Literacy Talks

Cognitive Flexibility: The Mental Skill Every Learner Needs

• Reading Horizons • Season 5 • Episode 12

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Switching between different cognitive tasks is critical in the classroom. Students learn one word can have multiple meanings. They move from one subject to another. This episode of Literacy Talks focuses squarely on cognitive flexibility, its role in executive function, and how literacy educators can help students build these skills to be confident, capable thinkers and readers.

So, get set to learn more about cognitive flexibility and why it matters. You can help students learn about changing their minds, switching from one idea to another, and simultaneously holding multiple viewpoints and thoughts. This episode gives us all a great deal to think about!

Show Notes
Literacy Leaders:

Resources:

Literacy Lexicon:

  • Cognitive flexibility: the mental ability to switch between thinking about two different concepts, according to the context of a situation.
  • SRSD: Self-Regulated Strategy Development




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Read the transcripts.

Narrator:

Welcome to Literacy Talks, the podcast for literacy leaders and champions everywhere. Brought to you by Reading Horizons, Literacy Talks is the place to discover new ideas, trends, insights and practical strategies that will help all learners reach reading proficiency. Our series host is Stacy Hurst, a professor at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Advisor for Reading Horizons. Joining Stacy are Donell Pons, a recognized expert in literacy and special education, and Lindsay Kemeny, an elementary classroom teacher, author and speaker. The focus of this episode is cognitive flexibility in the classroom, particularly as it relates to student's ability to switch between two different cognitive tasks. As students literacy skills deepen. They need cognitive flexibility to master multiple meanings, varying pronunciations, writing conventions and more. It's another important dimension of executive function. So if you're ready to learn more about an essential skill for readers at all levels and ages, fire up your cognitive flexibility for this episode of Literacy Talks. Let's get started.

Stacy Hurst:

Welcome to this episode of literacy Talks. My name is Stacy Hurst. And I'm joined today by Danelle Pons and Lindsay Kemeny. And every episode, we spend some time talking about things that are related to literacy, development, instruction, all those things we take turns choosing topics. And today, Donell had the job of choosing what we're going to talk about. And I think this will be a great conversation. So Donell, talk to us, what are we talking about today? You

Donell Pons:

bet. I'm kind of giggling because the topic if you hear it, you might go roll your eyes and go home? Or you might say, oh, yeah, yeah, I don't know, we'll see. We're actually going with an article, there's a lot of information on this topic is cognitive flexibility. That's the topic. And we're using as a basis for our conversation, an article that was in the perspectives periodical that's put out by the International Dyslexia Association, and we'll put a link to that too. So folks can look it up if you haven't, or if you're not familiar with it. The The title is change of mind, cognitive flexibility in the classroom. And it was really It caught my eye. It's interesting, because from time to time, we have these conversations, we've had them amongst ourselves and I know widely. And I find that very interesting about all of the various aspects that can impact reading for a student. And this, to me is a really big one that I don't see getting that much traction. It's like an incidental, though I'll put it that way. Oftentimes, if you hear anything about it is picked up as an incidental. But to me, and particularly with my work working with older adults who this has been a challenge their whole lives. This is a big deal. This is a big piece, this cognitive flexibility. What's interesting is, is that I was also looking at some other material. And one of the definitions that they came up with cognitive flexibility is, it's broadly defined as the mental ability to switch between thinking about two different concepts, according to the context of a situation, which I thought was kind of an interesting, more specific definition. And it's a little bit different than the definition that we've got in what we're working with. And they actually, in that piece that I read, they, they pulled out cognitive flexibility from behavioral flexibility. But within the one article that we've been reading, they were pretty much together, the cognitive was with the behavioral flexibility. And it's just what you're thinking about, it's the ability to switch between different cognitive tasks when needed, and the behavior that goes with that when you're asked to do that. And you can picture in your mind anytime you might have had to interrupt someone. And it's really how they respond to that interruption. And you can guess that how high a value the thing is they're engaged in also impacts the ability to switch to that that makes sense. You know, if you're really engaged with that thing, it's a little harder to switch or how much you were invested in what was going to happen if the plans change, that kind of thing. And some of the recent research I've seen on it has really come out because of COVID 19. There's been a renewed interest in looking at cognitive flexibility, because so many people had to switch up big time, how they did things, and they kind of looked at were people okay with that. And if they weren't, how were they able to be okay with it? It's kind of interesting, but I want to open the conversation by saying, you know, asking Stacy and Lindsay, both of you. Have you at any time had conversations with other folks in education or in teaching reading specifically, where this concept of cognitive flexibility has even come up in terms of reading and teaching reading?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Not really, except Did that I think we talked a little bit about this in a podcast episode several years ago, or a couple years ago, because I listened to a session at Ida. And they were talking about this. They had like a word, it was like grafico, something semantic cognitive flexibility. Do you remember that? Yes, I do. And it was really interesting, because they actually had a study where had they had, you know, done, I wish I had listened to the episode to remember go back to my notes, but that they had done something where the students were, you know, switching off between tasks, and then it did show improvement. And I feel like it was a comprehension. But I don't know if I'm remembering that right. Do you remember that time though? Yeah,

