Teaching tips
Advice for the classroom
© 2014 Commonwealth of Australia through the Australian Government Department of Education.
This material may be used, reproduced in material form and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
educational purposes until 31 December 2018, provided all copyright notices and acknowledgements are retained.
How to build executive functions in the classroom
If you are a classroom teacher, how can you strategically approach the development of executive function
in your students? While there are a number of books and programmes that you can investigate, you can go
a long way just by tweaking the kinds of things you already do in the classroom.
Valuing the executive functions
The first thing you can do with a group of students is introduce the executive functions and begin a
discussion about what they mean and how they affect everyone's lives. This is a quick way to demonstrate
that you value these concepts and want to apply them in a classroom context.
You can extend this by referring to the executive functions throughout your teaching: pointing out the
situations in which students or other people need to inhibit their impulses, discussing task demands in
terms of working memory and looking at difficulties through the lens of mental flexibility.
Executive function is so fundamental to human endeavour that you once you know about it, you see it
everywhere. As a teacher you will have no trouble finding links between executive function and school
work.
Making students stop and think
Impulse inhibition is essential for directed focus and sustained action. You can help students with these
forms of impulse inhibition in any context.
Maintaining focus
Acknowledge that we all have wandering minds, especially when working on something difficult or boring.
Rather than blaming students for having poor willpower, help them take a strategic approach to managing
their attention. This includes helping students notice that their attention has wandered, encouraging them
to remove distractions in the environment, and finding ways to make the task easier or more interesting.
Sustaining action
Nobody really likes to struggle, so when the going gets tough, most people do something else. It’s a lot
easier for a struggling student to give up than it is for them to engage with their tasks and continue the
long slog to mastery. You can help students reflect on the moments when they want to quit, find ways in
which they might persist, and find alternative paths to a solution.
© 2014 Commonwealth of Australia through the Australian Government Department of Education.
This material may be used, reproduced in material form and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
educational purposes until 31 December 2018, provided all copyright notices and acknowledgements are retained.
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Prompting second thoughts
In Daniel Kahneman's book Thinking, fast and slow he highlighted two thought systems: the first system is
fast, which is based on human instinct and emotion. The second system is slow, which is based on a
considered, logical response. When you ask students to put their hands up to answer a question (especially
an open question), you might ask for their first thoughts. Once you have collected those responses, you
might ask for their second thoughts, which is their slow, more considered response. After you have done
this you could ask the students to explain how they came to their first and second thoughts.
Problem-based learning
Students need direct instruction and repeated practice in order to cement basic skills. There is no doubt
that direct instruction and repeated practice are critical teaching tools that are more or less engaging. But
direct instruction tends to focus on situations with one right answer and ignores open-ended problems.
Open-ended problems are a powerful way to put students in a situation where they have to stop and think,
pay close attention, weigh multiple factors and consider alternative perspectives and options in order to
formulate a response. They also provide a rich context in which students can think about their own
thinking.
Resources for developing problem-based learning experiences
Into the classroom is part of the Government of South Australia's Leading learning resource and links to
some great videos about problem-based learning.
Dan Meyer is an American maths teacher who has developed a deep expertise in problem-based learning.
His blog is full of examples and discussion.
Ambiguity and risk
While schools are often very good at encouraging students to be conservative, both in terms of managing
their behaviour and of producing work that meets set criteria, we are often not as good at teaching
students how to calculate risk and take action in an ambiguous environment.
Students should be encouraged to look at many things in terms of risk and reward, to predict positive and
negative outcomes, and to develop ways of managing those risks. This doesn't just apply to physically
dangerous activities like climbing a tree, but also to social, intellectual and emotional situations. People
intuitively calculate risk all the time – if this process is brought to our attention then we have the
opportunity to intervene or improve it.
Gever Tulley's book 50 dangerous things (you should let your children do) is an excellent discussion on the
topic of teaching children active risk management.
© 2014 Commonwealth of Australia through the Australian Government Department of Education.
This material may be used, reproduced in material form and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
educational purposes until 31 December 2018, provided all copyright notices and acknowledgements are retained.
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Increasing the challenge
To increase a challenge for a student, we often respond by providing more advanced work, such as more
advanced maths problems or more difficult texts. But neurologically this runs the risk of being 'more of the
same but different'. An alternative approach is to ask questions or provide tasks which help students
explore deeper or broader aspects of the problem, for instance asking them to find patterns, establish
cause and effect relationships or make comparisons with unrelated problems or topics.
Asking the right questions
Bringing it to life is part of the Government of South Australia's Leading learning resource and has a good
framework for asking the kinds of questions that lead to higher levels of cognitive demand.
Not just for the smart kids
It's important that all students spend time grappling with open-ended problems, ambiguity and other
challenges. This is irrespective of academic ability. Executive function precedes academic achievement,
which makes it even more important to give struggling students the opportunity to stretch their thinking.
A key step as a teacher is to realise that even the simplest pieces of content can be rich grounds for
exploration. You don't need complicated or high-level subject matter to challenge your students. All you
need is a willingness to look closely, ask fundamental questions and encourage students to explore and
share their thinking with you.
Resources
Related support guides on the myfuture website
 Support strategies
 Serious play
Supporting worksheets available on the myfuture website
 Developing good controls
 Breaking bad habits
 My assignment game plan
 My assignment timetable
 Problem solving planner
Websites
'Into the classroom' Leading learning, Department for Education and Child Development (SA)
http://www.acleadersresource.sa.edu.au/index.php?page=into_the_classroom
© 2014 Commonwealth of Australia through the Australian Government Department of Education.
This material may be used, reproduced in material form and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
educational purposes until 31 December 2018, provided all copyright notices and acknowledgements are retained.
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'Bringing it to life' Leading learning, Department for Education and Child Development (SA)
http://www.acleadersresource.sa.edu.au/index.php?page=bringing_it_to_life
Dan Meyer's blog,
http://blog.mrmeyer.com
Books
Daniel Kahneman's 2011 book, Thinking, fast and slow
Gever Tulley's book, 50 dangerous things (you should let your children do)
http://www.fiftydangerousthings.com
Sources of information
Department for Education and Child Development, 2013, Leading learning, Government of South Australia,
http://www.acleadersresource.sa.edu.au
Alloway, TP 2010, Improving working memory: supporting students' learning, Sage Publications, California
Bodrova, E & Leong, DJ 2007, Tools of the mind (2nd edn), Pearson/Merrill Prentice Hall, NJ
Dawson, P & Guare, R 2010, Executive skills in children and adolescents: a practical guide to assessment
and intervention, The Guilford Press, New York
Diamond, A & Lee, K 2011, 'Interventions shown to aid executive function development in children 4 to 12
years old', Science, 333(6045), 959–964
Gathercole, S & Alloway, TP 2008, Working memory and learning: a practical guide for teachers, Sage
Publications, California
Kahneman, D 2012, Thinking, fast and slow, Penguin books, United Kingdom
Kaufman, C 2010, Executive function in the classroom: practical strategies for improving performance and
enhancing skills for all students, Brookes Publishing Company, Baltimore
Meltzer, L 2010, Promoting executive function in the classroom, The Guilford Press, New York
© 2014 Commonwealth of Australia through the Australian Government Department of Education.
This material may be used, reproduced in material form and communicated free of charge for non-commercial
educational purposes until 31 December 2018, provided all copyright notices and acknowledgements are retained.
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