COGNITIVE FLEXIBILITY
Continuing our series on COR Instruction, where we highlight the activities explored in the HOT ROD activity books, this month’s topic is Cognitive Flexibility.
What is Cognitive Flexibility?
Cognitive flexibility is an important executive function skill that centers on the ability to switch between different types of information. It can involve switching between different tasks or thinking about more than one concept at a time. Working memory is an important element of cognitive flexibility that helps a person manage more than one task, concept, or piece of information simultaneously. It impacts reading, writing, spelling, and more.
How Cognitive Flexibility Impacts Reading
Specific to reading, cognitive flexibility is essential for both decoding and comprehension. Students need cognitive flexibility to hold different possible pronunciations for a letter or combination of letters in mind while decoding unfamiliar words. At the same time, they must consider the word’s meaning. Working memory enables a reader to compare the possible pronunciations of a word with words in their lexicon (internal dictionary). While figuring out how to pronounce the word and determining what it means, a reader must also keep the rest of the sentence in mind. The content and structure of the sentence will also affect the word's meaning. If a word has multiple meanings, cognitive flexibility is required to hold the possible options in short-term memory while making judgments about the best fit within the context of the sentence and paragraph.
While many tasks help develop cognitive flexibility, few directly relate to reading and decoding. The activities developed for the HOT ROD (Higher Order Thinking through the Reading Of Decodables) activity books address executive function skills that directly relate to a structured literacy scope and sequence, as well as to the content found in our decodable stories.
Students can work on cognitive flexibility by sorting words that belong to two different categories simultaneously. If you and your students are tired of the same old word card drills, consider spicing up your routine by incorporating Cognitive Flexibility games. The easiest way to understand how these games work is to explore one of them with your students.
The game above was part of a research project completed by me and Kelly Cartwright, Ph.D., last year that focused on open and closed syllables (long and short vowel sounds) in the first syllable of two-syllable words. Now that the study is over, the 8 different word sorts used in the study are available at Boom TM Learning. The first game is free HERE or at the link above, but you must open a free Boom account. The complete Bundle of 8 digital games is available for $5.99 HERE. It contains several target words from the Level 3 decodable book, The Raven Remix: A Mashup of Poe Titles. Printable PDF copies of all 8 games may be found in The Raven Remix Activity Book: 50+ Activities and Games for Decoding, Reading Comprehension, Writing, and Speech. Both titles, as well as books for Levels 1 and 2, are available on Amazon or in the online STORE on our website.
The target words in the free online Boom game are from the Category Sort #1 from the activity book and include the categories of Foods and Objects.
This digital Boom Deck has three component parts:
1. First, students sort words into two categories (ex., Foods vs. Objects).
2. Next, they sort the SAME cards into two different categories: Open vs. Closed Syllables (found in the first syllable of a word).
3. Finally, students sort the same words on a 2x2 matrix in the Multiple
Classification Activity while considering all 4 categories at once.
The online Bundle of 8 digital Boom TM Learning games is available HERE for $5.99. If you participated in the research study, you should still be able to access these games for free. If that is not the case, please contact me at info@wordtravelpress.com.
If you would like to receive future information about the study results when they are available, sign up for my newsletter HERE.
References:
Cartwright, K.B. (2023). Executive skills and reading comprehension: A guide for educators (Second Edition). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Tunmer, W.E., & Chapman, J.W. (2012). Does set for variability mediate the influence of vocabulary knowledge on the development of word recognition skills? Scientific Studies of Reading, 16(2), 122–140.
Vadasy, P.F., Sanders, E.A., Cartwright, K.B. (2022). Cognitive flexibility in beginning decoding and encoding. The Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, in press.
Zipke, M. (2016). The importance of flexibility of pronunciation in learning to decode: A training study in set for variability. First Language. 36 (1), 71–86.