Donell Pons:

I do remember, and I remember us having a conversation about it. Because this has come up for me, I think I've shared many times, because I have folks in my household with the ADHD profile. And so this piece is really big for us at home, we talk about it interact with this kind of discussion about cognitive flexibility a lot. So I was interested in seeing it at Ida. So I chase that down a little further Lindsey, to see if there were things that you could actually activities that you could have students do to improve certain aspects. And that research isn't really fantastic. And saying, do this thing, you'll see an improvement so far. Yeah,

Lindsay Kemeny:

I wonder because we don't hear about it much. Right. So I kind of wonder, I heard about the one time in that session, but and then a little bit reminds me of set for variability, right? Because you'd have to be flexible and have cognitive flexibility. For set for variability. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst:

I've had conversations with my pre service teachers frequently actually about the need to be flexible as a teacher. And we have a lot of practical experiences that students plan for, they spend a significant amount of time and then they show up and something has changed. They have a fire drill or, and, and I just say that is part of teaching. And we just need to learn to be flexible. As student wise, when I was teaching first grade, I had a student who had autism. And one of her characteristics was that she was so tied to a schedule, like everything had to be really regimented. We met the year before she was in my class. And I remember having concerns about that, because I consider myself a really flexible person. And so I also as an educator, like to go with the teaching moment. So sometimes I didn't start my literacy block right at 10 o'clock, or I'd always say probably within five or 10 minutes, but she seemed really rigid. So I expressed my concerns, and the team decided to put her in my class anyway. But I did learn a lot of the things we read about in this article, I have the opportunity to put into my practice for all students, not just her, but I remember a big one was those cues. Okay, now, in 10 minutes, we're going to be doing something else, and just helping her be prepared for that. So that was some real time experience I had with this. And that was the cognitive and behavioral together, right. But this is a fascinating topic. And I too thought about this set for variability as well.

Donell Pons:

I think it's interesting to keep a to help folks keep this all in mind, this is all under executive functioning. So I even had another article that said, think of it as an umbrella, executive functioning as the umbrella. And within this, we have this cognitive flexibility, behavioral flexibility, of course, many other things. But they're finding this is a really important aspect. The other thing I found interesting, the article touched on was the development of cognitive flexibility over time. And you're most primed for development of this one you're rather young, which I found was interesting. They've done some research, I haven't looked at another article, because I found that so interesting to look at how young and then the aging, and that you're still relatively young, when you're at your prime have cognitive flexibility. So I really wanted to chase that down. And it looks like they're starting to even measure at two, three years old. If you don't see mechanisms for cognitive flexibility, are there pieces or components that are developing? I thought that was really interesting. But what we're talking about here is they're finding a prime age about 15, 21. Right in there is your prime age for cognitive flexibility. Think about this in the context of teaching reading. How old are we in the United States when we teach young people to read and then think about the cognitive flexibility in that student to? Anyway, some thoughts? What do you think the two

Lindsay Kemeny:

year olds are just starting? And then yeah, it's also interesting because like in kindergarten, you're first starting. And I guess if you think about how that flexibility is still developing, you when you start you teach the alphabet and you don't necessarily teach Oh, well, this letter can also spell the sound and the sound This sound right? They have gotten a little more rigid. And then as they go, you start introducing those other sounds, you kind of do it gradually.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah. And it makes me think about just how concrete their thinking is at that age, to the point that they may not even understand idioms or figurative language. And you have to be really explicit about that. And the students who start to understand that a little bit faster than others, even inference is tricky to teach that age to yeah, those are the things I'm thinking. And

