6

What is executive functioning?

What is executive functioning? Executive functioning is the brain’s “manager.” We can define executive functioning as the set of mental skills that enable us to plan, organize, and execute the steps to achieve a goal.

These include things like remembering what we’re doing, staying focused, managing emotions, shifting gears when plans change, and organizing tasks. Basically, it is the skills that help life run smoothly, whether tackling a math problem or figuring out how to clean your room without giving up halfway through.

As kids move into higher-level academics, they need more than knowing the facts; they need to learn how to apply that information. They need to juggle multiple tasks, follow multi-step directions, manage time, and think flexibly. Strong executive functioning skills are what help them apply what they know.

The All About Learning Press curricula help students develop those executive functioning skills needed for the later grades through tasks such as:

• Organizing and writing a paragraph
• Remembering multi-step directions
• Building the cognitive flexibility required to switch between decoding letters and then grasping the meaning of the word
• Self-checking work with cumulative review
• Developing focus with multisensory lessons to keep students engaged

“There is potential for these skills to be developed through systematic, mastery-based instruction. When lessons are taught in a clear, structured, incremental way, it gives kids repeated opportunities to practice planning, memory, attention, and problem-solving.” ¹

5 Areas of Executive Functioning:

• Working memory – holding onto information while using it (like remembering all the phonological rules learned and applying them to reading)
• Impulse control – learning to resist immediate urges by focusing on smaller, more specific concepts at a time to help with focus and distractibility.
• Flexible thinking – the ability to apply learned information to new situations. Multisensory lessons give students multiple paths of learning the same information, allowing them to try a new strategy if the first one doesn’t work and think outside the box.
• Planning & organization – figuring out the steps to complete an objective. Sequentially taught concepts build skills in taking things one step at a time.
• Self-monitoring – realizing if you’ve made a mistake and being able to fix it. Regular, cumulative review creates a habit of self-monitoring.

Executive Functioning in Dyslexia

Children with dyslexia must work harder than their peers to decode words. Because the cognitive load is higher, there is less brain power left to maintain impulse control, ignore distractions, plan and organize their work, and shift gears in their thinking between decoding words and then comprehending their meaning.

Intentionally building a child’s executive functioning skills until they are automatic habits frees up cognitive power to work on decoding. Without intentional strategies to build executive functioning, a child with dyslexia finds that school and life in general get increasingly more chaotic as she grows. She may lack the organizational skills to plan her work and may miss deadlines. Details fall through the cracks, and she might struggle to find solutions to unfamiliar problems.

Struggles with Executive Functioning are typical for students with dyslexia, ADHD, dyscalculia, language processing disorders, anxiety, depression, traumatic brain injury, autism, and other issues. This does not mean that every child with dyslexia will also experience difficulties with executive functioning. A child with ADHD and dyslexia, on the other hand, has a higher incidence of executive functioning challenges. Every child is different and unique. For this reason, caregivers and teachers should tailor their approach, emphasizing teaching executive functioning skills, to meet each child where she is.

Executive Functioning in ADHD

For a child with ADHD, with or without any co-occurring diagnosis such as dyslexia, executive functioning processes, such as reduced short-term working memory, impact the child’s ability to stay on task and focus long enough to retain the material. She may also experience difficulties in planning and organizing the multiple steps necessary to complete a problem or reach a goal.

Academically, she may struggle to complete assignments or follow instructions. All About Learning Press materials provide significant opportunities to build executive functioning skills in every lesson. The materials are not grade-level specific, so a child can progress through them at the pace that best supports their development of those skills.

How does All About Learning Press’ curriculum build the Five Areas of Executive Functioning?

1. Working Memory

Systematic lessons help build memory in specific tasks by:

• Breaking steps into bite-sized pieces
• Using visuals like charts
• Giving kids tools (like math tables or manipulatives) to hold the information for them
• Scaffolding learning, gradually adding more information that the brain must retain to strengthen working memory.

Students build stronger working memory when the instruction is clear, consistent, and structured.¹ Here are six ways you can help build your child’s working memory.

2. Impulse Control & Attention

Incremental lessons teach kids to:

• Slow down and follow a process
• Stick to the steps
• Check their work before moving on

Building in routines like “read the problem, underline the question, solve, check” develops habits that support focus and self-control.

3. Flexible Thinking

Cumulative instruction helps develop flexible thinking by:

• Mastering concepts well enough to apply them to different or unfamiliar scenarios
• Comparing strategies and discussing when to use them

Continual review helps cement the information in memory so the brain can discover novel connections between old and new concepts. This is also a key factor in creative thinking. Diamond (2013) discusses how children improve at creative thinking when they’re regularly asked to try different approaches to solving problems.³

4. Planning & Organization

All About Learning Press materials are full of built-in planning practice:

• Understand the problem with the teacher’s explicit modeling of the steps.
• Supports are gradually removed as the student improves in problem-solving
• Child learns to choose which operation or tool to use through dialogue with the instructor
• Work through lessons step-by-step with incremental learning
• Regular patterns and routines to lessons so the student can confidently predict what comes next

Scaffolding, or the process of providing learning supports and gradually removing them so the student takes on more responsibility, helps build the all-important planning skills while avoiding frustration. The child is allowed to move at his own pace, while supports remain in place until he can work without them.

