Understanding Executive Functioning and How We Coach Our Students Through Exams

Students with language-based learning differences often have difficulty with executive functioning: skills like organization, time management, planning, self-discipline, task initiation, and follow through, which together help us manage our lives. While some of our students need more help in this department and are enrolled in our Executive Function Coaching Program (EFC), when exam time rolls around Gow teachers are focused on helping their students succeed on their tests. The methodology behind the entire Executive Functioning Coaching Program is “I do, you watch. I do, you help. You do, I watch. You do independently.” One of the top questions we hear is how do we prepare our students not only for exams but for their academic future? Dan Dietz, EFC Coordinator, broke down the process of how we coach our students to and through college.

There is no universal method to help our students succeed. Every student and their learning difference are so unique, so one thing may work for one student but not the other.

Exam review begins two weeks before with students going through review activities in class and independently for homework. Teachers provide their students with a variety of different study strategies. Teachers will show student how to effectively use flashcards, how to learn from old tests and quizzes, how to create their own mock quiz and more.

Teachers at Gow understand our students better than anyone – a teacher cannot just tell a student to go and study, it won’t happen or at least not to the level the student needs. Instead our teachers realize they must show the student how to study, tell them how long to study and make the review process seem more manageable by breaking it down into smaller parts.

This year Gow is adding another layer. All the teachers for classes that administers exams have put review material in one central location electronically stored. This allows advisors, study hall proctors and EFC coaches to have access to the material and help students in the preparation for exams as a community.

Exams at Gow are not meant to frustrate our students by making them answer one hundred questions in a forty-five-minute block of time. Quality over quantity is our approach. We want our students to display mastery of their knowledge in a subject by working through a handful of problems completely in the time they are given.