Donell Pons:

I thought of it as in the structured literacy framework. So now structured literacy makes even more sense, doesn't it? Looking at it in this framework, thinking about, you start with those concepts that you can are rule based, really solid concepts, Lindsay, you refer to these things, things that are more concrete, Stacy, you said it and another way, how that would make a lot of sense when you're teaching framework to start with that, before you introduce other things that don't have those sort of more concrete sort of rules to them, that will take more flexibility. So getting that base down first. And being really solid with those concepts makes really good teaching practice sense, even when you're thinking of it in context of cognitive flexibility.

Lindsay Kemeny:

So when we hit it at 21, is what it said. That's the key. Basically, if you think like the older we get just the more rigid we are thinking, that's like, when people are close to retirement, they're like, Oh, please, I'm not changing what I'm doing in my classroom now. Like. It's the cognitive flexibility.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, which is funny about that, because I'm thinking about my students. Some of them are in that range, right? Definitely the higher end, but I guess I have a window of opportunity with them. But then I'm also thinking about my time as a literacy coach, and teaching adults who demonstrated behavior that was consistent with what you just shared, Lindsay, but anything specific to the concept of morphology. And their responses to that because, you know, with morphology, a morpheme has a general meaning. And it's not always concrete. And my pre service teachers, I actually remember noting this just a few weeks ago seem a little more okay with that. Then even some in service teachers who are like, Oh, how do we even teach this if there's so much variation in what a morpheme can signify?

Donell Pons:

And I think we've joked before, Stacy, I think you've been at least at one of these with me and Lindsey, maybe you were with me at one of these conferences where they, they did a presentation on morphemes and morphology. And more than a few times, some educators would get up indignant, outraged, upset and waltz out. Because there wasn't, they were saying, Well, we have to be flexible. So if we're going to pronounce what we would do, we might break it this way. And if we're going to look at it for meaning, we might break it this way. And that was not okay to think about. So here's something else I want to ask you about. So, as I'm reading this, I also felt a little bit schooled. Because as I've mentioned, I have folks in my household, we have the ADHD profile, we got a lot of things going on neuro atypical, that's our way to go. We'll just label but and so a lot of these things made sense to me that a lot of my was relating my head going oh, yes, I'm so familiar with that. At the same time, I had some moments of embarrassment where I thought to myself, why didn't I know that? Why didn't I realize that that's what that was, because so many times, especially with my two children who have dyslexia, and particularly my one son, who really struggled a lot I've spoken about before, a lot of behaviors that were had nothing to do with dyslexia. I was told all that's because of the dyslexia. And it had nothing to do with dyslexia. But because I didn't know enough to tease that out. Actually, what my my son was struggling with was ADHD. And that took us a long time to pull that out and get him the support and resources much longer than it should have, given how much I thought I knew, and how much training I'd had, that I was surprised by how still we lump things together. And really understanding and looking at these things and pulling them apart is to the benefit of our students every time. So I thought that was kind of interesting. I had a schooling moment in reading this myself. But let's let's move on a little bit with the cognitive flexibility and stay. So you talked a little bit about the profile of a student who might You might already be prepared that there might be some cognitive inflexibility perhaps, and what you can do about it. So you mentioned some things about having a regular schedule. The article that we were looking at said also suggested a few things, but in both of your settings and different experiences, what are some things that you've just kind of either read about and picked up and used or you found useful over time when working with students who might have issues with cognitive flexibility? One

Lindsay Kemeny:

thing I do, you know, I have a visual timer so and I think I've talked about it before but when my when I'm pulling small groups, my students are doing various activity He's right. And so I have a PowerPoint that runs everything and shows where they're going to be. And there's a timer at the bottom and it slowly, there's like, it's like a rectangle, it's white, and it slowly fills blue, like from the left. And as soon as it's all the way blue, the slides are gonna switch, and they're switching to the next activity. So that is really helpful for students, because they can look up there and kind of gauge, you know how much longer they have before we need to switch.

