Smart but Scattered: Improving Executive Skills to Promote School Success with Dr. Peg Dawson

Executive skills are task-oriented skills that underlie students’ ability to learn. Although seldom taught explicitly, many educators now see that students who are strong in these skills are more successful than those who aren’t. This workshop will introduce the 11 executive skills featured in the “Smart but Scattered” model, with suggestions for school-based strategies for strengthening each skill across the grade levels. It will also describe a process for embedding executive skills into classroom lessons and daily routines.

As a result of this workshop, participants will:

• Know how executive skills emerge across childhood and identify developmentally appropriate expectations for children at the elementary, middle, and high school levels.
• Be able to identify how executive skills impact school performance and daily living.
• Learn a variety of strategies for teaching executive skills to students of all ages.
• Learn a 5-step process for embedding executive skills into general education classrooms.

Audience: Classroom teachers, special education teachers, and support personnel such as school psychologists, school counselors, occupational therapists, and speech pathologists

About Presenter: In over 40 years of clinical practice, Dr. Peg Dawson has worked with thousands of children and teens who struggle at home and in school. At the center of their struggles are often weak executive skills. Along with her colleague, Dr. Richard Guare, she has written numerous books on this topic for educators, mental health professionals, and parents, among them Smart but Scattered, Smart but Scattered Teens, Executive Skills in Children and Adolescents, and Coaching Students with Executive Skills Deficits. Peg is also a past president of the National Association of School Psychologists, and the International School Psychology Association, and is a recipient of NASP’s Lifetime Achievement Award.