homework planner for middle school

homework planner for middle school

Homework Planner for Middle School

1. Introduction

Students decide when and how they are going to use the homework planner. Decisions should be discussed with their parents. Their parents may also decide when they want to meet with the teacher to discuss the assigned homework in each subject area. Having an individual homework planner, students begin to plan their homework and to visualize themselves as responsible for their own learning. It is important to use a homework planner every day. After about two weeks or thirty class days, students realize that they do not complete homework planners. At this time, they should review how they have been making decisions. When not doing homework or not planning, attitudes, behaviors, or possibly their thoughts need to be reviewed. This homework planner includes the Teacher’s Guide, homework checklist for the teacher, homework evaluation for the teacher, and the process T-Sheet and desk organizer sheet for the student. This Adapted Homework Planner is available from EdAdvice for the Middle School specific for each grade level and the subjects taught.

This post describes a homework planner for middle school students in 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. It includes ways to plan how to do homework, when to do it, and how it will be returned to the teacher. There are two different types of sheets: one for students to use, and the other to be used by the teacher. Most importantly, using it helps the teacher to assign homework and helps the student to plan it. For this homework planner, the student takes charge of deciding how to organize his/her homework for long-term projects, nightly homework, quizzes, reports, oral presentations, etc. To use it, a teacher shares visual information from the Teacher’s Guide with a student. The teacher explains when and how to use the specific sheet. The student uses the homework planner according to the teacher’s instructions.

2. Benefits of Using a Homework Planner

Using a homework planner can provide numerous benefits to a middle school student. The benefits could be the same for high school students, but my experience is with middle schoolers. It is fine to start using the word planner now with your younger students to help them understand that the use of an organization system will be an essential part of their ongoing learning. Personalization and routines are the keys to successful use of the planner. It is important to give regular thought to when and how often your students will review their plans throughout the week. Students should use this time to transfer assignments and reminders from the planner to their personal notebook or a spot in your classroom where important things are shared with your learners. It is also a good idea to have check-in times. Students often look at their week as a whole, so a check in at the beginning of the week is always a winner.

Some students need help with organization and time management skills. Homework can pile up quickly, leaving students feeling overwhelmed by the number of assignments that need to be completed. Students can benefit from using a homework planner for a variety of reasons. I created a Weekly Homework Planner for my middle school students to use. Each page of the planner has a column for each day of the week, and students write down each homework assignment that is given in each of their classes. I suggest recording the date the assignment is given so students can see how long they have had to work on the assignment. I also suggest students write the due date on their planners to avoid missing assignments. This planner has been a huge help to numerous students. It has been especially helpful for students who have a hard time keeping track of when assignments are due or prioritizing their work.

3. How to Effectively Use a Homework Planner

Now that you and your child have a reliable system for promoting planning and follow-through on projects, the only missing piece is strategizing the overall flow of activities to ensure that work, rest, and play are getting their fair shares. Truth be told, this is the part that most adults continue to struggle with well into their adult lives, so we can’t expect our children to figure it out anytime soon. Instead of telling your child what to do when, the best approach is to demonstrate by action and matter-of-fact conversation how to manage several different types of activities each day. Rest is easier to justify to an 8th grader than it is to an older student since the stakes are lower with middle schoolers, but it’s ultimately best to adopt a strategy that emphasizes balance in all things, even during the days when tests are looming.

Throughout this project, you’ve reminded your child that the point isn’t to check off as many boxes as possible, but rather to become more aware of what lies ahead and to develop plans for managing their time at a healthy and sustainable pace. If we consistently emphasize quality over quantity, our children will learn to distinguish between being productive and working themselves to the point of exhaustion. While our children are not yet fully adept at managing their own time, their ability to manage it grows by leaps and bounds when given the opportunity to make and carry out their own plans, which is essentially what the Heroic Journey is. Hence, throughout this project our role is to coach our children through the sticking points with the smallest and most specific suggestions possible, rather than solving the problems or creating the solutions for them.

4. Tips for Staying Organized and Motivated

Prepare for class before the nightly homework. Instead of cramming for tonight’s work, I encourage students to carve 15-20 minutes of study time into each school night for the following day. Whether it be to study math facts, reread Caesar categories, or find a quote in Among the Hidden, students should remind themselves to be engaged in the material during the middle school day. Often, my students will turn in a folded piece of paper with 3-4 productivity tasks for the night that encourage this kind of preparation. Tying homework into that school night’s events, like a topic of the day or visiting speaker’s topic, reminds students to absorb and retain what is pertinent to each class. A preparation area should be utilized by students who give themselves “points” for correction instead of redoing the entire assignment. Prior to creating the “retake” option, I stated that corrections could only be made up to the point value of the original grade. I also gave reteached area materials at the teacher’s discretion to struggling students who’d shown prior effort. I still stand by this guideline of effort over points for disciplined learners.

Designate a study time. After school, give yourself an hour to relax before starting homework. Sports, clubs, jobs, dinner (I’ve got five kids, so I know this will affect my student’s time), and other scheduled events often go multiple nights in a row, so negotiate study time with after-school craziness in mind. Once settled, open your homework planner. Groups, pep band, and student councils’ occasionally unpredictable schedules call for creativity, flexibility, and communication. A simple phrase like, “I have a huge project and I need a week to finish it ahead of everyone else,” is usually enough to get an advisor’s attention. The ability to compromise and be accountable for change often reaps amazing rewards.

5. Conclusion

Many disciplines are utilizing custom software to keep records of information, plan and schedule various items, and implement aspects of their management. Many professional jobs are even defined by processing and utilizing information, working in environments with large masses of generated and stored information, or doing analysis or planning by using specially designed software. These tools allow the participants in the field to act as a group to effectively create and exploit their resources, by providing a wide variety of both automated and manual help to both simple and very complex tasks. That offering increases the efficiency and quality of the work, or allows the completion of tasks previously impossible.

As you read this tutorial, you may have noticed that it is presenting just one possible solution to the problem of homework management. In many cases, this may not be the best solution for your own needs. Now that you have seen one possible model, restrictions and considerations, it is time to create your own, according to your own desires. The provided examples are also just one possible solution to the problem. It is unlikely that most people will find exactly what they hope for in this package, so the goal is to make the functions so clear and straightforward that it is quick and easy to modify the software to match the desired look and functionality.