Conversation Cards Executive Functions - Practical Education and (V)MBO

Executive Functions Conversation Cards - Practical Education & (Pre-)Vocational Secondary Education

This set contains 69 cards: 55 cards with statements, 11 category cards, and a concise starter guide.
These cards are particularly well-suited for practical education and (pre-)vocational secondary education.

All coaches, mentors, and remedial teachers want to engage in conversations with children. That is our motivation for developing conversation cards about executive functions (EF). By engaging in conversation with each other, you discover what the underlying problem is and together you can clarify what is already going well and what can be improved.

What are executive functions and why is it important to work on them?

Executive functions are 11 skills you need to succeed in life:

• at school
• at work
• in relation to others
• in your personal life

The 11 executive functions are:

- Thinking skills 1. planning 2. organizing 3. time management 4. working memory 5. metacognition

- Behavioral skills 6. response inhibition 7. emotional regulation 8. sustained attention 9. task initiation 10. flexibility 11. goal-directed persistence

The statements on the cards encourage clarifying during the (mentor) conversation what the student is already good at and where improvements are possible.
The student is involved in their own learning process, which increases motivation to work on areas for improvement.

Examples of a statement on a flexibility conversation card: *If I left my hospitality uniform at home, I know how to solve this. *I can name 3 different reasons why I am late. *I need to go to my internship and I have no transport. I can then come up with a solution.

Our card sets can be distinguished by the smileys on the back of the cards and the smileys on the box:
Primary education has 1 smiley
Secondary education has 2 smileys
Practical education & (Pre-)vocational secondary education has 3 smileys

This way, you can use the cards interchangeably and then easily sort them again.