Executive Function Strategies Blog

This article is going to introduce a simple but powerful principle that can help you study more effectively for any given class or exam and achieve academic success.  The principle is called “deliberate practice” and research has shown it to be the key to learning new things and building all types of skills: academic, athletic, musical, and more.

But first, let’s address two commonly held views about studying and academic success in general.

I won’t forget the day I took the road test to earn my license.  I’d been (reluctantly) attending three-hour classes on Saturday mornings and cruising around with both my mom and dad (who, by the way, took drastically different approaches to educating me on the nuances of driving).  By the time my road test came, I’d felt that I had practiced enough, studied enough, and focused enough to walk away with a piece of plastic that would finally give me the freedom to cart myself all over town.  

Summer vacation: that time of year when students spend long days at the pool, longer weeks at camp, and even longer weeks trying to delay required summer reading.  For most kids, August is the start of summer reading, which also means the start of panic.  I have how much to read? And I have how much time to read it?  If your child would rather be the catcher on the ball field than read "The Catcher in the Rye," then the following five reading strategies might need emergency deployment.  Here’s how you can support your child in completing summer reading assignments before school begins in the fall:

As both an executive function coach and a teacher, I’ve seen students stress over tests again and again.  Over the past few months, for example, I’ve been coaching a student whose emotional regulation around test preparation and peformance is nearly debilitating.  She experiences acute anxiety when a test is coming up and that anxiety carries through until the moment the test is over.  During our work together, we discovered that her test anxiety fluctuated based on the format of the exams: she could excel on multiple choice questions but would bomb the open-response formats.

“What,” I thought to myself, “could be responsible for the different outcomes?”