Donell Pons:

Gosh, I really like that I like the visual, that visual image because it's also a good thing for time management, which can fit into this flexibility piece to is being able to manage time, within a segment say I need to complete a certain task, I'm not quite sure what a budget my time, that's helpful in many ways, not only to let me know when it's going to end, and be prepared, but also how I might be spending my time doing that particular task I like like it for both of those reasons. Stacy How about you,

Stacy Hurst:

I have been thinking a lot about behaviors that become manifest when this is something a student has a hard time with. And it depends on their age. But I did teach first grade and I could do this there. But I know that when something was disrupted in a schedule or whatever that some buddy wasn't expecting and had an adverse response to, then I would let that behavior express itself in a safe way. But then later, when they were calm, really try to rationalize, like talk about give them the rationale for can you see why acting differently would have been better? Can you see why this had to happen? And then also follow that up with next time, something like this might have been what can you do, and just helping them be prepared for it. And some of this is just behavior 101. Right. But I think being very explicit about it could be helpful depending on the student too.

Lindsay Kemeny:

So another thing so if you think about when a young child is learning to read, and maybe they're not solid in those sound symbol correspondences, and then as they're sounding out, they're going to say one wrong, right? And then you've got to correct them. And this could be either they say it wrong, or maybe there's multiple sounds for that spelling. Either one, they've got to be flexible in order to say, Okay, I got it wrong. Let me try again. Or okay, it wasn't the EAA wasn't either it was at and they need to be flexible. So I have a student this year, who, really, she's a memorizer. And she guesses from context, right. And we've been dealing with that all year where she, she's really good at it, she can memorize words really well. And she wants to skip the hard part, that hard part of decoding. And when she gets one wrong, then she has to go back and sound it out and she gets mad. And at the beginning of the year, she would really stomp her feet, she would have a tantrum, she would start like whining, crying and be really mad, she just wants to skip, she was wishing I had the books where she could just memorize the pattern, right, which I don't. So she was really frustrated, because why she doesn't have the cognitive flexibility. And also the behavior flexibility, because she would start those tantrums and the stuffing the void. Sometimes she would just like put her head down and would refuse to do things. And so I'm like, Oh, my goodness, we need to work on that. So one thing is that in my writing instruction, I'm using an approach called SRSD. And self regulation is a huge part. I mean, it's called self regulated strategy development. And so we do a lot of things like self talk. And we and I model this when we're writing and the students do it and like all model, like when I'm writing and then I'll stop and say, this is hard. My hand hurts, I don't know what to say, oh, I can do it, relax, don't rush. And I start modeling, doing some positive statements and talking myself through it. And then as a class, we have come up with all these different self statements, you know, my class will say, persevere, you can do it, try again, you know, don't worry, all these different things. And then every time we write, they'll choose some statements. And they'll write it on their, like their planner for writing to remember to tell themselves when things get hard. So that can apply to reading too. And that's what I told the student not long ago when she started getting frustrated, and I want what can you say to yourself right now? Oh, slow down, it's okay. Try again, try my best. And walking her through that help. Like, she didn't have a tantrum. She was like, okay, she did those. We said those together, and then she could keep going. So I just think you know, that self talk can help in so many different scenarios really

Donell Pons:

like that, you know, it makes me think of my adult students. So a lot of this is head nodding, because the adult students, what do they need? Well, particularly when learning to read they still need all those gaps filled in, right. And so we've talked a little bit about some of the recommendations that were made in the article and what's fits kind of nicely into this is it You have to be able to see a clear path forward for your learning. So that was part of what the teacher needs to do is set the clear path forward for the student to see an ability to be able to do this thing that you're asking me to do this task. And I think that's a big part with adult students is for so many years, they didn't get correct help, there wasn't the right support, the teaching wasn't correct for them. And so before I ever start with a student, we have a conversation about what it felt like in the past to try to learn these skills, how it will be different going forward. It's much like the self talk, Lindsey that you're talking about, I'm setting the groundwork for, it's okay to tell me how concerned you are about things. And let's talk about what I'm going to do to alleviate you of those concerns. And then we also talk about some of these things will be difficult, they will be challenging. So what we'll do is take breaks, we'll take breaks and we do breathing exercises, that's another form of that self talk, it's taking a minute, filling yourself up with that some good oxygen, some fresh air, taking a break for the brain for a minute letting it back out. But these things are all I mean, we think about them, we know that they're they're good practice, but oftentimes, we don't put them into our practice and build it into our practice. But it definitely should be, as you're saying, is built into writing. The other thing that you hit on there, Lindsey, when you're talking about writing is we're asking students to decode when we're teaching them to read, that's the decoding piece, the words are provided there on a page, where you're working them up to being able to take the words and decode them off an entire page, we might start with words on their own a sentence, so on as we build, but then think about writing that is a really tough task, because now we've upped it to where they're providing a lot. So cognitively, the load is a lot heavier for what we're asking them to do. So I like the fact that you've pre loaded students with let's put these practices in place for what is arguably a much harder task. So you had some thoughts?

