: Fostering Executive Function Skills in Early Years A focus on creating challenge and promoting talk about learning

In this blog Katie Moores, Early Years Leader at Werneth Primary School in Oldham, discusses her team’s approach to developing executive function within the Early Years, focusing on Creating and Navigating Challenge, and Promoting Talk about Learning.

Executive function goes hand in hand with self- regulation; both are integral to laying the foundations to successful learning and successfully navigating through daily life. Executive function refers to a set of skills that support children to resist their impulses and control how they focus their attention. It is also fundamental to support children to retain information so that they can apply it.

The main skills of Executive Functioning can be summarised as:

• Holding information in mind (working memory)
• Inhibiting impulsive behaviours (inhibitory control)
• Controlling how to direct attention

The task of teaching a class of three- and four-year olds to develop executive functioning skills is monumental. At Werneth Primary School, we have used the EEF’s Approaches to Support Self-regulation and Executive Function to support us with this.

There are 5 approaches to support Self-Regulation and Executive Function:

1. Creating and Navigating Challenge
2. Teaching Self-Monitoring and Self-Awareness
3. Creating a Community of Collaborative Learners
4. Promoting Physical Activity
5. Promoting Talk about Learning

When leading this change and planning how we were going to further support our children’s executive functioning skills we followed the EEFs implementation Process. It was vital to adopt a practical and tailored approach that recognised the implementation as a collaborative process. This meant discussing as a team which of these approaches would work best for our children; which would be sustainable and which would bring about the most success.

Whenever implementing change, it is essential that staff are:

Engaged so that they can shape what happens;

United around what was being implement, how and why;

Reflect monitor and adapt to improve implementation. 

In order to bring about effective and sustainable change we selected two approaches from the EEF toolkit as our initial focus: Creating and Navigating Challenge and Promoting Talk About Learning

This approach involves creating developmentally appropriate challenges for children to practise their skills in different contexts. Below is an example of where we looked at creating challenge.

On a Friday afternoon, a small group of children play on the obstacle course in the outdoor provision. After circulating the course a number of times, boredom sets in, impulsive behaviours arise and the children’s focus visibly dissipates. They aren’t being supported to use their executive functioning skills, and they aren’t learning.

The Nursery practitioner observes this. She decides to make their task more challenging, by guiding the children to the outdoor den building area. She asks the children to help her make ​“a tricky obstacle course.” The children begin to refocus, the cogs turn as they wonder how they can make an obstacle course that is tricky. They begin to work together, stacking and turning the different sized crates, adding planks, deciding on the distance between the different stepping stones. By creating and navigating challenge, the practitioner has enabled them to develop a multitude of other skills including their communications and language, maths skills, their ability to think creatively and ability to work collaboratively.

Further opportunities to create and navigate challenges have been carefully planned such as using increasingly complex instructions, memory prompts, posing problems and providing learning environments which allow for challenges to be adapted.

This approach supported our focus to improve Communication and Learning across the Foundation Stage. Through ​‘self talk’, practitioners support children to plan, monitor and reflect on their thinking and learning.

During block play, adults model planning out loud how they will build their construction. They talk through which sized and shaped wooden blocks they will use, they vocalise what they plan to do next, reflecting on what they could do to improve their model. As the children begin to build their own constructions, the practitioners use sentence stems to promote the children’s talk about learning. ​“I am using the … block because”, ​“I will change…” ​“It would be better if I…”

Over time and regular modelling, children became much more confident talking about their learning. This had a hugely positive effect on their metacognition and executive function, as they began to focus their attention and think more flexibly. Additionally, they became much more resilient and confident to try out their own ideas and listen to other’s suggestions.

Planning adult-led opportunities to teach executive strategies continues to be the way forward, as we carefully adjust the intensity of adult scaffolding over time. This enables children to develop greater responsibility for applying strategies to monitor their own emotions and thoughts.

The EEF’s Schools’ Guide to Implementation’, explains that; ​“Implementation is framed as a process of ongoing learning and improvement.” It was crucial that this was at the forefront of what we did and continue to do as we seek to further improve the executive functioning skills of our children. The positive changes that we have seen have taken time: it is an ongoing process, and there is no ​‘quick fix.’