Author: Coach Benjamin Mizrahi

Mr. Mizrahi's Academic Coaching was founded on the belief that every student has the ability to learn. Academic coaching is a service that enables students to set goals and achieve them. Students from middle school through college, gain increased awareness of what it takes to achieve academic success. At the beginning of our journey, we focus on assessment of learning style and discovery of personal strengths. Throughout the coaching process, clients work on their executive functions skills to improve their chances of academic success. Over the past years, Benjamin Mizrahi has helped students improve their study habits, comprehension, and test-taking skills. As a result, these students have earned better test scores and grades, and grown in self-esteem and confidence. We love celebrating those victories with our students.

6 ways Flexible Thinking Weakness impact your kid at school

Published on by Coach Benjamin Mizrahi1 Comment

1. Flexible Thinking and Real-Life Learning

Doctors have a term to describe the ability to think about things in a different way. They call it “cognitive flexibility.” It uses two skills—flexible thinking and set shifting. Flexible thinking is when kids are able to think about something in a new way. Set shifting is when they can let go of the old way of doing something in order to use a new way.

Here’s an example of how those skills work together. Kids often start out learning to tie shoes using the “Bunny Ears” method (making each lace into a loop). They then often progress to the “Squirrel and the Tree” method (making one loop and wrapping the other lace around it). Flexible thinking enables kids to consider this new squirrelly approach. Set shifting helps them “unlearn” the old bunny-ears way in order to use the new method.

Kids who are rigid in their thinking have difficulty moving beyond the more basic ways of doing things. If your child has weak flexible thinking skills, taking on new tasks and responsibilities as she gets older may be tough.

2. Flexible Thinking and Reading

Kids use flexible thinking both for learning to read and for reading to learn. When they’re starting out, flexible thinking enables them to understand how the same letter combination can make different sounds (such as the “ough” in words like enough and dough). It’s also the skill that helps kids understand how words can be used in more than one way (such as “Don’t slip on the banana peel” and “Sign the permission slip”).

As kids start reading books to get information, they use flexible thinking to understand what information is important and what details are just used to add to a description. Flexible thinking is also what helps them understand the perspectives of different characters in a story. Flexible thinkers have an easier time understanding idioms (such as “keep your ear to the ground”) and puns (such as “the joke about the duck quacked me up”).

If your child is rigid in her thinking, you may see that she has trouble identifying the correct pronunciation for words and interprets what she reads much too literally.

3. Flexible Thinking and Writing

Writing is a complicated process for kids. They have to organize their thoughts and choose the words for the sentences. They have to add supporting details while keeping track of the main idea. On top of that, they need to be able to check for grammar and spelling mistakes. All of that requires the use of flexible thinking. Kids who are more rigid thinkers can have a hard time shifting among all these things.

If your child has trouble thinking flexibly, her writing may not have enough supporting details. Or it might have lots of errors in it.

4. Flexible Thinking and Language Learning

Flexible thinking is the skill kids use to learn the rules of language. It helps them to know, for instance, that the way to put most words into the past tense is to add “-ed” to the end. Flexible thinkers also understand there are exceptions to those rules. It makes sense to them that the past tense of go is went. These kids can easily use both rules and exceptions of language.

Flexible thinking also plays a role in learning foreign languages. In other languages, letters can have different sounds. Sentences aren’t put together the way they are in English.

If your child is not a flexible thinker, it may be hard for her to learn the rules and the exceptions that make up languages. She may learn better by listening to how people speak the language than by sitting down and reading the rules in a textbook.

5. Flexible Thinking and Math

Flexible thinking is a key skill in math. Kids use it to find ways to solve word problems and to understand that a phrase like “how many in all” means that addition is being used. Flexible thinking also helps kids understand that there’s more than one way to solve a math problem. They can see how a new type of problem can be solved using a formula they already know.

Without strong flexible thinking skills, your child may struggle with math that requires her to do more than just solve the equation on the page. “Cheat sheets” that connect words or phrases to math operations can be helpful tools for your child. So can checklists of the different things she needs to look at to solve a problem.

6. Flexible Thinking and Studying

Doing homework and studying for a test require flexible thinking, too. Knowing how to switch between different subjects during homework time becomes increasingly important as kids get older and have more work to juggle. Doing math problems requires a very different strategy than doing a writing assignment. Kids need to be able to change their thinking to handle both.

When it comes to studying, kids use flexible thinking to figure out what kind of information they need to pay the most attention to. Do they need to memorize facts and information, such as for a multiple-choice quiz? Or do they need to learn the basic ideas so they can retell the story, such as for an essay test?

