All this information gave me a perfect insight in what EF really is and what it needs to help children develop these skills. It is good to know that these skills can be trained.
The problem I want to get my head around is to decrease the amount of school dropouts by children. It is important that this problem will be dealt with from a young age. Therefore, I chose to aim my attention to children of seven years old because children of that age are starting to have longer attention spans, tolerate less-detailed directions and last-minute changes. That age needs it because school is getting more difficult every year. Seven-year-olds are also very curious and that gives me a good opportunity to do something with it.
Keywords
I came up with a few keywords I want to keep in mind when I will be working on a concept.
- Motivation; the children need to stay motivated. This can be reached by involving the parents and the teachers so that they do not feel left alone. It needs to be fun, using rewards/games makes it more fun for the children and that will hopefully motivates them to continue developing.
- Lists; we all need lists occasionally, but children with EF disability need it more than a regular person. Therefore, I need to make sure that whatever I come up with, the child can put in a list of task/homework.
- Planners; not only lists, but also planners are important as well. To be organised they have to learn how to plan their tasks.
- Gamification; as I mentioned at motivation, it needs to be fun. Therefore, using games as rewards or a game-ish interface could be interesting for the child to keep training.