Executive Function Help: Teaching Kids to Manage Their Digital Files

Back on March 11, which now seems a long time ago, we introduced a series of posts by Beth Guadagni on executive function and how kids can manage their digital lives. Now that students are working from home, keeping their digital materials organized is more important than ever. So we are picking up this series and hope that it helps your students stay on track. As Beth noted during her introductory post on this subject "having a sense of control over their time and materials lowers anxiety". And we can all benefit from a bit less anxiety in our lives.

Teachers’ increasing reliance on cloud storage like Google Drive means no more lost papers – hooray! Your student can now access assignment sheets and submit work online. But working from the cloud can mean misplaced files. Some kids have even more difficulty with digital file storage than they did with papers because they often use the same account throughout their career at a school or in a district. That means that, in theory, if a high school senior was assigned her district email address when she was in, say, fifth grade, she could be searching through seven years’ worth of disorganized digital files. Not pretty.

Here are some tips for helping your student resolve the digital chaos. Remember: It’s almost certainly going to take a while for your student to do all this independently, so provide patient support for as long as she needs.

Establish Order 

A student shouldn’t store work on both a computer’s hard drive and in a digital cloud because it can be hard to remember which of the two places she used last. Ask her to commit to one. Once she’s committed, first thing’s first: Create a system for a student’s existing files and help her put things where they belong.

She should begin by creating one folder for the current school year and one for each previous year from which she has documents saved. If she gives the file the name of each grade (e.g. 8th, 9th, 10th, etc.), she should be sure to arrange them in reverse-chronological order so that her most current grade shows up on top.

Now, within the folder for the current year she should create one folder for each of her classes. If she includes a number to correspond with which period she has each class (e.g. 1. Biology, 2. Spanish, etc.), the folders will be organized in the order of her schedule and not alphabetically.

If you really want to take things to the next level, most file storage systems will allow users to choose colors for each folder. Pick a color for each subject, then give your student colored pens, folders, and binder dividers to correspond with her digital organization system. For example, if she chooses green for biology, the divider for the biology section of her binder could be green, too. She could also use a green pen to put biology assignments into her planner (or choose green for biology work she enters into her electronic calendar). This color-coding process can help her make sense of her schedule and materials at a glance. Better yet, the mental process of selecting the correct color each time she saves information and writes down a due date enforces the categorization of the different parts of her schedule, helping her brain to be as organized as her planner and files.

Now that she’s got her system in place, it’s time to organize her files. This could be a multi-day process if she’s got several years’ worth of documents willy-nilly, and that’s OK. Anything from previous years can get dragged into the appropriate folder for that year; there is usually no need to organize them further. With documents created during the current school year, your student should take the extra step of dragging files into each class’s folder. Show her how to arrange her files by date in reverse, so that the most recent documents are at the top of the list.


Maintain Order
If you’ve gotten this far with your student, you’ve almost certainly encountered an alarming number of documents named “Untitled.” This frustrating situation is a great learning opportunity. Point out to your student that she has open each of these documents to determine what it is before she can put it in the right place. This is a waste of time, and after having to do this over and over she’ll likely become a believer in titling documents. The next step is to make titling a habit. A good practice is to prompt your student to title each new document immediately upon creating it, before she begins working on it. If she uses Google Docs, she can type the title into the body of the document, then click on the field for the name of the doc and the title she entered will auto-populate, so she needs to type it only once.

Each time your student creates a document, slide show, etc., she’ll need to drag it into the correct folder. But for kids with weak EF, streamlining processes is important. If she uses Google Drive she can eliminate this step and still stay organized. Show her how to create the new document from within the correct folder. Next time she needs to type a reading response for a novel, for example, ask her to open the folder for that school year, then for Language Arts. Now, when she clicks “New,” the document will automatically be saved to that folder. (She can, of course, move it later if she accidentally creates it in the wrong place.)

Step One: Complete! Now that your student can find what she needs on her hard drive or in her cloud storage, check back for our next post about how to manage email.

