Organizing Strategies to Prepare for Homework and the Real World Description: An Interdisciplinary Approach

May 13, 2008
with Michelle Garcia Winner, CCC-SLP

The vast majority of students with social cognitive deficits have immense difficulty developing organizational skills to manage the increasing complex expectations of life in upper elementary, middle, high school and into their adult years.

Organizational skills are a set of executive functioning skills that develop through experience and minimal prompting for neurotypical students. These same skills can be mammoth, overwhelming tasks for even our most intellectually sharp students with social cognitive deficits. The impact of poor organizational skills is immense, affecting one’s outcome in school as well as at home and work.

Weak organizational skills are poorly understood and often written off as pure laziness on the part of a “smart” student. Relatively little support is given to teach students to develop these critical skills that carry over into their future jobs as adults.

In this workshop we will explore two different types of organizational skills: static and dynamic. We will then break apart the concept of dynamic organizational skills into 10 concrete steps. Each step is vital towards the completion of what is considered a “homework assignment”; an educational strategy will be reviewed to accompany each step of the process. A large handout will be provided to support this teaching method.

Learning Objectives: Participants will be able to:

1. Increase awareness of participants own organizational structures so that they can better offer support to others.

2. Define the difference between static and dynamic organizational skills.

3. Define a strategy for helping students to explore their own motivation towards approaching complex tasks.

4. Describe the 10-step model to understand the deeper organizational skills and support each step with an instructional strategy.

5. Write 3 IEP goals to support addressing deeper organizational issues in our schools.

6.Define a time in their school and/or home day where they can incorporate some aspects of direct organizational instruction with their students.

Michelle Garcia Winner's Biography

Michelle Garcia Winner is an SLP who specializes in students with social cognitive deficits. She runs a clinic; authored numerous books and speaks internationally. Michelle's goal is to help educators and parents appreciate how social thinking and social skills is an integral part of students academic, vocational and community success. She was honored with a "Congressional Special Recognition Award" in 2008.

For More Information
contact Barbara Freethy Transdisciplinary Workshops, Inc.,
at www.transdis.com - barbara@transdis.net.