Stacy Hurst:

I always have thoughts. But what the most recent when you ask that I'll just grab it since it was the most recent I've been dealing with this in my pre service teacher situation, but I saw it in first grade, too, is this idea of perfectionism is not unrelated to this because they have, they're so perfectionist sees exactly how they think something should be. And if it is not that then life is not okay. And I have a student who got 98.5 on a quiz, and it just drove her crazy. And they're, you know, it was just hard to say, hey, you've got to learn to like, this is okay, you still know the content, you can still, and it wasn't enough for her to correct her mistake she had to, can I retake it? Can I, you know, get 100%. And I honestly said in your best interest? No. And then let's talk about how you can deal with that. And I've seen that in first graders too. And Lindsey, you kind of talked about this as well, those meltdowns, when they don't get something perfect. When it's not correct. Or if somebody else isn't following the rules like they think they should be, then they get verbal about that. I mean, these are all really important behaviors and mindsets to address.

Lindsay Kemeny:

It's another thing we do in our writing because we score it and I have my students self score first. And I tell them, like why do we self score? It's so you can get better. And so we can set goals. So if you're just gonna give yourself all the points, you know, I said, score hard, score hard on yourself. If you're like, Okay, I had my topic sentence, but maybe there was a little part that was unclear or not my best. Don't give yourself the point for it. And then that's going to be your goal for next time is you're going to try to you know, so we talked about scoring hard that scoring is not just to be like Oh, good job scoring is so we can learn and grow and make our writing even better.

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Donell Pons:

You know, you both in a way touched on these different things to be aware of as educators you know, you have maybe in a classroom setting, you have this student for a limited period of time, but there are things you can do to help that student prepare because as they go along, remember the behavior goes with them. So this is something that they will work with and try to get a handle on all through the years that they work as a student, so whatever tidbit you can offer whatever help you can give them they can put that into the toolkit and take it with them. And so it's thinking about teasing those behaviors out, like me thinking about my son, where I was constantly being told a lot of things I was saying were dyslexia. And it wasn't, it would have been a lot more helpful to know. Well, that's ADHD, to be prepared to help him with that. And we talked about maybe OCD, or perfectionism that we see maybe coming through and a student. So a lot of these things that we've hit on have definitely been mentioned within the literature about what impacts cognitive flexibility. So if you do have an interest, and you've this has kind of piqued your interest, maybe there's some students who are thinking about, when you look it up, you'll see things like that references to well, perhaps a student might have a profile with and it might be ADHD or something else. And that might provide some helpful resources and information for you. I've liked that we've given these practical suggestions, we talked about what it is what it looks like, right. And then in its basic form, what we're talking about is just being able to switch between doing something else that you've been asked to do, what they've talked about with cognitive flexibility on its own without the behavior pieces, being able to maybe to manage a couple of tasks. So we think about that in the context of reading, and how much we're asking students to do, when we are teaching them to read and having them read. And this really got me thinking about that, and about how many students might come prepared or not prepared. We talked about cognitive flexibility being measured, even as young as two and three, to see what aspects of cognitive flexibility might be present, we we start really measuring about age seven to nine, in that age group, we start really measuring, we see a really solid, look at this cognitive flexibility about age 12. And then about age 1215 16, even up to 21. It seems to be it's pretty strong in there. That's our strong measure. And then we talked a little bit about how we might get rigid as we're coming on that other side. But this is something to think about in the whole range of a student's growth, right. So also, it got me thinking about if we had this vision of reading, where it wasn't one and done by third grade. But rather we had educators prepared to intervene and continue teaching reading fourth and above, when that make a lot more sense, given even what we know about cognitive flexibility. I know what are your thoughts? Yeah,

