1st Annual Children with Complex Challenges Conference with Peg Dawson 

Smart but Scattered: Improving Executive Skills to Promote School Success

Youngsters with poor executive skills are disorganized or forgetful, have trouble getting started on tasks, get distracted easily, lose papers or assignments, forget to bring home the materials to complete homework or forget to hand homework in. They may rush through work or dawdle, they make careless mistakes that they fail to catch. They don’t know where to begin on long-term assignments, and they put the assignment off until the last minute, in part because they have trouble judging the magnitude of the task and how long it will take to complete it. Their workspaces are disorganized, and teachers may refer to their desks, backpacks, and notebooks as “black holes.” Students with executive skill deficits present tremendous challenges to both parents and teachers who often find themselves frustrated by children whose problems in school seem to have little to do with how smart they are or how easily they learn. After providing an overview of executive skills and the critical brain functions associated with their development, Dr. Peg Dawson, the co-author of the book Smart but Scattered, will present an array of practical strategies that can be embedded in the classroom and shared with parents to help children with executive skill challenges become better students and more proficient learners.