Support Executive Function While Reading: 3 Ways

The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University defines executive function and self-regulation skills as the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully. Just as an air traffic control system at a busy airport safely manages the arrivals and departures of many aircraft on multiple runways, the brain needs this skill set to filter distractions, prioritize tasks, set and achieve goals, and control impulses.

Executive function takes a lot of practice to develop and improve, even for adults. The good news is that you can support executive function while reading with your children, without adding a single extra activity to your day.

Talk About Problems, Plans, and Solutions

When the main character of a book or story comes face to face with their primary challenge, that’s the moment to slow down and focus on what happens next. What kind of emotions do they have? What plan do they come up with to try to solve their problem? Do they end up following that plan, or going rogue? Does the first plan fail, forcing them to be flexible and come up with a new one? Does the character solve their problem alone, or do they need help from others? What unexpected challenges or circumstances force them to adjust their plan along the way?

When we ask questions like this, we’re modeling the underlying thought processes involved in planning, executing plans, problem-solving, using cognitive flexibility, anticipating possible outcomes and challenges, and reflecting on past behavior. Here are a few questions you could try with elementary-aged kids:

• What was the character’s problem?
• What plan did they have to try to solve their problem?
• Do you think it was a good plan? Why or why not?
• How did the character change their plan when they didn’t reach their goal the first time?

Model Self-Monitoring Self-Talk

You can start talking through self-monitoring related to reading with early elementary-aged kids, and these conversations keep benefiting a child’s executive function and oral reading skills all the way through elementary school. With kindergartners, try occasionally making a “purposeful error” while reading aloud, reading a word wrong on purpose. Then say something like, “Oh wait, that word can’t be X because it starts with an N,” or “Oops, I read X, but when I looked again, I realized it was Y,” or “Wait, X is a short word, and I’m seeing a long word there, so I might need to try that again.” This shows your child the thought process they can use to catch and fix their own mistakes.

This same principle applies to older students reading books aloud to their parents. You can help them self-monitor when they make decoding errors. For example, try saying, “Oh, that was close. When you read ‘play,’ I picture the letters p-l-a-y in my mind, but I just see p-a-y on the page.” This strategy helps your child pay attention to smaller details and compare what they said to what’s actually on the page, which is self-monitoring in a nutshell.

One quick note: it’s not necessary to use this strategy for every single reading error, since interrupting too often can break the forward flow of reading. In fact, at some point, many kids start saying, “I know what you’re going to say,” and fix the error themselves, which is exactly the goal.

Show Them Attentional “Pausing”

All the strategies above are great, but what if your child has a hard time getting through an entire book? Maybe they start making off-topic comments or getting up to shake out some wiggles. When that happens, try talking through “attention pausing,” the ability to shift attention away from a task, do something else, and then return to the original task.

This is easier said than done for adults too. Think about starting a load of laundry, then getting distracted by another household task and completely forgetting about the wet clothes sitting in the washer for hours.

During reading, try letting yourself participate in an off-topic conversation with your child for a minute or two. Then say something like, “Oh, that was fun talking about X, but I just realized we need to get back to our book. Where were we? What was happening again?” If your child seems to be struggling to sit still, you might say, “Do you think we should get some wiggles out? Let’s do a quick movement break, then get back to our book.”

Additional Support for Executive Functioning Skills With Enrichment Therapy & Learning Center

At Enrichment Therapy & Learning Center, our passion is helping students thrive with their communication and academic skills. We know building a child’s executive functioning skills is essential to helping them achieve their goals. Together, we can help your child master reading, executive functioning, speech, language, writing, math, and so many other skills. Don’t hesitate to reach out, contact us today.