Strengthen Your Special Needs Students' EXECUTIVE FUNCTION SKILLS: Reduce Impulsive Behaviors, Increase Focus and Develop Working Memory Presented by Kathy Morris Outstanding Educator, Author and Nationally Recognized Speaker

Specifically Designed for Special Education Teachers, Speech-Language Pathologists, Occupational Therapists, General Education Classroom Teachers, Counselors, and Paraprofessionals

Practical Ideas and Strategies

Over the past decade the 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 for many of our students with special needs. In this stimulating and interactive seminar, designed for grades Preschool-12 inclusive and special education settings, you will gain dozens of interventions and practical strategies you can use to help students lacking executive function skills. Join Kathy Morris, long-time and experienced teacher in the area of executive function disorders, for a day filled with ready-to-use ideas and strategies that will make a significant difference for your students with special needs who appear to be unorganized, off task and have self-regulation behavior issues. You won’t want to miss this day filled with highly effective ideas and interventions to support your students to 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’ Success in School
   What skills should we expect at certain ages and how can we help students with special needs 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. Walk Away with Numerous Practical Strategies to Teach Executive Functioning Skills That Help Students Learn
   Leave with specific strategies to teach and increase special needs students’ skills in working memory, inhibitory control and mental flexibility … How to teach these skills in ways that help students catch up on lost learning
3. Strategies to Help Your Students Improve in Key Executive Function Areas
   Help students who have trouble completing assignments, focusing, setting goals, planning, sequencing, and initiating and persisting in task completion … Strategies that work!
4. Address Self-Regulation and Self-Management Skills
   Learn ways to help your special needs students with impulse control, whole-body listening and managing anxiety
5. Ways to Adapt Your Instruction and Classroom Structure
   Techniques and tips to adapt your teaching that works for all students, but especially those who have difficulties with key executive functioning skills … Quick and easy ideas for setting up routines and your classroom structure for optimal learning
6. 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 that will greatly benefit your students with special needs
7. Tools and Strategies to Teach Independence and Emotional Regulation
   Learn how to help your students become more independent with strategies that teach the steps in planning, implementing the plan and self-evaluating when finished … Strategies students can use for emotional regulation
8. 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 with special needs to develop situational awareness to stop, think and plan before they respond negatively
9. How to Use Visual Strategies to Teach Executive Function Skills
   Create visual strategies that help students gain and retain information … Tips and tricks for helping your students catch up
10. Receive an Extensive Digital Resource Handbook
    Each participant will receive a comprehensive digital resource handbook developed specifically for this seminar filled with strategies, ideas and research-based techniques that will support you as you help your students catch up

Outstanding Strategies You Can Use Immediately

• Practical strategies for identifying and teaching special needs students who lack the necessary executive function skills to be successful in both inclusive and resource classrooms
• Strengthen your special needs students’ executive function skills in grades P-12
• 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
• Help your students with impulse control and self-regulation
• Strategies for co-teaching, inclusive, and general education classrooms
• Flexible problem-solving strategies to fit the needs of specific students
• Emotional regulation and anti-anxiety strategies you can use immediately
• 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 in school
• Low-prep strategies you can use in the classroom or resource room the very next day
• Proven ideas for helping students plan their homework, manage short- and long-term
• Set up all your students for success in an inclusive classroom
• Dozens of practical strategies for teaching students to remember, manipulate information, self-monitor, and self-check

A Message From Your Seminar Leader

Dear Colleague:

Children and adolescents who struggle with executive function disorders often look like those who just aren’t paying attention, have difficulty making transitions or are purposely not controlling themselves. They may be unaware of the connections of their behavior and the consequences of the behavior. Their desks, backpacks and distance learning environments feel disorganized and they may have an inability to plan ahead. The exciting news is that current research clearly indicates that this deficit can be effectively addressed with proper interventions.

In this strategy-packed seminar, designed for grades Preschool-12 inclusive and special education settings, you will learn how to recognize executive functioning deficits and how they can inhibit learning, along with a toolbox of practical strategies for helping these students get organized, stay focused for longer periods of time and be more successful in school and in their online learning experience. Strategies in self-awareness, work completion, task initiation, planning, and organizing, will all be shared as well as ideas for impulse control, motivation, self-regulation and more!

You won’t want to 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,
Kathy Morris

P.S. You will also receive the extensive digital resource handbook I designed specifically for this seminar filled with strategies and ideas ready for you to try with your students!

Who Should Attend

Special Education Teachers, Speech-Language Pathologists, Occupational Therapists, General Education Classroom Teachers, Counselors, and Paraprofessionals

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

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.

ASHA - CEUs

ASHA-Required Disclosure Statement for Kathy Morris:
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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