If your child has poor flexible thinking skills, switching strategies will not come naturally. This can make homework time a source of frustration. Teaching her note-taking strategies and providing homework planners can ease the stress on both of you.

The Good News: There Are Ways to Help

If your child has trouble with flexible thinking, she’s likely to have some problems learning. There are ways to help, though. Your child’s teacher can use strategies in the classroom to teach your child in ways that make more sense to her.

You and your child can also play games at home to build flexible thinking skills and come up with ways to make homework more manageable. One of the best things you can do is to help your child learn to make a list of pros and cons, first on paper and then in her head, to determine the best choice.

Key Takeaways

  • Kids who have weak flexible thinking skills have trouble knowing when not to use typical grammar and pronunciation rules.
  • Kids with weak flexible thinking skills have difficulty understanding abstract concepts in math and reading.
  • There are tools and strategies that can help your child think less rigidly.

Source: Understood.org

Flexible Thinking

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At a Glance

  • Flexible thinking allows kids to switch gears and look at things differently.
  • Flexible thinking requires the ability to “unlearn” old ways of doing things.
  • Flexible thinking plays a key role in all types of learning.

Imagine you’re driving somewhere, and discover that a street you were planning to turn onto is blocked off for construction. Your initial plan for reaching your destination obviously isn’t going to work. So you instantly come up with a new way to get there.

That’s what flexible thinking is about—being able to quickly switch gears and find new approaches to solve problems.

Your child may struggle with flexible thinking, which plays an important role in how kids learn and adapt to new information in many areas.

Read my next article:
6 ways Flexible Thinking Weakness impact your kid at school

Managing emotions

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Emotions are a vital part of our everyday lives. Whether you’re having a good laugh over a text message or feeling frustrated in rush hour traffic, you know that the highs and lows you experience can significantly affect your well-being.

Your ability to regulate those emotions, in turn, affects how you’re perceived by the people around you.

Our page on Emotional Intelligence explains why it is important to understand your emotions and those of others.

The handout below will help your kid recognize and understand his/her own emotions, and explains why they are sometimes so strong. It offers some practical ideas about how he/she can manage his/her own emotions so that he/she can use and harness them, but are not governed entirely by them.

Download the handout here: Managing My Emotions

Executive Functions – In deepth

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Processing Skills

Cognitive Processing Speed

Cognitive Processing Speed reflects how quickly and efficiently a student is able to perform mental tasks. For many students, the intellectual portion of schoolwork isn’t the challenge – it’s how quickly they can process and express the information that they know. This set of skills becomes particularly important in time-limited scenarios (including standardized tests) and in managing tasks that require multiple steps, such as higher-level math and critical reading activities. Processing speed challenges are also linked to delays in other processing skills and improvements in Cognitive Processing Speed generally result in improvements across a number of other processing skills.

 

Working Memory

Working Memory determines how well new concepts and information can be integrated and used in simple tasks building up to more complex tasks. Critical to academic success, working memory is often implicated in mathematics as it affects how well a student can hold multiple pieces of information in his or her mind while solving a problem or conducting a complex analysis. Similarly, in reading comprehension, simultaneously keeping multiple ideas or pieces of information in mind is critical to a student’s understanding and success. Working Memory skills are crucial in any course of study that values more complex analytical, scientific, mathematical or financial analysis.

 

Visual Processing

Visual Processing correlates with a student’s ability to process and manipulate visual stimuli efficiently to perform various tasks. Challenges in Visual Processing can make upper level math and sciences more challenging as many of these classes use diagrams to demonstrate concepts. For university students, science, engineering and higher-level financial modeling, in particular, are heavily visual subjects that require strong visual processing skills. Students who struggle with Visual Processing may find that they rely more heavily on other forms of input – such as language – to compensate for visual challenges. Visual Processing challenges may be linked to underlying physical challenges, such as visual tracking or convergence challenges.

 

Language Processing – Reading, Written and Oral

Language Processing requires a foundation of being able to decode words effectively, associating strings of symbols (letters) with the appropriate sounds. As students go through school, they are constantly being asked to learn vocabulary and use it in context. Challenges in Language Processing make acquiring new vocabulary difficult, which then means that applying new words they encounter to other higher-order critical reading and thinking activities will be more difficult. Auditory Analysis determines how well information presented in oral formats will be received and processed – particularly when listening to lectures in an academic setting. Auditory processing skills prove important for skills as simple as following directions (particularly multi-step directions) all the way up to retaining content presented in lectures, the predominant instructional format in high schools and universities. Many students with Auditory Analysis challenges become quite adept at APPEARING as though they understand what is being said even if they don’t completely understand. As a result of the extraordinary effort these students must apply to processing auditory input, school can be physically draining and emotionally stressful. For many students, alleviating the effort and energy diverted to accurately processing and comprehending auditory input can result in increased attention across the board.

