Brain First Learning for an AI World

FOR EDUCATORS: EXECUTIVE FUNCTION IN AN AI WORLD

Executive Function Skills in the Age of AI: Future-Proofing Student Critical Thinking

AI didn’t break education. It pulled back the curtain on what’s really behind the finished assignment: the executive function skills that reveal whether a student is actually thinking — or just complying.

By Susan Kruger Winter, M.Ed.

The Foundation

What Are Executive Function Skills?

Executive function is run by your front brain — the part that makes decisions, organizes, and plans. It manages anything a mother might nag about, plus it filters incoming information and decides what matters.

When we encounter new information — whether it’s from a textbook, a conversation, or an AI output — it’s our front brain that decides:

• Is this relevant?
• Where does this fit with what I already know?
• What do I do with this?

Without that decision-making layer, information flows through. It doesn’t stick.

Students with strong executive function automatically:

• Plan their approach before they start
• Organize information for later recall
• Notice when something doesn’t make sense
• Manage their attention — deciding what to focus on and what to ignore

Students without it? They’re overwhelmed by the sheer volume of choices! Instead of asking, “Do I start here or there?” or “What do I do first?” they shut down — through avoidance, procrastination, or outsourcing their thinking entirely to a tool that will do it for them.

Executive Function Skills in an AI World

AI will happily take over our front-brain work. It will organize for us. Plan for us. Decide what matters. But every time it does, it bypasses the exact neural pathway that builds understanding — the connection between new information and what we already know. And like any pathway in the brain, the less we use it, the weaker it gets.

We’re not learning. We’re consuming.

Here’s the good news: When students understand why they’re learning something and have the executive function skills to manage the work, shortcuts become unnecessary:

• The work has meaning.
• They have the tools.
• They engage.

The Shift

The Universal Thinking Process

Executive function manages and powers the universal thinking process. Have you ever noticed that all of the “well-known” thinking models are essentially the same process, dressed in different words? For example:

• Scientific Method
• Project-Management
• Creativity Process
• Writing Process

…all share the same cognitive evolution. So when my students — and even my own teens — ask me, “Why do I need to learn how to write when I can have AI do it?” — I introduce this activity:

CLASSROOM ACTIVITY

Card Sort: The Universal Thinking Process

As a card sort, I cut this matrix apart and challenge students to sort the pieces into the right columns — they soon realize that “learning to write” is about far more than “just writing.” It’s learning how to think!

Every Learner

Supporting Neurodiverse Students & ADHD in an AI-Driven Classroom

AI is a tool. For any student, it can be a shortcut or a scaffold.

The neurodivergent student doesn’t need different thinking skills than anyone else. They simply need to understand how their brain works so they can build intentional detours around challenges.

All brains have strengths and weaknesses — a neurodivergent brain just makes that reality more visible: ADHD might mean weaker sustained attention but stronger creative problem-solving. Autism might mean processing language differently but seeing patterns others miss. A learning disability might block one pathway to information while another sits wide open.

Executive function skills are the great equalizer. They give every student the tools to build those detours intentionally — and turn AI from a shortcut around thinking into a genuine thinking partner.

Here’s how this plays out: A student with executive dysfunction finds a multi-step writing process overwhelming — but they have something they want to say. They use AI to clarify and organize that thinking while evaluating every suggestion: Does this match what I’m trying to say? A student with ADHD uses AI to gather information while they decide what matters, what connects, what the argument is. Both are building detours around the obstacle — not replacing their thinking.

The key word is intentional. Students have to understand their brain, know their strengths, and actively choose how to use the tool. That’s not learned by accident. It’s learned through instruction that names how the brain actually works — which is exactly what the Brain Circuit series does.

The Method

SRSD: The Bridge Between EF and Relevance

The skills AI exposed can be built — by intent, not accident. But that means teaching them the right way, not handing students a list of habits and hoping they adopt them.

Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) is the evidence-based instructional model that makes EF instruction effective, for transferable, life-long impact. Backed by decades of research and validated across grade levels, subject areas, and learner profiles.

The core principle: students don’t just learn what to do. They learn why it works, how it connects to their goals, and when to use it.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. A student who memorizes a note-taking format will forget it before they can use it. A student who understands why their brain needs an external organizational system will connect the process to the problem, establishing both the motivation and long-term recall to use it.

SRSD moves through six phases:

1. Develop background knowledge — explore the relevant, real-life contexts where these skills — or lack of them — surface. Make the invisible problems that executive function can solve, visible.
2. Discuss it — discuss why the problems matter, examine potential solutions, and explain why they work. This is where we begin making thinking “visible and sharable.”
3. Model it — provide explicit instruction and examples of how to execute the strategies. Ensure “invisible” thinking is made visible.
4. Memorize it — students internalize the steps so they’re available without cognitive load. (One differentiator where EF skills strengthen SRSD: when steps connect to prior knowledge, students don’t have to memorize — they intuitively follow the logical progression.)
5. Support it — students practice applying strategies with scaffolding, getting feedback as they build fluency.
6. Independent performance — students use the strategy on their own, adapting it as needed.

Together, these six phases do something traditional instruction rarely accomplishes: they build strategies students actually own.

The skills transfer across subjects and hold up when the work gets harder! That’s the EF foundation — deliverable within a semester.

Relevance is the next layer; it amplifies everything executive function enables. We’ll address it in the next section.

Self-Regulated Learning in Action: The Learning Matrix

We tested this with a standards-based matrix system:

• Students chose their own proficiency target — so they owned the goal
• They demonstrated learning through multiple pathways — social learning labs, default activities that guaranteed evidence, or custom projects of their own design
• At the end of each unit, students created concept maps that drew explicit connections between standards — turning fragmented skills into an integrated web of understanding

In short: we shifted our focus away from outcomes and turned our attention toward inquiry.

That shift raises the question every educator asks: how do you measure inquiry? The matrix itself was the answer. Paired with rubrics, it let us evaluate each standard, each executive function skill, and the connection-based activities that served as our summative assessments.

The result: students moved from compartmentalized knowledge to connected thinking — and AI shortcuts became a non-issue. Not because we banned them; students freely used AI to research and fill in gaps. But the matrix measured thinking, not products. AI can generate a product — it couldn’t replace students’ thinking.

That’s the proof of concept. EF instruction builds the foundation. SRSD gives you the method. Relevance — when you’re ready for it — makes the whole system self-sustaining.

(I’ve written extensively about this shift in my education reform series.)

The Curriculum

How SOAR Builds All of This

SOAR® is a comprehensive executive function curriculum built on how the brain actually learns. It teaches through SRSD — so students don’t just learn strategies, they understand why each one works and how it connects to their goals. That’s what makes strategies stick.

The curriculum teaches students how their brain works — how memory works, how learning sticks, how decisions get made — and then gives them concrete strategies for:

• Managing time and organizing tasks
• Setting goals
• Taking notes, studying, and reading
• Learning new information

The assessment model is built to match. Eight different assessment types measure whether students actually understand and can apply the skills — not whether they can pick the right answer. Only two are multiple choice. The rest evaluate reasoning, application, and process.

And because executive function skills apply across all learning, SOAR teaches through four transferable maps that cover all ELA anchor standards:

• Reading nonfiction
• Writing and language
• Speaking and listening
• Reading literature

Each map explicitly teaches the strategies, then shows how they transfer to any context. Together, the four maps meet all ELA anchor standards.

EF instruction takes one semester to one year to establish. Students start showing measurable growth almost immediately. The foundation is teachable. The timeline is realistic. The first step is always the same: teach students how their brain works and give them the tools to think for themselves.

AI didn’t change learning. It exposed the circuit that was there all along.