Video 10: Provide options for executive functions
An expert learner is a purposeful, motivated and goal-directed learner. Students come into the CS classrooms with a range of executive functions skills. Thus, it’s important to help all of our learners learn how to set and work towards long-term goals, engage in strategic planning, and monitor their learning.
Strategies for providing executive functions:
- Help students set goals and make sure that they understand these goals by using “I can” statements.
- Support project planning incorporating wireframes and design journals. There are many decisions that go into the creation of computational artifacts.
- Provide supports such as starter code and completed exemplars of computational artifacts for students to engage with.
Part of being a good computer scientist is being able to effectively manage projects; focusing on executive functioning helps to develop those skills.
Resources related to this guideline include:
- Location of executive functioning on CAST’s graphic organizer
- CAST: Executive function
- UDL for Teachers: Executive function
Note: We use CAST’s (2018) Version 2.2 of the Guidelines. The CAST link is similarly numbered. UDL for Teachers uses a previous version of the guidelines, so numbering and terms may vary.