speech Language Pathologists, Occupational Therapists, General Education Classroom Teachers, School Psychologists, Counselors, and Other Educators Working with Students in Preschool - Grade 12 Who Have Trouble Organizing Themselves for School Success

Special Benefits of Attending

Extensive Resource Handbook
Each participant will receive an extensive digital resource handbook giving you access to countless strategies. The handbook includes:

• Step-by-step strategies for meeting the needs of your students with executive function deficits
• Multiple resources and next day ideas for organization, impulse control, memory, behavioral regulation, and attention/concentration
• Ideas for planning long-term projects, studying for tests, homework completion, as well as organizing space, materials and time
• Easy techniques for teaching students situational awareness, social planning, estimating time, and anxiety management
• Lesson planning ideas for helping students to remember and learn information in core curriculum areas
• Teacher-tested ideas to help students focus on academic tasks
• Ideas for specially designed instruction, IEP goals, and accommodations
• How trauma and stress affects executive function performance and how to help
• Dozens of practical strategies for inclusive and special needs settings

For in-person seminars, registrants will also receive a printed copy of the resource handbook as long as their registration is received in the BER office at least 15 calendar days before the event.

Share Ideas with Other Educators
This seminar provides participants a wonderful opportunity to meet and share ideas with other educators interested in adapting their instruction to strengthen students' executive function skills.

ASHA - CEUs

ASHA-Required Disclosure Statement for Kathryn Phillips:
Financial:
Presenter for the Bureau of Education & Research and receives honorarium compensation.
Nonfinancial:
No relevant nonfinancial relationships exist.

Semester Credit Option
Up to four graduate level professional development credits are available with an additional fee and completion of follow-up practicum activities. Details for direct enrollment with University of Massachusetts Global, a nonprofit affiliate, will be available at this program.

Meet Inservice Requirements
At the end of the program, each attendee will receive a certificate of participation that may be used to verify hours of participation in meeting continuing education requirements.

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