When older students take charge of their education, a schedule becomes very important. At the beginning of the day and the end of the day take time to plan the next learning session’s activities. The morning check will look for the items that need to be completed in the day. Many teachers utilize check lists or calendar functions to support this. However if the teachers are not sharing a tool feel free to use mine linked here. 

Check the nightly list

Begin the morning session with a check of the list from the day before. Is the learner waiting on an email from a teacher? See if it was answered. Is there a group project that needs input from other members? If the information did not show up, follow up with another email to the student and possibly to the teacher. Was there an assignment that needed to be finished? Finish that up before starting the new material. You may also need to look at doing an analysis of why the assignment was not completed. Look for any assignments that teachers returned to make changes. Lastly, check scheduled meetings.

Morning List

Create a morning list that shows all of the work that needs to be accomplished for the day. Some school districts present live or synchronous sessions, meaning teachers expect students to be online and take part in class from home. Other districts provide asynchronous lessons, lessons are created using recorded videos. Finally, some classes are held in hybrid or Hyflex. This means that students receive the lessons from teachers in different formats. The format could depend on scheduling some students at school and some virtually.

Regardless of the format, create a work plan based on:

• When do synchronous lessons occur?
• Which assignments are due first?
• Which assignments can be completed independently?
• What will the student need help doing? 

How do you Eat an Elephant?

One bite at a time…

The next step is starting. I have read several self-help books that say get started ½ hour earlier than the day before. This is great for me as a 40 year old, but as a teen, I am not sure that getting up early works. So, my suggestion is this…be up at least one hour before something is required or no later than 9 am. Then, expect to work for 5-6 hours on school activities. Remember this time includes both the time at school and homework time.

Second bite…create the checklist.

Third bite…

Pick something to do. Some people prefer to get the hardest thing out of the way and then the rest of the day is easy.  Others need a warm-up with something easy. Finally, sometimes there is a required starting point…Zoom meeting at 10:00 for Algebra II. 

Final bite…

If you need help getting this set-up. Let me know how I can help. As a special education teacher, I frequently ask these questions, leaving parents out of the middle of the conflict at the beginning.