5. Self-Monitoring

When a program requires the student to check his answers, reflect on his thinking, and revisit problem areas until they are mastered, it contributes to the development of self-monitoring skills.

• Self-check routines
• Oral evaluations with open-ended questions that help a child think about what he is thinking
• Scaffolding methods that train the child to pause, re-read, and apply the correct decoding strategies with supports that are removed as he improves.
• Opportunities to revisit errors without shame
• Activities that get kids talking and modeling about how they solved something

The IES Practice Guide (Gersten et al., 2009) highlights how necessary these reflection steps are for strengthening executive skills.⁴ When we intentionally incorporate these five areas into lessons, the student starts to internalize them as a habitual approach to everything from writing essays to cleaning his room or organizing his day.⁵

Executive Functioning skills by age

The development of executive functioning skills is by no means linear. There are several complications that make it difficult to create a checklist of what each child should be able to do at various ages. Differences in upbringing, environment, parental involvement, learning differences, life experiences, opportunities to learn various skills, and more all affect the types and speeds at which executive functioning skills are acquired.

• The tasks researchers use to measure executive functioning are typically administered to children ages 2-5. Still, many of the skills considered part of executive functions don’t mature until adolescence or even adulthood.⁶
• Research in this field is still developing. There is some indication that skills plateau around age 12, and executive functioning skills in teens and even pre-teens indicate refined sophistication and strategies for using those skills, rather than the development of new skills.

With those caveats in mind, here are some approximate developmental skills at various ages based on the work of Dr. Christine Chapparo of the University of Sidney⁷:

6-12 months

• Growing attention span

1-2 years

• Notices new things in their environment

3-6 years

• Developing some impulse control
• Able to resist some distractions
• Follows a 2 to 4 step instruction
• Understands the concept of following rules

7-9 years

• Can talk themselves through the steps to complete a task
• Can process new information more quickly
• Resists more distractions
• Able to develop goals
• Learns from mistakes and finds alternatives
• Flexible at task switching

10-12 years

• Continues to increase in impulse control and concentration
• Switches between multiple tasks
• Planning and organizing the steps to reach a goal
• Increase in working memory capacity
• Improvements in flexible thinking
• Planning and organizing of more complex tasks

Teens

• Gradually improving decision-making skills

Executive Functioning: 7 Strategies for Success

1. Create and follow consistent routines. Structure and consistency provide a reliable schedule that the child can count on. It models organizational skills that she can learn to apply in her own life.
2. Break tasks into small steps with mini deadlines. Remembering a long, multistep process is challenging for anyone. To build this executive functioning skill, start small with one or two steps that can be completed in one sitting and praise that accomplishment to help build confidence.
3. Keep each math, spelling, and reading lesson to no more than 20 minutes and allow for regular breaks. Sitting for too long is frustrating for a child who struggles with impulse control. Movement breaks help relieve the tension so the child can sit back down and focus on the next lesson.
4. Use visual organizers like progress charts. A visual means of self-checking work and marking off accomplishments can help the student with self-monitoring: evaluating what was done, discovering mistakes, and planning corrections.
5. Include multisensory activities in each lesson. A strong working memory is a vital executive functioning skill. The use of multisensory lessons engages multiple areas of the brain, so information is stored in different regions, increasing the strength of the memories.
6. Provide direct, explicit instruction. The teacher is directly engaged in presenting the material, modeling the steps, and guiding the student until they are ready to do the entire process on their own.
7. Find ways to praise and encourage even small successes. Sometimes, with our eyes on the bigger picture of mastering a concept, or completing the curriculum, we forget to acknowledge all the little steps that a child has to conquer to get there. However, the child can lose confidence and motivation if the little successes aren’t acknowledged.

FAQ’s about Executive Functioning

See for yourself how the All About Learning Press learning model supports the development of executive functioning skills with these All About Learning free samples.

_________________________
¹ Clements, Sarama & Germeroth (2016) – on how math and executive skills grow together. Clements, D. H., Sarama, J., & Germeroth, C. (2016). Learning executive function and early mathematics: Directions of causal relations. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 36, 79-90. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2015.12.009
² Swanson & Beebe-Frankenberger (2004) – working memory and math success. Swanson, H. L., & Beebe-Frankenberger, M. (2004). Working memory and math problem solving. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96(3), 471-491. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2004-18154-006
³ Diamond, A. (2013) – overview of executive functions and what helps develop them. Diamond, A. (2013). Executive Functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135-168. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143750
⁴ Gersten, R., Compton, D., Connor, C. M., Dimino, J., Santoro, L., Linan-Thompson, S., & Tilly, W. D. (2009). Assisting students struggling with reading: Response to intervention (Rtl) and multi-tier intervention in the primary grades (NCEE 2009-4045). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/PracticeGuide/3
⁵ Meltzer, L. (2010) – practical strategies for supporting executive skills. Meltzer, L. (Ed.). (2010). Executive Function in Education: From Theory to Practice. Guilford Press. https://www.guilford.com/books/Executive-Function-in-Education/Lynn-Meltzer/9781462534531
⁶ Best, J. R., & Miller, P. H. (2010). A developmental perspective on executive function. Child Development, 81(6), 1641-1660. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01499.x
⁷ Occupational Therapy Helping Children. (n.d.). Understanding children’s executive functioning milestones. Retrieved 10-29-2025 from https://occupationaltherapy.com.au/executive-functioning-milestones