 

Logic and Reasoning

Logic and Reasoning is the core skill used in problem solving and strategizing. Logic and Reasoning skills impact a student’s ability to plan and prioritize a strategy for multistep problems, especially as teachers assume a base level of conceptual understanding and assign problems that require a higher degree of inference. For any discipline that involves mathematics or written work which requires logically organized, persuasive arguments, logic and reasoning skills are crucially important and can be strengthened with the proper support.

 

Selective Attention

Selective Attention describes a student’s sensitivity to distractions and the ability to sustain attention despite other competing stimuli. Selective Attention is also strongly correlated with a student’s ability to prioritize information and tasks, manage time and stay organized. Selective attention is what allows students to sift through the overwhelming amount of auditory and visual input in their daily environment and interactions and prioritize this input effectively. For example, a lecture may be challenging to attend to due to the sounds of a classmate tapping his pen or the construction site next door. Similarly, a page full of dense text may be challenging to sift through for important information. Ultimately, Selective Attention links strongly with a student’s Executive Functioning skills, which we also address in our program (see below). In the absence of strong Selective Attention skills, a student’s ability to take in and organize information can be seriously constrained. This often means that he or she will have to work extra hard as they attempt to attend to everything instead of just what is most important.

 

Academic Skill-Building and Executive Functioning

Learning Efficiency’s programs cover a number of key academic skills and executive functioning processes, including:

  • Time Management
  • Task Analysis and Prioritization
  • Organization and Note-Taking Skills

Read on for an in-depth description of what each of these skills includes:

Time management

Time management is a bedrock skill needed for academic performance—particularly as students reach middle school, high school and university, when demands on their time rise sharply. Students who struggle with time management often procrastinate and complete their schoolwork very close to the due date, usually the night or morning before. Part of this dynamic is that their workload leaves them little room to get ahead. With more efficient planning, however, they can regain lost time and feel more in control of their work and lives. Mr Mizrahi coaches students in developing a variety of habits and techniques to strengthen behaviors that will help them manage time more effectively. With targeted guidance and coaching, time management can become a more natural part of their lives.

 

Task Analysis and Prioritization

Difficulty breaking down large tasks, such as term-long science projects and research papers, is a problem experienced by many students across a wide range of ages. Larger tasks, especially those with fewer explicit instructions, can give even the most organized students difficulty. Students who struggle with task analysis and prioritization often show tremendous work ethic but have difficulty tackling large tasks or prioritizing a number of competing obligations. When given step-by-step directions, these students possess the technical skills to complete each task, but identifying those steps without direction proves harder. Practicing this skill, just like others, involves pursuing a variety of new and multi-stage projects. Mr Mizrahi provides an excellent opportunity to work on these skills through projects that build on a student’s existing interests. As we work on their chosen projects, we focus more on the process and less on the specific content to reduce the number of stressors inherent in building these skills.

 

Organization and Note-Taking Skills

A student’s ability to be successful in school is not purely academic. For most students, in fact, a far greater component of their academic success is whether or not they can maintain the level of organization required to keep track of the many things they need to do and the information they need to do it. Students with challenges in organization often find themselves spending more time than necessary to complete their work. Mr Mizrahi works with students to build an organizational system they can use to structure their tasks and environment, improving efficiency while offering the comfort that comes with having a predictable structure. For older students (middle school, high school and university), Mr Mizrahi also includes exercises related to note-taking, including HOW to take notes and tools for prioritizing information. Students with enhanced organization and note-taking skills will be able to complete more work in less time – reducing stress while improving academic performance.

 

Left/Right Brain and Brain/Body Integration

Like the building blocks in our physical development (e.g. crawling before walking) neurodevelopmental systems are the building blocks for academic, social and behavioral learning. For a variety of reasons, some of these systems develop less well in some of us than in others—this simply means some of our kids must work harder to support these underlying systems.
When students experience challenges with neurodevelopmental systems, they may appear anxious, distracted or fatigued in class. It takes a great deal of effort to support suboptimal systems that are working hard to keep the body still and upright while also staying focused on the teacher. The extra pressure can overtax a child’s system and leaves little room for attending and learning. For some students, this sense of feeling overtaxed can lend itself to impulsive or even explosive behavior when stress levels rise.
An overview of the most crucial systems includes:

