BEVERLY, MA--(Marketwired - Oct 30, 2014) -  The Landmark School Outreach Program recently released the second book in their Language-Based Teaching Series for K-12 educators entitled Executive Function: Foundations for Learning and Teaching.

What is Executive Function?
Executive function, as described by the book's author Patricia W. Newhall, is "the brain's ability to coordinate the cognitive and psychological processes needed to initiate, sustain, and monitor and adapt the behaviors and attitudes required to achieve a goal." Many students and adults struggle with this ability to get and stay organized, manage time, prioritize tasks, set goals, produce intentional and thoughtful written work, and much more.

The National Impact of Poor Executive Function Skills
Of 55 million K-12 students in the US, close to 5 million have diagnosed ADHD, more than 2.2 million have a specific learning disability, and the vast majority struggle with executive function tasks. To succeed in school, these students need all their teachers to be knowledgeable about how they learn and skilled at instructing them so they can reach their potential. Without appropriate support, these students are at increased risk for school failure as well as emotional and behavioral problems. 20% of students with learning disabilities drop out of high school compared to the national rate of 8%.

"Patricia W. Newhall's new book, Executive Function: Foundations for Learning and Teaching, is an extremely valuable and readable synthesis of how executive function relates to learning," said Pamela Wheaton Shorr, middle school humanities teacher in the Salem, Massachusetts Public School District. Ms. Shorr continues, "It is thoughtful, insightful, and filled with helpful strategies and approaches for any teacher with a student who is struggling to stay focused and engaged in class. I particularly liked the fact that the book addresses the social-emotional facets of executive function, and helps put a human face on learning difficulties and behavior that challenge even the most experienced teachers. With the new understandings I gained from this book, I find that I am much better able to see the struggle and not the problem, and to help my students reach their full learning potential."

Helping Educators Help Their Students
Major topics covered in the book include a full explanation of executive function, attention and memory, emotion, motivation, and effort, academic proficiency, and learning styles, differences, and disabilities. Each chapter includes sections on "What to Know" and "What to Do" with reproducible templates, questionnaires, and worksheets that are also available for customization on the Landmark Outreach Program web site, www.landmarkoutreach.org. 

What are Landmark School and the Landmark School Outreach Program?
Landmark School is widely known as a leader in the field of educating students with language-based learning disabilities (LBLD) such as dyslexia and expressive language disorder. The Landmark School Outreach Program's mission is to empower students through providing professional development programs for their teachers. Landmark Outreach shares the school's successful, evidence-based, teaching approaches with public and independent schools across the nation. It provides school consulting and program design, an annual summer professional development institute, online graduate level courses, and an extensive selection of electronic and print publications written by teachers for teachers.

About the Author
Patricia W. Newhall, M.A., M.S.Ed., is Associate Director of the Landmark School Outreach Program. A teacher of literature and writing since 1987, she joined the Landmark School faculty in 1993. Her professional development work is dedicated to sharing knowledge about learning disabilities and differences, and the teaching strategies essential to building the skills and self-efficacy of struggling learners. Newhall has been a speaker at national conferences including the Learning Disabilities Association of America and the International Dyslexia Association. She contributes regularly to Landmark Outreach's free e-resource, Spotlight on Language-Based Teaching, and teaches summer courses in Landmark Outreach's Professional Development Institute. Other books by Newhall include Language-Based Learning Disabilities (2012), Teaching Independent Minds (2008) and Study Skills: Research-Based Teaching Strategies (2008).

The Landmark School Outreach Program's mission is to empower children and adolescents with language-based learning disabilities by offering their teachers an exemplary program of applied research and professional development.

Visit us on the web at www.landmarkoutreach.org