How to Help Students Plan Their Week

Posted in Homeschool students, teacher tools

This is the time of year where I often find students start to fall behind, and often aren’t sure how to catch up. Depending on your philosophy and the type of class that you teach, deadlines are going to vary.

I teach AP classes which means that students need to create a certain amount of work in order to have enough to submit their portfolio at the end of the course.

During my 13 years of teaching, I’ve realized that we don’t usually teach students how to plan and create a schedule. Even if a due date is provided students often aren’t sure how to track to make sure that they’re going to hit the deadline.

I’ve never met anyone that successfully executed a project, and completed it on time that didn’t first have a clear plan.

Let’s start making a plan to have a successful week.

Step one:

Grab a notebook and your favorite pen, and open your calendar. In your notebook, label a page for each day of the week. Monday- Sunday.

Step two:

What things are already scheduled on those days? For example, if you have any dr appointments, sports practice or music lessons, write them on the correct day, along with the time. Don’t just write the start time, note the entire time. For example, if you have music lessons from 10-11, but you also have to travel to music lessons and it’s a 30 min drive each way, that means that music lessons are taking from 9:30-11:30.

Step Three:

On a new page, write down what assignments you have that are due this week?

Example:

  • Art history paper is due on Tuesday
  • Art project is due on Friday
  • Math test to study for, test is on Wednesday

Step Four:

Now you’re going to get more specific about all of the steps that need to happen in order for you to arrive at a finished project or ready for your test.

Example:

  • Art History Paper due on Tuesday

    • Review feedback from the rough draft and make adjustments
    • Proofread my paper for errors
    • Ask someone else to proofread my paper, make adjustments as needed
    • Write the bibliography
    • Submit the paper

  • Art Project due on Friday

    • Think about my idea and experiment in my sketchbook
    • Determine what idea like best from my sketchbook
    • gather my needed supplies
    • Create the first sketch of my final piece
    • add details and finish
    • photograph my work
    • complete my assessment and submit

  • Math test on Wednesday

    • Find notes on the test topics
    • complete practice questions and check answers in the back of the book
    • spend one hour reviewing the questions that I got wrong
    • Take the test

Step five:

Take your list above and plug it into your schedule. Make sure that you’re specific about the amount of the time that you’re going to spend. Otherwise, you might end up creating a plan for one day that would take you 28 hours to complete. Make sure that all of the listed hours don’t add up to more than 8 hours.

Example:

Monday:

2 hours: Art History Paper: Review feedback from the rough draft and make adjustments

1 hour: Art History Paper: Proofread

10 mins: Art History paper: Ask someone else to read over my paper

30 mins: Art History paper: write a bibliography

2 hours: Dance practice

1 hour: Brainstorm ideas for art project

15 mins: Collect notes to help study for math test

Tuesday

5 mins: Submit Art History paper

1 hour: Thinking about what idea I like best for my art project and gathering supplies

1 hour: complete practice math questions and check answers

1 hour: Math: reviewing the questions that I got wrong

Wednesday

1 hour: Create the sketch for my final art piece

1 hour: Start adding details to my final art piece

1 hour: take math test

Thursday:

2 hours: adding more details to my hart piece

Friday:

2 hours: working on my art project

15 mins: photograph my art

15 mins: complete assessment and submit

Step 6:

Now that you’ve scheduled the most essential things for your week, fill in the rest of your time with other areas. You want to make sure that you schedule the most important things first. So that by the end of the week, you know that those are complete.

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