Planning and Organizing Skills of Poor School Achievers

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Abstract
The study attempted to determine whether some poor school achievers are deficient in planning and organizing skills. The tasks used were designed to yield equivalent and high success rates by 20 failing and 20 adequate or better (control) second—grade children so that the children's method of approach to the tasks could be examined independently of available skills and effects of failure on performance. The results suggested that: 1) many children who are seriously failing in the early years are inefficient or poor task planners and organizers, often remaining fixed on a given approach; 2) this characteristic may be related to lagging or deficient language skills but not to spatial organizing skills; 3) school failure may result from specific cognitive deficiencies and/or failure to effectively organize available cognitive skills. The discussion considered planning and organizing in relation to set, spatial organization, language, memory and attention.