Interhemispheric Integration

The strength of the integration between our left and right brains depends on the efficient functioning of all the other neurodevelopmental systems. Interhemispheric communication makes it possible to reason and strategize, process and retain information, express our thoughts as written words, mentally and physically organize, respond when simultaneously doing another task, manage academics, and play sports. Organized rhythmic activity helps to organize the brain. For students whose integration is inefficient, their processing is often not supported by efficient differentiation and lower level sensory-motor systems. These inefficiencies then leave less energy in reserve for integrating information between the left and right sides of the brain. For many students, interhemispheric integration is linked to challenges in working with word problems and higher order reading comprehension questions. As the demands increase over the years, this challenge may manifest in ways such as essays/reports/homework not being representative of what a student knows or is able to articulate. You may also find that a student avoids expanding beyond his comfort zone of strengths so as not to overload his system.

Vestibular Functions

Our vestibular system, located in the inner ear, forms a foundation for almost all of our other neurodevelopmental systems. The inner ear supports hearing, vision, muscle tone, proprioception, kinesthesia, awareness of gravity and barometric pressure, balance, knowledge of starting, stopping, accelerating, decelerating, motor planning and movement. It is the vestibular system that allows us to do more than one thing at a time. When a student’s vestibular system is working inefficiently, the disorganization can contribute to difficulty in attending to and retaining auditory information when no visual or kinesthetic support is provided. In social situations that are dynamic and unpredictable, many individuals with vestibular challenges may likely seem more reserved or they may prefer to do things on their own rather than be in a more chaotic group setting. Students with vestibular inefficiencies often fidget or need to shift in their chair, feeling a need to get up and move around a room. Rather than asking a student to “sit still,” our program focuses on helping them learn how to monitor their own need for increased vestibular stimulation in order to be able to focus. We give them strategies for coping and perform more successfully in school.

 

Visual Tracking

Beyond visual acuity (e.g. 20/20 vision), our eyes also need to work TOGETHER to focus on a single point (convergence) and move smoothly over information (visual tracking). Strengthening this system allows for improved reading, spelling, attention and eye contact. Ocular motility (visual tracking) is interdependent on the vestibular system and muscle tone. Auditory processing is directly linked with vision through the workings of the colliculus, which means that when one system is stressed so is the other. Roughly speaking our ears follow our eyes in the sense that our auditory attention is guided by what we are looking at. If it is hard for our eyes to maintain focus for an extended period, then we are more prone to auditory distractions as well as auditory miscues. For some students, visual tracking challenges may manifest as skipping occasional words as they read, sometimes missing written details or instructions or miscomprehending what they have read. Irregularities with visual tracking sometimes have an impact on reading fluency due to disruptions in the thread of ideas as sentences have to be re-read or are not fully understood. This may make it so that students struggle to get the big picture when reading more complex literature, affecting skills such as inferring and judging validity.

Proprioception

Proprioception is our own sense of our body in space as well as our sense of self in relationship to our surroundings. Our proprioceptive system is interrelated to our vestibular system, tactility, muscle tone, kinesthesia, vision, smell and hearing. Proprioception has an impact on vital activities such as sleep, attention, and social interactions. Proprioception also supports the development of visual functions, in particular visual-spatial awareness. Students with proprioceptive inefficiencies will sometimes report not feeling rested, even after having slept. The academic and social implications range from difficulty taking notes or copying off the board, challenges with summarizing readings, remembering and following multi-step directions, understanding social cues and social boundaries, and feeling comfortable learning a new game or sport. For students with proprioceptive issues, we build in targeted exercises to strengthen their underlying systems while also providing families with interventions they can do at home to continue supporting proprioceptive optimization and efficiency.

Growth Mindset Enhancement

Students with learning challenges receive a great deal of feedback from the school system about how they are NOT doing well. In addition to the fact that most unique learners would actually do quite well with a little bit of targeted support, the metrics that the system chooses to use are often not fair representations of a unique learner’s true ability. Over time, the feedback from school can result in challenges with self-esteem and damaged self-confidence. Our program for unique learners helps address these challenges by incorporating “Growth Mindset” exercises. These exercises allow each student to rebuild and strengthen their self-esteem and confidence by placing their personal challenges in context and transforming current challenges into future opportunities for learning, growth and joy. Students who move from the traditional “fixed” mindset to a Growth mindset will report less stress, improved self-esteem and a greater willingness to try and explore new activities and social settings.

