homework planner template pdf

homework planner template pdf

The Importance of Using a Homework Planner

1. Benefits of Using a Homework Planner

It’s essential to include free time and short breaks as part of the student’s schedule. Don’t get caught in the trap of hyper-commitment. It’s important for the students to know they are in charge of their schedules. The tutoring center supports students and helps them to realize they have to participate in making everyday decisions. Time to relax and do things friends like doing, start with 15 minutes before bed can become 30 minutes the next week and gradually increase to an intensive free-time schedule. A planned schedule could include reading between blocks of study time, which helps increase a student’s focus and can help with understanding. Assigning regular reading can enhance a student’s attention span, a self-regulatory function that is important. Students can have short-term and long-term goals. Eventually, they will make the connection between these goals by connecting them through life and experiences.

Using a homework planner has many benefits. Time management skills and self-discipline are essential traits of a well-organized student who has the coping skills to handle homework on time. A homework planner is a great tool that will decrease the stress while increasing the fun and effectiveness of the learning experience. It’s a way to manage the unexpected and maintain balance without getting overwhelmed. Having a homework planner will enable students to make a schedule that provides a nice flow and fits into their own life. Creating a routine of manageable drafts, action plans, and extra activities will help a student to stay motivated in achieving their homework goals. The aim is to make these systems automatic, so there are no surprises. To succeed, it’s essential to anticipate what’s ahead. Using a homework planner will prevent last-minute panics. Being able to deal with the demands of academic life will prepare a student for future challenges in the workplace. Establishing predictable routines over time helps get hold of life’s stresses.

2. How to Set Up and Organize Your Homework Planner

As soon as possible, write down all quiz, test, project, and other important dates for all your classes in your planner. Use your completed napkin to remind you of major project due dates or exam review dates. Your daily homework planner should already reflect what is due in class each day. Ideally, you will also have an ongoing calendar to keep this important information posted. Use the quiz review section of your lessons to direct your planner for studying before an exam. You will receive a lesson with practice problems and worked out solutions for these quiz reviews well in advance of the exam so you can prepare adequately for the exam.

Use pencil rather than ink when entering your homework in your planner so you can easily change your plans. Keep your planner and all handouts and notes for class in the one-inch, three-ring, color-coded section in a five-subject spiral notebook. I color-code the sections to keep you organized. As an example, keep all notes taken for homework, quizzes, and tests together separated by the different units of the class. All materials for English should be paper clipped in the red section and then the same for science or whatever other classes you have. Paper clip old materials behind the new papers as new information is given to you. This way you can quickly and easily follow the flow of your class as you review. You would not believe how frequently we go back in the notebook to recover something from a previous unit and having a color-coding system saves a lot of time. Always use a pen or pencil as these papers come into your planner to jot down the date of the lesson. If you know the date of the quiz, paper clip the pages where you worked on those specific problems so you can review them without trouble.

3. Strategies for Effective Time Management

In college, maintaining such routines can be more challenging. However, given creativity and the right will to put in the effort, a regular schedule is definitely attainable. At the center of this regular schedule, time must be allocated for each course material. Sticking to that time is up to the student. A homework planner gives the student a less-obscured view, colorfully and descriptively, of what deadlines would come knocking, project-in-bag.

You see it every time. Miss a party and prepare for your Friday morning class, subsequently grab sleep afterward, by 3 PM you would have covered a whole day’s content. True, a party that lasts all night can deliver the same effect, but with serious repercussions. A dash here and there, two friends in the Library, Library hopping, albeit a very poor time management strategy, the 6-7 hours that follows have excellent potential for personal productivity.

To assume that effective time management is giving up TV and any other fun activities would be crazy. Of course, watching TV has nothing to do with time management, rather the content of TV. Too much of it bleeds out the most precious asset each one of us possesses – time. Unfortunately, many kids, a good number in college, lack this foresight and/or are too proud to entertain a 20-min lecture on time management when it is most needed. Extra lectures and coursework seem less of a priority than the Wednesday night boycott of Game of Thrones on HBO Max.

4. Tips for Prioritizing and Scheduling Tasks

Families can help students build a simple logbook (lined notebook) organization that consists of six basic core subjects: Mathematics, Reading, Language Arts, Social Studies, Science and a blank section. In the first week of school, students insert a divider between the core subjects with the elementary response in each subject, date of homework (time or task), and the due date. Every day after the completion of each subject, students cross through the assignment (good for pencil and pencil eraser) to eliminate it as a priority to complete when they get home.

– How do I want to approach my nightly assignments? – What organizational plan will work best for me and the suggestions provided by my teachers? – How do I want my parents involved in my system? – What successful organization did I use last year at school? – Who can be my “buddy” so that we both can help each other stay organized?

In order to decide which organizational system will work best for your child at school or home, students need to consider the following questions:

When it comes to managing or organizing homework, ask your child what the teacher’s expectations are. Some teachers like their students to use a bound book, similar to a calendar that has enough room to either write out assignments in detail or enough space to write simple reminders. For those teachers who want their students to be responsible and have homework listed in a specific area of the binder, students need to have a plan that includes spatially designed logbooks based on subject.

5. Maintaining Consistency and Accountability

Students have to maintain a strong and stable relationship with their planners. Being random in doing homework won’t work either. You have to use it constantly. When you start using one of these planners, you do not change it. You continue serving your planner and maintain a strong system of reminders and encouragements. You set forth goals and take them down one by one. In the meantime, set a connection between complete tasks. Disposing yourself with a convincing argument, as how these next 30 minutes are going to make this whole plan happen, will definitely urge you to start right away. Without attaching these 2 elements together, it is essentially an ordinary and another get-to-it-whenever plan. It is also a crucial trait of any serious planner.

One thing is for sure and that is undoubtable, once you cross it out in the planner, there is no turning back. On the other hand, if you fail to mark it out, you are the one to blame. After all, it is your own promise and your own reminder tools. That is the tricky part of the planner. It provides visual stimulus, but it also comes with a visual penalty of not finishing things.

Every single bit of information you gather and decide to keep in your head is taking up mental RAM space and is contributing to stress, together with hundreds of other bits you still have in your head. Efficient planners substitute a big chunk of the stress with productivity. There is no better feeling than crossing the homework out of the plan, knowing you did accomplish a bit of homework. You also have a visual presentation of what you are doing and you can always come back to it. It makes it much easier to avoid redundant working and you begin to appreciate your time off more.