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Health & Fitness

Getting It Done - Homework Tips #3

Homework organization tips for home and backpack.

Assuming your student has mastered both knowing where to look for his posted assignments while at school, and how to effectively record them, we now turn our attention to ways to effectively transport his work from school, keep it organized at home, and transport it back to school.

It’s no secret that for the disorganized student, a backpack is often the place where important papers go to hide, only to reappear days/weeks/months later.  It’s as if your student’s critical work has decided to participate in some sort of game of hide and seek with the winner being determined by which “lost” paper can reappear closest to the time AFTER which it can no longer be turned in.

Developing habits around backpack and home organization, like other habits, takes time.  Here are some things you can do to ensure that the habits being developed are good ones:

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  • Separate new work, ongoing projects, and finished work into labeled bins, folders, file cabinets, or an under-bed box.

 

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  • Buy a bulletin board for reminders and place a weekly calendar on it. Give your student a stapler, a three-hole punch, and big binder clips.  Provide a shelf for books. Give your student a pad of sticky notes, and encourage him to post special reminders on mirrors, doors, and elsewhere.

 

  • Keep an extra set of textbooks at home. Make the extra books part of the IEP or 504 plan, or request them from the teacher at the beginning of the term.

 

  • Keep extra supplies on hand. Fill a supply cabinet with pencils, rulers, tape, binders, and other essentials. Post a checklist in the cabinet that your student can mark when he takes an item.

 

  • School gear that encourages organization, such as a backpack with multiple compartments, is very helpful. Help your child categorize his school materials - notebooks/binders, workbooks/texts, pens/pencils - and assign each category its own compartment.   An accordion folder whose sole purpose is homework transportation can help here.  Divide it into “incoming” and “outgoing” sections.

 

  • Depending on your student’s requirements, a three-ring binder, with colored tabs for separate subjects and inserts with pockets for notes, can work well.  Paper with reinforced holes to reduce the risk of losing pages is a must.

 

  • Prepare for the next day. As your child packs his book bag each evening, make sure that homework is in its transport folder and that everything he'll need is ready to go in the morning. On weekends, help him go through his backpack to remove old work and see if he needs any new supplies. Reserve a shelf or cabinet by the front door for items that your child takes to school every day. Label it with colored stickers, so that regularly required items can be easily found. Hang a hook underneath for a backpack or sports bag.

 

In our next installment, we’ll talk about using a planner.  Additionally, to wrap up, well talk about ways to provide incentive for your student to develop the habits mentioned in this series.

If you have some additional suggestions that you have found to work, please share them,  We would love your input.

Until next time.

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