At Oliverian, we work with many students who experience ADHD and other executive functioning challenges. Our approach balances skill-building with nonjudgmental support to help students thrive both academically and personally.
While we help students find the tools and develop the skills they need to manage ADHD—such as organization, planning, and time management—this must happen in an environment where they feel safe, accepted, and not judged for their struggles. Many students with ADHD expend enormous effort trying to stay on top of tasks—remembering appointments, keeping track of materials, or following through on assignments—but their brain’s wiring can make consistency difficult. This can lead to frustration, shame, and exhaustion.
Executive functioning challenges aren’t limited to ADHD; they can also be rooted in anxiety, depression, and autism spectrum differences. Because these skills are essential to nearly all our students, we focus on strengthening them through intentional strategies and structures.
What are Executive Functions?
Executive functions are the higher-order reasoning skills that help us organize our thoughts, plan, and solve problems—essentially, they’re the mental processes that allow for goal-directed behavior.
Even simple assignments—like completing a worksheet—require numerous executive skills: understanding directions, gathering materials, managing time, following through, checking work, and submitting on time. When a student struggles with any one of these, the entire process can feel overwhelming.
Balancing Accommodation and Skill-Building
Oliverian’s approach combines two key strategies:
- Accommodation – Reducing unnecessary executive-functioning demands so students can access learning (for example:, flexible deadlines, clear checklists, or breaking down large tasks).
- Skill-Building – Explicitly teaching students how to plan, organize, and manage time so they can grow toward independence.
If the balance tilts too far toward accommodation, students risk developing learned helplessness—relying entirely on adults to manage their responsibilities.
If we provide too little support, students may feel overwhelmed, anxious, and defeated.
Our practice of separating deadline grades from assignment grades is one example of this balance. It allows students to still learn and complete important academic work, even if deadlines are a struggle. Without this, many might never complete major assignments like essays—and thus never learn the skills those assignments are meant to teach.
The Work Plan Tool
One practical strategy we use is a Work Plan, which helps students map out their academic workload.
How it works:
- List all assignments – Gather everything in one place to reduce anxiety about the unknown.
- Prioritize and estimate time – Determine which tasks matter most and how long each will take.
- Map out the week – Schedule realistic blocks of time, accounting for breaks and energy levels.
- Assign tasks to time slots – Fill in the plan with specific goals for each day.
The Work Plan exercise not only creates a path to success with the tasks a student is currently facing, but the exercise itself teaches critical executive functioning skills. Knowing how much time to allot for various tasks is a prerequisite for good time management. Knowing how they themselves work – when in the day they are energized and when they need a break, how long they can stay focused at one time – is key to effective self-management.
When first introduced to this tool, many students need adult support in every step. With repeated practice, students become increasingly independent in their use of the Work Plan, thereby demonstrating their growing skills in planning, prioritizing, and managing their use of time.
Download a copy of Oliverian’s Work Plan document. We hope you find it helpful!
