A new school year has officially started and with it comes many fresh starts: new classrooms, new teachers, new books, and perhaps even new friends. Some students, however, carry with them old habits of losing papers, forgetting important books, and neglecting to turn in their work. Help your child create a stronger back-to-school routine and avoid these organizational woes with the ideas detailed below.

Establish a Homework Routine
Setting up a regular homework routine at the start of the school year is a key component of organizational success. Some children enjoy completing their homework as soon as they get home, to “get it over with” and move on to more “fun” activities. Others need a small snack and are then ready to work, while many kids need a few hours to fully wind down before they are ready to work again. The key is to help your child determine a routine that works for him, then keep it consistent. Do what you can to help him stick with this routine. For instance, if he prefers a small snack before getting to work, try to have that snack ready for him as soon as he walks in the door. If he prefers to eat dinner before working, aim to have dinner ready at the same time each day. Consistency is key, as it will ultimately help him maintain his homework routine.

Set Up a Study Area
Help your child to create a clean, well-organized study area where she completes her homework on a regular basis. This could be a desk in her bedroom, the kitchen table, a study desk in another room, or the like. This study area should be stocked with all the supplies she may need to complete her work – pens, pencils, loose leaf paper, highlighters, a sharpener, and so on. Help her organize the supplies into labeled containers or sections within drawers so that every item has a home. As the supplies quantities dwindle, be sure to refill them right away to avoid any unnecessary distractions in trying to look for these items.

Maintain an Organized Assignment Book
Many students, especially those with executive functioning challenges, think they can remember all of their homework assignments and feel no need to write them down. Others use an assignment book only sparingly. Yet as students move through school and the workload increases, it becomes imperative that they learn to write down their assignments on a regular basis. Help your child develop stronger homework management skills and avoid missing assignments with this strategy: in his assignment book, he should create five columns for each day: ET (estimated time), AT (actual time), O (Order), D (Done), and Assignments (which should be the widest column). When he is at school, the only place where he should write down his assignments is in the assignment column. When he gets home and begins his work, he should start by looking at each assignment and deciding how long he thinks he each one will take – then write the ET, or estimated time, for each one in the ET column. Based on these estimated times, he should decide which assignment he wants to work on first, second, etc., and write the numbers (1,2,3, etc.) in the O column. Once he completes each assignment, he should write the AT, or actual time each one took to complete (usually in the beginning there is a big discrepancy between the ETs and ATs but as he practices this strategy, the times will start to merge as he becomes more realistic with his time). Finally, once the assignment is done *and put in the right place to be turned in* he should place a check mark in the D column. This strategy can help him develop stronger time management, organization, planning, and homework management – skills that are essential for school success.

Learn to Prioritize
As students progress through school, they receive an increasing amount of assignments and projects. Help your child manage this rising workload by teaching her to prioritize and organize her assignments. For instance, a project that consists of researching, creating note cards, outlining, writing, and self-editing can seem overwhelming at first. To help ease her anxiety, look at the assignment with her and help her break down the large project into smaller, more manageable steps. Then assign a due date to each step and have her enter them into her assignment book with completion dates connected to each one. In doing so, she will feel calmer and more in control of her workload, and will feel successful as she completes each step.

At Home Organizational System
As the school year progresses, the quantity of papers students receive seems to multiply, and many students leave this growing pile of (often crumbled) papers inside their backpacks or stuffed into their notebooks. Help your child develop an effective filing system to avoid this overload of papers. Try this 2-tier system: Tier 1 is his active note book, or the note book he carries to school with him on a regular basis. Tier 2 is an accordian file that stays at home and consists of three sections for every class: homework, notes, and tests/quizzes (math homework, math notes, math test/quizzes; science homework, science notes, etc.). He should designate once day per week to be his “clean out my active notebook day,” where he goes through his active notebook and removes any papers he doesn’t absolutely need to be carrying with him on a regular basis. He should file them into the appropriate section of his accordion file. Then, as quizzes or tests come up at a later date, he will know precisely where to find these important papers. As a result, he will be more organized, empowered, and in control of his paperload.

‎Starting a new school year can feel overwhelming for some students. Yet with these back-to-school ideas, your child will start the year feeling organized, confident, and ready for success.

The post How to Help Your Child Establish a Homework Routine appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Set your child up for school-year success by getting organized during the summer

Moving from the sun-filled days of summer to the cool, brisk days of fall can bring back-to-school jitters to almost all children. During the summer, planning out tasks, organizing notebooks and backpacks, and turning in completed homework assignments all fall to the back burner. Yet with the start of school just around the corner, these organizational skills will quickly become paramount. Try the five tips below for helping your child become organized for the new school year.

1. Create a Working Notebook and a Filing System

When you embark on your annual school supplies shopping trip, ‎help your child select a working notebook, or a notebook he will take to school with him on a regular basis. The working notebook should include only essential papers he needs to carry with him daily. To create an at-home organizational system, he should also pick out an accordion file which will stay at home for filing. Inside the file, he should label three tabs for each class: homework, notes, and tests/quizzes (for example: English homework, English notes, English tests/quizzes; math homework, math notes, etc.). Then he should designate one day per week to be his “clean out my working notebook” day. On this ‎day, he will remove any papers from his working notebook that he doesn’t absolutely need to be carrying with him and file them into the correct section of his accordion file. Those at-home papers can later be used to study for tests and quizzes.

2. Set Up (and Maintain) a Planner

Setting up and maintaining an organized planner can help students develop strong homework and time management skills. If your child’s school doesn’t provide one, purchase a planner that has a large amount of space for each day of the week. Then have your child create five columns for each day, labeled as follows: Assignment (where she writes down the assignment while in school), ET (estimated time, or how much time she thinks it will take to complete the assignment), O (order, or the order in which she wants to do the assignments), AT (actual time, or the actual time it took to complete the assignment), and D (done, which she checks off once the assignment is done and put away in the right place to be turned in). If need be, offer your child an incentive at the end of each week for following through on this strategy each day. Practicing this strategy will help your child learn to manage her time and homework more effectively.

3. Designate a Color for Each Subject

Have your child designate a specific color for each subject and maintain consistency with that color for all notebooks, folders, and assignments. For example, he might designate green for science. He should then use a green folder and notebook for science, and perhaps even highlight all science assignments in his planner using a green highlighter. He could use green note cards to study for exams. Math might be blue, English purple, and so on.

4. Time Management: Estimated Time vs. Actual Time 

For all school (and some non-school) assignments, have your child estimate ‎how much time she thinks a given task will take, and then compare it to the actual time it takes. While this technique is integrated into the planner system, it can be applied more generally.  For example, she might estimate that it will take her 30 minutes to complete a math worksheet (ET). She should then time herself to see how long it actually takes and record the AT (actual time). This strategy can be applied to non-school tasks, including cleaning her room, taking out the garbage, eating breakfast, making her bed, and so on.

5. Introduce a Highlighting and Note-Taking Strategy 

Introduce a highlighting and note-taking strategy before the school year begins so your child can apply this strategy as soon as he starts receiving assignments. When he reads, even if it’s a newspaper article, have him highlight the topic (one, two, or three words describing the passage) in blue, main idea (what the author is saying about the topic) in green, and important details (important information describing the main idea) in yellow. Then he can create a two-column note-taking diagram by writing the topic on the top, main ideas (in his own words) in the left column, and important details (also in his own words) in the right column.

Try spending some time at the tail-end of summer helping your child set up organizational systems for the new school year. In doing so, he will start the year off on a positive note and will be well on his way to academic success!

The post 5 Tips For Organizing Your Child For The New School Year appeared first on EBL Coaching.