 

Preschool Math Substraction

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Preschool Math: Take Away the Sea Creatures offers preschoolers an easy introduction to subtraction. Using the picture diagrams, simply cross out the number of sea creatures to be taken away and count how many are left to find the answer to the problems. Preschool Math: Take Away the Sea Creatures will have preschoolers wanting to dive right into subtraction!

Click here to download the worksheet

Back to School Stress

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Back to School Stress

Back to school is a source of stress for many parents, but it’s important to not forget that it can also be for the children. Here are some tips and tricks to help our children overcome the stress of Back to School.

How do our children live the return to school ?

After spending two months of vacation, day camp or outdoor activities, it’s sometimes difficult to resume the pace of the new school year. Parents are of course worried about the reorganization of this busy time of year, but many children and teenagers are also sensitive to the tension caused by the start of the new school year.

The stress that our children live can be manifested in different ways, and the signs are not always very visible. We must therefore be on the lookout to perceive them and thus be able to help our child. For children in early childhood school, there may be more restlessness, lack of appetite, greater insecurity than usual, or difficulty falling asleep. Adolescents, who are more likely to close themselves up when they don’t go well, will appear to be preoccupied, less involved in family life, and may even be more irritable in their relationships with others, such as parents and friends.

What stresses our children?

There is no doubt that stress is different from one child to another and depending on age, but some sources of stress are shared by most:

The fear of the unknown: who will be my teacher? Who will be in my class? Will the atmosphere be good? These are questions that most children and teenagers are asking. If the child changes cycles or goes from lower school to middle school, it’s easy to imagine that this fear of the unknown will become more intense.

External changes: moving, divorcing parents, change in custody, death or sickness of a family member … These factors will make it more difficult for young kids to leave the family cocoon and start his return to school in a relaxed way.

The idea of performance: the desire to have good grades – or not to have bad grades if he has experienced previous failures – and of course the will to succeed in sports and extracurricular activities in which he participates .

Tips for a good life for 5-12 year olds:

Re-establish a routine between supper and bedtime.
Involve your child in shopping for school supplies. He is allowed to make certain choices, when possible, to make him feel involved during this period of preparation.
Spend quality time with your child (even if you are overwhelmed!). Remain available for your child.
Listen to what your young ones tells you and try not to minimize his problems. Even if you feel that he sees things worse than they are, his feeling of anguish is real.

For the 12-16 years old

Spend time alone with your kid doing an activity or a sport that you both enjoy, without television or computer.
If you feel stressed or worried about his return to school, you can try to approach the subject with him.
With his participation, a schedule is established for the moments devoted to school work, leisure and other activities, and, very importantly, sleep.
This schedule is displayed in a common room, such as the kitchen, to ensure that it is respected.
Despite the burden of schoolwork and time spent on activities and recreation, your teenager is required to take time off for family supper. The best way to keep in touch with your kid daily!

For everyone

On school days, get up early enough so that our youngster can have a supportive breakfast and so that you have time to spend a good time with him before arriving at the school, without feeling jostled by the time .

There is evidence that academic achievement is directly related to the quality of relationships students have with their teachers. So if we feel that there is a discomfort, approach the subject with your child and then meet with his teacher or the school principal. Important: avoid taking sides with your child.

Limit the extracurricular activities that your child will participate in. Young people are often full of energy at the end of the holiday and ready to embark on a variety of activities. You must ensure that your child has free time in his / her schedule. Moments where he can simply rest, read, listen to his favorite music or simply play for pleasure and not to perform!

A Day in the Life of a Child With Executive Functioning Issues

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Some kids have a really tough time getting organized and starting tasks. Planning, focusing and using working memory can be big challenges too. Use this visual guide to see how executive functioning issues can affect a child’s daily life.

A Day in the Life of a Child with Executive Functioning Issues

Source: https://www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/child-learning-disabilities/executive-functioning-issues/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-child-with-executive-functioning-issues?utm_source=pinterest&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=understoodorg&pp=1

Hospital demonstrates how to save a choking baby in just seconds

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St. John Ambulance, an organization dedicated to teaching medical first aid, shared  a video that is a must-watch for every parent. According to them, 40% of parents have witnessed their own baby choke, yet over 80% of these parents had no idea what to do in such a situation. This is an alarming statistic, especially when you consider that an average of 34 children are treated for choking on food every day.

In order to combat this staggering issue, St. John Ambulance created an animated video that will show you a very easy way to save a choking baby. In this heartwarming video, four characters – a pen lid, marble, jelly baby, and princess – work together, in a fun-filled manner, to show you the proper technique.

We all know that infants and babies will put anything and everything into their mouth, so this video is incredibly resourceful for those with little kids.