At North Street Street, there is an international fifth grade art exchange with partner classes living in the rainforest region of Guatemala. The interdisciplinary unit involves lessons with the fifth grade classroom teachers, singing a song with Ms. Boretsky, speaking Spanish with Mrs. Gryak, and creating artwork with Ms. Peri. North Street students send their artwork to students in Guatemala, and the students in Guatemala send artwork to North Street students

On Wednesday, all fifth grade classes spent time in a live video conference with the students in their partner classes in Guatemala. With the assistance of a translator, students in both countries were able to talk about where they live and the area and neighborhood surrounding their schools. Students were able to ask each other questions about their daily lives and explain their artwork to each other. Each video conference concluded with students singing a song from their culture and the teachers meeting each other through the virtual exchange.

Students at Community Connections work on the pre-vocational tasks, such as sorting gift cards. This helps students become independent with real world job skills.

by MaryPat Caldwell

This month I would like to talk about executive functioning and its impact on reading.

In its simplest terms, your “executive functioner” is the CEO of your brain. It plans, organizes and prioritizes information. It sets goals and monitors progress to achieve them. It focuses your attention where it needs to be and maintains it to accomplish tasks. It allows you to shift between tasks and think flexibly. It stores, retrieves, and manipulates information, so you can perform complex mental tasks (working memory).

Executive Functioning is a critical skill for reading and life. It begins to develop in the toddler years and is not fully developed until early adulthood.

If your child is showing weaknesses in executive functioning or has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (“ADD”), don’t despair – these skills can be taught and developed over time.

As with all learning, patience is key. Kids are doing the best they can with the skills they have. I teach my students many strategies to support their executive functioning and reading skills. To name a few, I teach my students how to set small, manageable goals and evaluate their own success. We do a lot of reflecting! We use a toolbox of strategies including note taking, graphic organizers, proofreading checklists, memory resources, technology, etc. I also use prompting questions to get them to think for themselves and eventually ask themselves these questions such as:

• Can I retell or summarize what I just read?

• Do I need to go back and read it again?

• Did my mind wander?

• Were there difficult words/phrases that I did not understand?

• Was my reading fluent?

• Is this book too hard? too easy? just right?

• What tool/strategy can I use to help get me started?

• What help do I need to get started?

• What part of the assignment is hard? What part can I do independently?

• Where can I find that answer?

One of the pitfalls to developing executive functioning is being too directive with kids. We must be careful not to “executive function” for them. We want to teach them how to “executive function” for themselves.

At home, you can try this with a few simple prompting questions instead of redirectives such as: What are you doing? What should you be doing? When they ask questions, respond first: What do you think? How can you solve that problem or figure that out?

You will slowly develop a more self-sufficient and competent youngster, as they learn to ask themselves their own questions over time. If you would like more information on this topic, I have linked resources below:

• Reading Comprehension and Executive Functioning (CHADD)
• Executive Function Strategies: The Building Blocks for Reading to Learn - International Dyslexia Association