Lindsay Kemeny:

I just keep thinking back to when I was a child, and I flipped the Monopoly board. And I'm like, where was I in that flexibility? Definitely, you know, I'm trying to think how old am I was I behind the times, and that's why I flipped the board when I got mad and landed on Park Place and had to pay all my money. That's

Stacy Hurst:

not nothing

Lindsay Kemeny:

I wouldn't do it now.

Stacy Hurst:

brings out the best in all of us. You know, it's funny, you mentioned that because I was also thinking about myself as a child. And I'm relating some of this to those temperaments. We get children. And when we're saying you can recognize some of this early on. I'm thinking about my own self I, most people who know me would not call me an introvert. But I do consider myself an introvert, but I am slow to warm up. So I'm thinking about when I was younger, and I would be put in situations with a new group of people, I would take my time I would observe I wasn't very flexible to just jump right in and, and participate. It took me a minute. Even in fifth grade, I moved across town, which is a joke and where I'm from, it's like two miles, maybe it was it took me a while to warm up. This is

Donell Pons:

just got me thinking about that one size fits all that really when I see students that it was over by third grade. I mean, my husband talks about himself who has dyslexia. He's talked about his dyslexia quite often. But he says he knew just going first grade, he says by second grade, I knew I was well behind, there was no catching up by third grade, he said I knew I was pretty much going to be out in the hall the rest of the way through. I mean, that's quite something to realize by third grade. And here's the thing is that now, you know, being the adult that he is having the information that he has now, he said even if somebody along the way had recognized some of these aspects, and had helped me understand myself a little more, then that would even even have helped to be able to say, hey, look, I'm seeing some of these things that might be in your profile pieces, that that information for myself would have been helpful. And I think that's a lot of what we're talking about here Wednesday, when you brought up you know, the self talk, that kind of thing, letting a student know that maybe this is harder, maybe I'm going to struggle with this a bit. So what are some things that I can do? I think those are all very helpful. But also this has made me question that timeline that we put our students on within the school system. And

Stacy Hurst:

I'm thinking too, about systemically. We have really hyper focused on the product to your point, Danelle, and if there's a way that we could shift collectively that focus on the process. I mean, when I say systemically we're focusing on the product. By the end of first grade you should have done this this and dismiss by the end of the second grade this, this and this and this. And in some ways, depending on how you're accountable for that information, it's not okay to be on track, even though you're not there, by the end of the school year, you're heading in the right direction. Sometimes that's not recognized, right. So I think about Lindsay, this came to my mind when you were talking about writing to, and in my writing instruction, I try so hard to focus on the process. Because no matter how good of a writer anyone is, there is not a perfect writing product. It's really hard to come by. So how do we focus on the process and just keep getting better and better. And it goes along with the theme, we've talked about a lot on this podcast about always being a learner, and you're not done, you're not ever done. So I think, too, sorry, I'm adding a lot of thoughts on to this. Hollis Scarborough was asked if there was something she would do to improve the infographic of the reading rope. And she said, I would have put at the bottom, that this process happens over time, all along the rope. And I think that's significant. So

Lindsay Kemeny:

I'm just thinking a lot about how we can help a student who is like, very, very rigid, very inflexible, with their schedule, and I mean, we know all these things to to help them give them a timer, give them a schedule, but you know, there's there's going to be like, can we protect them too much. And then a big change happens in their life or anything, and it's just complete chaos. I mean, I just wonder almost, if we intentionally give little opportunities, like first maybe giving them some skills, what, what happens if we're going to go out to recess a little late, you know, today or whatever, we're going to do breathing, we're going to do self talk, we're going to do different things. And then almost, I wonder if you should intentionally do a little a small change, to help them like work through that. But I don't know, does it get better? Or does it not? I just wonder, can we protect it too much? And then something major is going to happen in their life? And they're not ready? I don't know. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst:

