homework planner elementary

homework planner elementary

Homework Planner for Elementary Students

1. Introduction

In addition to homework, students would like it to be a fun book, but still look professional as a notebook. In the two months after the project, students reported how they keep track of homework tasks and what changes were made to the homework planner to improve the organization of their work. We found that students responded positively to the homework planner, leveraged it to keep track of expected work, and used it to develop strong habits for organization. Some concerns were registered, but the tool was deemed to be useful in the process of keeping track of multiple homework tasks and reducing the chances of forgetting about them.

As an example, we designed a homework planner, a two-sided weekly planner notebook for each student so they can keep track of homework, in which class the homework details, and when it is finished. We worked with seven 4th grade students who used the homework planner for two months. We are interested in how they keep track of homework and other tasks, and whether it supported their organization and study habits.

Based on preliminary interviews and observations, we designed the homework planner, and studied how it was used.

A lot of students forget to take home their homework or bring the wrong folder to school. In order to help students and their teachers, we worked with seven 4th grade students to design a homework planner. It is a weekly two-sided planner notebook where teachers can notify students on homework and project due dates, and students can plan and organize their homework among multiple classes and keep track of what is done.

2. Benefits of Using a Homework Planner

Teaching children to use a planner is the first step to developing aware kids that are capable of managing their assignments. The advantages of using a homework planner are numerous. The most essential aspect is that a planner allows kids to visualize their workload. Children lack the ability to properly comprehend time. Without visual assistance, kids often struggle to understand how much time they actually have to complete an assignment, leading to a misalignment of priorities. Other key benefits of using a planner include the opportunity to check work and the ability to document the length of time spent on assignments. It takes kids less time to check their work when it’s documented in a planner. Additionally, keeping track of the length of time it takes to complete an assignment helps prepare them for the demands of future classes.

Are you a parent tired of managing your child’s schoolwork? You’re not alone. Many parents express frustration about the amount of time they’ve had to dedicate to keeping track of assignments. Not only does helping your child with schoolwork eat into your personal time, but an attempt to prevent completion results in a teachable moment loss. Ultimately, many children lack the knowledge required to properly prioritize or manage their time. One possible solution is to teach kids time management skills through the use of a homework planner. Helping kids learn to manage their time effectively can be a challenging task. Unfortunately, most school systems do not provide their students with instruction in this critical area. The burden falls on parents to help their kids learn time management so they can manage their own workload as they approach college.

3. How to Use the Homework Planner

When it comes to the planner itself, use the first two pages to number the days you have to finish the homework, the first five pages of the planner to also plan what to study, and then the next 2 or 3 pages to make the size of the rest of the planner uniform. This will leave space for all the subjects that you are currently enrolled in. Each of them will have approximately four pages of 5 lines each and you will have everything right where you need it. Only do one task a day until you can’t take anymore and switch to another one. Keep doing one task until you have gone over everything once already. Go over what you might not pass on old exams again whenever you have not finished all of your homework, but make sure to at least reach the important things you need to study for the most important exam you have not taken already first before even attempting to study the least important or most difficult things to study.

Use the top boxes for English and the bottom boxes for Filipino or your language. Starting today, count forward how many days it will take for the exam or quiz to come. For every day, write the number in the respective dates (circled) to finish the homework. On the right side of this number, write down in one sentence what you need to write on your piece of intermediate pad paper. Keep following where today went and updating how you need to plan what to study in the next days to come on every day you finish the homework. Once you have the plan, do it every day and finish what you know you can already do today and every day after this. When you finish what you know you can do today and you still have a lot of time left, do the next most difficult workload that you know how to do.

Prepare the homework planner. Print or use a ruler to draw a vertical line two boxes away on the left side of the book of numbered pages. Use another ruler or stick a long piece of paper at the very right of the book so that you can see what the calendar looks like in one glance. This way, it is a lot easier to remember the dates.

4. Tips for Effective Homework Planning

The single-sheet weekly planner we have been using in 3rd and 4th grades also is helpful for that purpose. Blocks indicate school-related events or appointments: school hours, homework, study time, athletics, music, dance. Children plan and write down daily homework on the very same sheet. Sports and other extracurricular activities help establish routine. Yet do take care to make sure that your 3rd or 4th grader has time to enjoy and to play. Regular routines will help eliminate uncertainty, reduce anxiety, and prepare your child for effective planning when there are more classes and teachers.

Our homework planners provide a bird’s-eye view of the week and a separate sheet for each day. Write down long-term projects on the weekly sheet. Schedule the steps necessary for longer assignments on the daily sheets. The time to learn about and to practice this two-level planning is in 5th and 6th grades. In 4th grade, there are enough subjects handled by a single teacher, at the right time and in the right place, to do much of the long-term planning and scheduling yourself. For our 4th grader, writing daily homework on her weekly plan was a useful start. From 5th grade onward, the two layers of plan – weekly and daily – will prove handy to organize work.

Tell a college freshman to manage time better, and he’ll shrug and walk off. Tell a second grader the very same thing and the odds are high the youngster will stare wide-eyed and ask, “You mean I’m supposed to manage my homework?” Elementary school children have difficulty grasping abstract ideas. Given clear instructions and precise limits, they can handle the concrete job of managing their time. It won’t be long before they genuinely feel in command of their world by using our homework planner.

5. Conclusion

In the above discussion, it can be concluded that the child’s learning abilities cannot be forced to work bound due to the poor condition of the children’s work of several expansion studies that have been proven in chapter two. The student must be accompanied through homework completed along the way toward quality hours that are well realized, that pay attention to the progress of children, in solving problems or completing the task, until the student gets a better understanding while experiencing non-systematic working conditions. With care from teachers and parents academically supportive circumstances will easily be achieved since the nursery age for the same ideal education.

The recent global economic crisis and the untiring cost of studying for increasing costs. Society will always seek to obtain the best education for students so as to have a guarantee in shaping the future of children who are increasingly uncertain. To respond to this, it requires hard work not only from teachers, but the role of parents who are no less important in providing knowledge to their children.

Based on information from a teacher in Jakarta, she struggles to provide learning materials for grades III, IV and V students (6th to 10th grade elementary school students) and often requires the completion of this material in the same day or even for two days. With a sufficient number of teaching hours, in a week it is enough to do one to three subjects, but the learning materials sometimes reach six different subjects. This is as we know, there are still non-academic activities and assignments that have not been considered before. If students have to work on completion tasks from as many as six subjects every day, of course students are required to be forced to work in non-systematic situations, sometimes they also need time to search in various sources because they do not use the same type of book from one subject to another subject.

In this modern era, it is a fact that the level of competition in every facet of life is becoming higher and tougher. Schools, naturally, do not want to miss the rhythm of these developments and have high expectations of their students. Moreover, the competitive environment in school is also slowly beginning to be fostered since elementary level or even from kindergarten.