Seeds of Learning, LLC

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Seeds of Learning, LLC

Tera Sumpter, M.A., CCC-SLP • Executive Function Education • Author of the international bestseller, The Seeds of Learning • International Presenter Who am I?

Seeds of Learning, LLC is a home-based private practice for children of all ages with special needs in the areas of speech, language and literacy. Comprehensive evaluations are performed to determine areas of need. A treatment plan is created and tailored specifically for each child. Early intervention therapy is provided for children ages birth-3 years of age. I provide multisensory-cognitive tre

atment which shapes specific neurological processes involved in impairments such as dyslexia, auditory and written comprehension impairments, expressive language disorders, phonological disorders, articulation disorders, and childhood apraxia of speech. Tera Sumpter, M.A., CCC-SLP. I am a wife, mother, and speech-language pathologist with specialized experience in the area of reading I am an instructor in the Speech and Hearing program at Cleveland State University. Having worked with children in medical and therapeutic settings for over 11 years, I understand the special needs that children and their families encounter when faced with learning difficulties. I am committed to providing quality treatment to children, as well as educating and empowering families. For a consultation or evaluation, contact Tera at 440-454-1686 or email [email protected]. Please do not substitute any advice found on this page for a professional evaluation. Contact Seeds of Learning, LLC directly to set up an appointment with a speech pathologist if you have any concerns regarding your child's development."

09/10/2026

Today I was prepping the slides for a full day I’m spending with a school in Missouri here in a few weeks. I added in one of my favorite demonstrations where audience members act out the literacy network-a demo I did at the EF Symposium too. The demo shows how EF is fundamental to the reading process.

Working on this presentation got me thinking…

We talk a lot about reading as a language, decoding, and comprehension task.

But reading also places heavy demands on working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility.

This 2026 meta-analysis helps make that connection much harder to ignore.

Executive function is not sitting outside of reading.

EF is part of the work of reading itself.

09/08/2026

We usually start talking about executive function when a child struggles to organize a backpack, finish homework, manage time, or follow a plan.

But executive function was helping that child learn long before any of those things existed.

Even learning a first word requires a developing system that can notice, attend, hold information, compare, monitor, and adjust.

That’s the part I think we’ve missed.

Executive function isn’t just how we manage what we already know.

It helps us build what we know in the first place.

09/07/2026

This student taught me something I’ve seen over and over again…

What looks like dependence is sometimes an executive function system that still needs support.

When we stop seeing the behavior as the problem, we can start teaching the skills underneath it.

09/06/2026

We’ve made executive function much smaller than it really is.

Yes, it helps with organization, time management, and getting things done.

But it is also woven through how we learn language, read, solve problems, navigate relationships, and make sense of the world around us.

That is the part I think we miss most often.

09/05/2026

I think we sometimes mistake the child with the strongest executive function in the room for the developmental expectation.

But those are not the same thing.

Executive function develops over a long period of time.

Inhibitory control grows rapidly in the preschool years, but continues maturing through adolescence and into early adulthood. Working memory, cognitive flexibility, and planning also continue developing well beyond age 5. (Best et al., 2009; Huizinga et al., 2006; Constantinidis & Luna, 2019)

So when we look around a 2nd, 5th, or even 9th grade classroom, we should expect developmental variability.

The child who remembers everything, gets started without prompting, ignores the noise, shifts easily, manages time, catches mistakes, and plans ahead may be showing us what is possible at that age.

But that child should not automatically become our definition of what is developmentally expected of everyone else.

Sometimes the kid with the strongest EF in the room quietly becomes the benchmark.

And then we interpret everyone who needs more support in comparison to them.

And this is exactly why my team and I created SPARQ-EF™.

It gives teachers a way to explicitly teach and support the executive function skills we so often expect children to already have.

If you work with K–2 learners and want a practical way to build those skills into the classroom, check out SPARQ-EF™ here 👇

https://shop.terasumpter.com/products/sparq-ef-full-classroom-program

REFERENCES
📄 Best, J. R., Miller, P. H., & Jones, L. L. (2009). Executive functions after age 5: Changes and correlates. Developmental Review, 29(3), 180–200.

📄 Constantinidis, C., & Luna, B. (2019). Neural substrates of inhibitory control maturation in adolescence. Trends in Neurosciences, 42(9), 604–616.

📄 Huizinga, M., Dolan, C. V., & van der Molen, M. W. (2006). Age-related change in executive function: Developmental trends and a latent variable analysis. Neuropsychologia, 44(11), 2017–2036.

09/04/2026

SAVE THIS FOR LATER!!

Give me a stack of index cards and some tape and I can turn it into an executive function activity. 😂

The building part is fun, but it’s really everything happening around the building that I’m interested in.

Can the child imagine something before acting?

Can they make a plan?

Can they hold onto that plan long enough to begin?

Can they notice when reality doesn’t match what they expected?

Can they change course without someone immediately stepping in and telling them what to do?

And afterward, can they think about what happened and what they might do differently next time?

That’s why I love activities like this. You don’t need an “executive function game” or fancy laminated activity.

You need a task that gives children a reason to plan, internalize, execute, and self-evaluate - the building blocks to develop executive function!

09/03/2026

We are the best planners when the motivation is high and the focus is strong.

It’s in these excited moments that we build the most elaborate plans for the most extensive projects.

But there’s one problem…

NOW ME is making an elaborate plan for FUTURE ME.

But FUTURE ME might be tired, hungry, or stressed…

Without the capacity to carry out NOW ME’s elaborate plan.

So what needs to happen?

Two things.

1) NOW ME needs to time travel into the future to pre-experience how FUTURE ME might handle the plan in order to potentially scale it back.

2) FUTURE ME needs to have the cognitive flexibility necessary to adjust the elaborate plan to work for the moment rather than abandon it all together.

THIS IS EXECUTIVE FUNCTION.

ALL OF IT.

09/02/2026

What if “demand avoidance” is telling us what happened, but not why?

Because “open your Chromebook and start the assignment” sounds simple…

until you start pulling apart everything the learner has to do cognitively to make that happen.

That’s the part I want us to get curious about.

Not just, “Why won’t they do it?”

But, “What is this asking their brain to do, and where is it getting hard?”

The answer won’t be the same for every learner.

But that question can completely change where we start.

09/01/2026

Two autistic kids can both need support with transitions and still need very different things from us.

That’s why I try not to stop at the behavior I can see or the diagnosis they’ve received.

I want to understand what the transition is asking of that particular child.

What are they noticing?
What are they expecting?
What has changed in the plan? What support would make the shift more understandable or manageable?

The goal isn’t to make autistic kids transition like everyone else.

It’s to understand their experience well enough that we can support them in a way that is actually meaningful to them.

08/31/2026

The longer I work with kids, the more I notice how much executive function is packed into the ordinary parts of their day.

Getting out the door, starting homework, cleaning up, joining a game. None of these are really “one-step” tasks.

When a child struggles, I want to know which part of the EF load is making it hard.

That question gets us much further than simply labeling the behavior.

Address

16927 Detroit Road Suite 5
Lakewood, OH
44107

Telephone

+14406161984

Website

http://www.terasumpter.com/

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