that is a good question. As you were talking, I was thinking about the practical aspects of that, like if something changes in their life and the aspect of how they emotionally respond to it, right. So maybe giving them those small opportunities, I feel like would be very beneficial if they're, you know, safe and structured. But then also the attitude we have around that. And I'll give you an example, when I was reading this paper, that all of you will have access to one of the behaviors that was listed, that demonstrates problems with cognitive flexibility is that they get upset when something in the environment changes. And I, my student who that I told you about with autism, the schedule is very much that if I moved a pillow in the reading center, she noticed it right. Everything has to be just so. So I hearkened back to something my second grade teacher did. And I think she did it for a totally different purpose. But it was the tool I had at the time. Every day in the classroom, she would change something. And sometimes it was big. And sometimes it was really small. But when you found it, it was celebrated. Right? And sometimes it was I remember, we had the alphabet strip on the wall, but they were separate cards, she turned one upside down. It was just something like that, right that you notice, oh, that's different. And I think she was doing it. So we were more cognitively aware of our surroundings. But so I did that. And then we just said, Oh, you found it so and so found the difference, and we had a big celebration with it. And that did change my student's response to when something was switched up in the environment. So I think so Lindsay, I think that would be beneficial. That'd be really intentional, right?

Donell Pons:

And, you know, one of the I was telling you, I've read some additional research. And when I got to the end of one of the reports, is there anything that you can do to help build this in a student that maybe has a weakness, and so far, there's no real strong, they've worked on some software programs, some gaming programs, and they've seen some effect, but they're wondering if it will continue, it will generalize that they still have a lot of research in that direction. So I'm hoping this continues, because that would be amazing to be able to do that. But I was also thinking about you, Stacy and the teacher that would change something intentionally in the room. That's also a way to see the positive aspect of maybe some of these personalities because they'll notice the change, perhaps the minute change, no one else would notice. And so it can flip it to a positive and to say, oh, that who will be able to catch that and be able to see what the change is today. So that's a positive way. And then I also remember another one there was a child psychologist I met years ago. It was fantastic. And we had a conversation. It was along the lines of some of this. And he was talking about some of the most rigid children that come to his practice, were children who had been placed in environments because the parents were concerned about how they would react to things. They were placed in further restrictive environments. So a more private setting where everything really was the same and could be controlled. And he said that that was a catastrophe for a lot of the students. That was interesting. So he said, as much as we can buffer as best you can, but expose the children to settings where you can't control everything. And he said public school was one of those settings, it's one of those settings, you can't control a whole lot and things will change. And he said, it may be challenging, you may have to feel the phone call or two from the school and go on down and to help settle down a child if need be. But overall, he found that those students longitudinally through his practice and had watched many of them then graduate and move on, did better he thought over time, in in just having to face those different challenges as they come. One thing he did mention that I think is a good idea is he said, have a little thing that they can have control over if you have a student who has really challenged with this. And this is very, very hard for that student had a small thing that they can control. So he said, you know, whether it's a small pocket, whatever they can put in their pocket, something and then the other things you tell the student today, a lot of things probably won't go the way you think they will, things will happen. You can even mention things in the past that were hard and say some of those things could happen today could happen tomorrow. We don't know. The you might have control over this small item here. And that's okay. But it'll be okay. It'll be alright. Because remember, when that happened, we're here today, and it's fine. So it's it's just reminding them the times they were able to overcome and telling them we're all good. We're here today. It's kind of interesting. It's been a fun topic, you guys fantastic. And I can't believe we've already gone 30 minutes, I should be able to know that. So we'll probably have to wrap it up. And maybe we'll do a part two or something else later on. Or if there's more information, which I'm hoping comes would be fun. But this has been a fun conversation. Thank you.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, thank you and the flexibility of going a little bit over 30 minutes. I think we're all doing okay with that so far. It does make me think I'll keep thinking about this. After this conversation. We all encounter situations that are unexpected, right? How do we approach those? How do we help our students focus on what they can control what they do know. And then hopefully set them up for success not just in reading, which is a big, important part of life, but also in life skills. So thank you for this conversation. And thank all of you who have joined us this week. Please take advantage of the article that's included in the notes and use it to improve your knowledge and practice like we did. And please feel free to join us for the next episode of Literacy Talks.

Narrator:

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