It’s really important that we help kids to organize and we have to understand that when we talk about someone who has poor planning and organization it’s not just their stuff that’s a mess, it is also their ability to organize information in their own heads that’s difficult. So we have to figure out ways that they can learn to organize that information in their heads.
Some of these are very simple and some are more complex. So we can work with these graphic organizers that are very common in classrooms. We can use them to help kids not just plan writing assignments but also to read. So if we give kids outlines that have the main topics in the text and the subtopics and then they have to go in and fill it in, that then gives them an outline in their head so that as they’re reading the information they’re organizing it and putting things into the right file folders, right?
We can help kids plan and organize their work. There are a ton of apps for task management for students. But really it can be done with a paper and pencil planner and the important thing is that we work on do dates, d-o, not just due dates, d-u-e. So what happens to most kids, a high school student say or middle school student, we assign something that’s due in three weeks and we say write this in, you know, on February 21st you’re going to have to turn in your social studies project.
And they write it on February 21st, but they go home and they’re only looking at this week at a time, right, that the spread sheet covers one week at a time. And so my co-author and colleague Margaret Foster who’s a wonderful learning specialist, has this technique where she takes a paper and pencil planner, if that’s what the child is working with, and teaches them that if whatever is assigned is not due tomorrow, you write it in on the day that it’s due, but you turn your planner sideways, so when you write it in it’s actually, and then turn it back to the proper orientation, it’s written vertically.
And anything written vertically on a planner is your symbol that when you get home and start your homework you have to plan out that assignment. Now if it’s due in four weeks you write it in on the date that it’s due, but you also write it in over today’s date. And again that’s how you know that you have planning to do.
And sometimes for a long term assignment the most important thing that a kid can do on the first day is sit down and do that whole GPS model with this assignment. What is it that I have to have done, a list of tasks that it’s going to take, thinking about when they’re actually going to do those tasks, how long is it going to take to do and we also always teach kids that you don’t want to be done the day it’s due, you want to be done a couple of days.
What happens if you get sick? What happens if you … you know, whatever’s going to happen … you have a snowstorm, whatever? So we can teach kids how to plan and even without fancy technology, many of the kids that I work with though at this point in their lives prefer the technology and there’s no reason you can’t do that and again it’s sometimes a simple calendar app can be used, build there are more involved ones and I know kids who are using things that are designed specifically for tracking homework goals.
The problem is though the very kids that need to use those often don’t initiate it. And so you still have to have somebody who’s initiating that at the point of performance. Long beyond when you do for kids who don’t have problems with executive functioning. So you may still need a parent on the other end to sit down and say, gee, what do you have for homework, show me your plan, have you checked the website to make sure you don’t have any missing assignments.
It takes more hands on. So when we talk about these interventions they help kids to grow and develop, they support kids while they’re developing what they need to develop. But they don’t make the job easy for teachers or parents. It is not an easy job to help the kids. I don’t know of a way to make it easy. But understanding what needs to be done takes a lot of the worry and the confusion out of it. And that’s why we talk about principles rather than just specific sorts of interventions.
