Executive Functioning Coaching
Executive functioning coaching is a structured tutoring approach through which students learn a number of strategies to most successfully complete tasks and achieve goals. Executive functioning skills play a pivotal role in daily functioning, from domestic duties to work, school, and social interactions.
Executive functioning skills are defined as a family of interrelated, top-down cognitive processes that allow us to control our impulses and our attention. While executive functioning skills are distinct from one another, they all work together to help us control our behaviors in beneficial ways. A person who struggles with executive functioning may struggle to maintain focus, which in turn impacts their ability to meet deadlines and organize their time efficiently. These challenges will likely preclude a person from producing their best work and managing their responsibilities effectively. Executive functions are trainable, and students who struggle with these skills can be taught to plan and organize to remediate executive dysfunction.
What are some key executive functioning skills?
Students who struggle with executive functioning are often diagnosed with ADHD, Autism, and other specific learning disorders. In order to address your child’s executive functioning needs, Adept engages in a thorough intake process. After a review of any neuropsychological evaluations, academic evaluations, and IEPs, each student is given an executive skills assessment to help provide direction for your child’s individualized programming.
Reading and Writing Tutoring
For our reading and writing specialist services, Adept uses curriculum like Orton Gillingham and Wilson to help students address challenges with reading and writing (decoding and encoding skills). This program has been designed to help students improve reading fluency, reading comprehension, spelling, expository writing, handwriting, and keyboarding skills. Students who often require this type of tutoring may have diagnoses like dyslexia, dysgraphia, or specific learning disorders in reading and writing. Administration and review of relevant reading and writing assessments will serve as a roadmap for an individualized reading and writing curriculum.
Adept's Approach
Decoding, encoding, handwriting, and typing are the four essential elements of focus in our reading and writing program.
- Decoding (Print to Speech)
Decoding is the ability to translate a word from text to speech. The key to reading is knowledge of sound–symbol (letter) correspondences, which requires that readers understand what sounds groups of letters in words represent. English lacks a 1:1 correspondence between letters and sounds, so clusters of what appear to be strange letter groupings tend to especially confuse students with language based learning disabilities. Students will learn to identify the underlying letter groupings that make various sounds so that they can more easily break down words. Syllabication is a key strategy that students will use to break down words at the syllable level to master pronunciation (pro/nun/ci/a/tion).
- Encoding (Speech to Print)
Encoding is the ability to translate language to a written form. In order to encode, one must manipulate English orthography (the alphabet) to represent the sounds they hear come together as spoken words (phonemes). Students are best supported to encode through practice with constructing words from the bottom up, through a morphology based approach. Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units of our speech, and understanding the extent to which are morphemes are both borrowed from other languages and present in a wide range of words will facilitate a deeper conceptual understanding of our language, as well as improve students’ understanding of spelling rules. - Handwriting
Our tutoring for handwriting accounts for issues with print handwriting as they relate to both fine motor skills and challenges with visual-spatial processing. Simply put, whether your child struggles to grip a pencil or flips letters, we can help. We use the PAF handwriting curriculum to specifically address handwriting challenges as they relate to dysgraphia and dyslexia. - Typing (Keyboarding)
Typing is seldom a skill still taught in schools. Beyond a lack of instruction, preexisting challenges with visual processing make typing exhausting, tedious, and stressful. We use the Diana King Typing Program as a framework for teaching typing, where students will learn to position their hands in the home row position so that they can successfully type without looking at their keyboard. This will allow them to type with greater accuracy and speed. Since the visual-spatial burden of typing already requires a heavier cognitive load for students with language-based disabilities, a more streamlined approach to typing will make it easier for them to navigate longer form writing tasks.
College Counseling and Advising
Successfully navigating the college brainstorming, selection, application, and admissions process has become a commitment that demands a lot of time and energy from students and their families. Adept offers 1:1 coaching for students and families to help them prepare for college, whether it be to support standardized test preparation, school research, college application materials, or simply helping them structure their applications in an efficient manner.
Extended 1:1 Support for College Students
College is a dramatic life transition for everyone. Navigating the academic rigor of college proves especially challenging as a student with a learning disability. While universities maintain their centers for disabilities to ensure that students receive the accommodations they need, the support they provide is limited relative to what is available for high school students. Adept takes this into account, where we offer a 1:1 college mentorship program, where a learning specialist approach is coupled with a deeper understanding of a college student’s goals and ambitions.
Within this program, college students receive support and guidance as they grow in their respective discipline and look towards joining the workforce full-time. Students will learn to take advantage of their campus resources, network with peers and professors, and build on key executive functioning skills as the demands of adult life begin to ramp up.
