Student Highlight.

Jacob is a 7th grade student with very deep thoughts. When Jacob is not playing Minecraft video games, he loves taking his dog for walks to the park with his family.

Jacob's Challenges

Jacob is a gifted student, but he struggled to maintain good grades due to not completing his assignments. He was evaluated using the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function® (Brief 2). Jacob’s Brief 2 assessment showed that working memory, planning, and organization were clinically elevated. Areas of high concern were related to planning ahead for school assignments, carrying out the tasks that are needed to reach goals, and having trouble concentrating on tasks and schoolwork. Other areas of concern were keeping his assignments organized and knowing where to start. With these key executive function challenges identified, Jacob was given specific Cerebrate lessons to empower him with strategies for increased learning success.

Working Memory Solution

Jacob was having a difficult time paying attention, and he lost focus on tasks easily. He shared how this challenge affected his schoolwork and impacted his grades.

The Cerebrate lessons Making a List and Attention Strategies helped Jacob develop strategies to stay focused like setting timers, creating a homework. schedule, and prioritizing when he has more work than normal. He implemented a strategy to write down each of his tasks to help him remember what he needed to complete. With the lesson Paying Attention, he also learned how to determine whether he was paying attention so he knew when he needed to utilize his new strategies to get back on track. Jacob began to see how keeping himself focused will help him stay up to date on his schoolwork.

Jacob originally struggled to pay attention and focus on the work in front of him. By learning how to identify his behaviors when he was not paying attention, he is now able to choose strategies to focus, remember what he needs to finish, and complete his work on time.

Task Initiation Solution

Jacob struggled to get started and keep focused to finish his work, and his overwhelm at the amount of work to complete often causes him to shut down.

With the Cerebrate lessons Getting Started, Get Focused and Task Chunking, Jacob learned how to break his large assignments into smaller pieces. He incorporated small rewards for himself after completing each attainable goal. Jacob realized how much simpler it feels to get started when he has several smaller tasks instead of a couple larger ones. He also learned questions to ask himself to determine his level of engagement to help stay focused on completing his work.

Initially, Jacob struggled to get started despite his feelings of overwhelm. After learning how to make the work more manageable by breaking it into smaller pieces, he can now manage his stress. He is also able to get started on his assignments because he has a plan that includes attainable goals and rewards, and he can identify when he is no longer engaged so he can adjust his plan and still finish his work.

Organization Solution

Jacob was having a challenging time managing his priorities. He shared that having multiple assignments was scary to him because he didn’t know where to start or in which order to complete them.

The Cerebrate lessons Assignment Tracker gave Jacob a way to organize the tasks he needed to complete so he had a big picture of his work. He learned how to look at everything on his list and choose what needed to be finished first and what could wait with the lesson Prioritize It. He recognized that his top priority was to address any missing assignments that were causing him to lose credit. Finally, the lesson Stay on Track showed Jacob how to use his motivator of earning screen time to help keep him on track to finish his work.

Jacob initially had a difficult time knowing where to start and how to order his workload. After learning ways to organize his assignments by importance and creating incentives to finish them, Jacob can identify what assignments he should complete first and then stay on task to completion. He is also able to calm himself down when he gets overwhelmed about his schoolwork by looking at his list of tasks and prioritizing them.

Impact of Change

Using Cerebrate lessons, Jacob learned strategies to pay attention to what he was working on, get started and stay focused on tasks, and manage his priorities to keep on track. Learning how to recognize when he was no longer paying attention and then regain focus will help him complete his work and feel less stress. Jacob’s new skill of chunking his work to make it simpler to get started on what he needs to do gives him the ability to work more efficiently, as he doesn’t spend as much time trying to avoid his work. Prioritizing his tasks helps Jacob organize his workload so he can manage his assignments and turn them in for credit, which in turn gives him the independence he craves. The executive function skills Jacob has learned will help him realize what he is capable of achieving as he continues to see the success of his efforts.