A Note From Dr. Yellin to Our Patients And Their Families

In response to questions from our patients, I want to let you know that The Yellin Center is open and operating during this difficult and complicated time. As a physician, parent, and grandparent, I have no greater concern than the health and safety of our patients, their families, and our staff. Our assessment model has always been a one-student-at-a time process, which enables us to work with individual students in our offices and still practice the “social distancing” which is so important to contain the spread of the coronavirus. We have taken steps to make sure that our premises are safe for all visitors. We have removed everything – baskets of snacks, books, magazines, toys, literature – from our waiting and family areas and our entire office is disinfected regularly in accordance with current CDC guidelines. We are limiting contact with assessment materials and disinfecting any materials handled by students. We are using new pencils for each student and discarding them after each use. We require all visitors and staff to use Purell or to wash their hands thoroughly with soap and water immediately upon entering our offices. Our staff has been instructed in ways to monitor their own health and to remain home if they show any signs of illness or have been exposed to coronavirus through family or friends, and we ask that students and parents who have scheduled appointments do the same. We will, of course, continue to pay our staff whether they are able to come to the office or not. With schools closed and remote learning and homeschooling being arranged for many students, we know that students may face additional challenges, including how to use their learning strategies outside the classroom, how to use their strengths to best access academic material, and how to deal with anxiety and emotional issues in this unsettled time. We would be pleased to offer support to parents and students to deal with the unique issues they are facing. Just contact our office to set up a call. We are aware that some of the families who have consultations and follow-up appointments scheduled would prefer to do these remotely. We have always offered remote consultations and follow-up and hope that even more families will want to take advantage of this technology. Please contact our office (and leave a message if we can’t pick up your call immediately) to arrange for your meeting or consultation to be held remotely. For those of you who will be visiting our offices but have concerns about travel, we do want to remind you that there is an Icon parking garage directly across from our offices at 839 6th Avenue, with an entrance on 29th Street, just west of Sixth Avenue.   We will, of course, continue to monitor this situation as well as the latest guidance from the CDC and others, and share any changes to our operations. In the meantime, you may want to review guidance from our colleagues at the American Academy of Pediatrics, including ways to talk to your children about the coronavirus and the latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

My best regards to you and your family. Take good care,

Paul B. Yellin, MD, FAAP pbymd@yellincenter.com

Executive Function Help: Teaching Kids to Manage Their Digital Lives

Executive function (EF) is often compared to the CEO of a company or the conductor of an orchestra. People use this set of mental skills to manage the way they understand tasks, form plans, organize their materials and thinking, execute work, and assess their progress. Some people develop these skills naturally through experience, while others need explicit instruction and practice. (Visit Understood.org for an in-depth explanation of executive function and how kids use it.) Poor executive function can stop even the brightest kids in their tracks.

The ever-increasing use of technology in schools has been a great help to kids with poor EF in many ways. More teachers post calendars, grades, and assignments online, allowing students to check due dates, keep tabs on their progress, and figure out what they’re supposed to do without having to keep track of papers.

All of this is great, but the proliferation of online resources adds a new set of challenges for kids who struggle with EF. The internet abounds with distractions. Further, a student who can’t keep a binder organized isn’t likely to somehow develop the skills to manage his email inbox and online file storage.

Many students, particularly those with weak EF, need help organizing their digital lives and keeping them organized. Over the next three posts, we’ll share tips for helping your student keep his files (think Google Drive) and his email inbox organized and functional. We’ll also provide some information about helping your student to minimize distractions when he’s online and keep straight the many logins he needs.

As you read, please remember that if these skills don’t come naturally to a student in the first place, it’s unlikely that simply sharing these ideas with him will result in lasting changes. Students will need ongoing support until these strategies become habit, so be consistent and be patient. Although most kids resist any kind of new system, many intuitively come to love this kind of organization because having a sense of control over their time and materials lowers anxiety.

Stay Tuned!

Preparing for Parent-Teacher Conferences

New York City Public Schools are holding parent-teacher conferences starting this week. Elementary school conferences begin this coming Wednesday, March 4th and continue on the 5th. Middle school conferences are Wednesday and Thursday, March 12th and 13th, and the high school conferences are scheduled for March 19th and 20th.

Sometimes, parents have very specific concerns that they want to address during these conferences. Other times, especially as your child progresses in school, you may be less inclined to attend the parent-teacher conference, since you may have no special concerns and have been to so many of these meetings over the course of your child’s school career. There is much to be learned, however, from just showing up to your child's classroom.

The folks at Inside Schools, which is a rich resource for New York City parents, have published a guide geared to math and science education, which includes numerous things to look at in your child's classroom, geared to each elementary grade level. Before even speaking to the teacher, for example, just looking at what is hanging on the walls, what kinds of books are displayed, and what objects are placed around the classroom can all inform your understanding of how and what your child is learning, even in areas beyond science and math.

Another guide to help you prepare for parent-teacher conferences has been created by our colleagues at Understood, who have listed ten tips to make these conferences more productive, including updating your child after the conference and following up with the teacher. The Understood guide also stresses preparation and includes a downloadable worksheet to help you consider questions and concerns and ask about them in an organized way. This worksheet includes specific questions for students with IEPs and 504 Plans, including the important question as to whether your child's teacher has actually seen the IEP or 504 Plan.

A number of NYC public high schools have student-led conferences. One of these schools is the Hillside Arts and Letters Academy, a high school in Jamaica, Queens, where students present their grades and post-graduate plans to their families. This helps students and their families plan ahead, helps students reflect on their performance, and helps make the traditional conference more relevant to these older students and their parents.