Organisation at school – helping with homework and learning
We all know that being disorganised can have disadvantages for us. Bills which are paid late, running out of milk, leaving an umbrella at home or forgetting about the wet washing in the machine are all things which can
cause problems for disorganised adults. But detentions, late assignments, being kept in and missing out on valuable learning experiences are some of the problems which disorganised students can face.
Sometimes, the first that you hear that your child is having problems with his or her homework might be that you get a letter from school saying that they need to show up at detention for incomplete homework. If you child has just gone up to high school, is a bit disorganised, enjoys chatting to the person next to them in class or staring out the window, then they might not write down a full description of the homework task.
In primary school, homework may often be to complete a worksheet. If this is the case, the student usually doesn’t need to write anything down in class – they know they have to do the sheet, they take the sheet home, follow the directions on the sheet and voila! All done!
However, usually when kids enter high school, the conditions change. For instance, maths homework will often be questions from a text book. To complete homework correctly, writing down ‘do maths questions’ in their homework diaries won’t be sufficient, there is much more that they need to remember.
Let’s say Monday’s maths homework is written on the board ‘Exercise 4.3 pg 152 Q1, 2, 3, 5, 7 Due Wednesday’. To complete this homework correctly the student needs to
- Take home maths notebook
- Take home maths textbook
- Take home calculator/ compass/ protractor/ ruler or whatever is required
- Know the page number of the exercise
- Know which exercise on the page to do
- Know which questions within the exercise to do
- Get the homework done on Monday or Tuesday night
- Remember to bring notebook, textbook and other equipment to school on Wednesday.
And all that’s just for maths! There is also English homework, science homework, SOSE homework, Japanese homework, and so on. This is a lot more than take home sheet, do it, and bring it back the next day.
If your child is not writing down what his/her homework is, or is only writing down something like ‘do questions’, it might not take too long for your child to end up with some detentions and/ or a phone call home to you. If this is the case, talk to your child’s teacher and see if you can come up with some strategies. Ideas which you might try include:
- Having the teacher initial his/ her homework diary when your child has written in his/ her homework, checking that it contains all the needed details.
- Talk to your child and his homeroom/ pastoral care teacher about checking his/ her timetable when he/ she packs her bag at the end of that day. You might need to make a list of equipment required for each subject which can be stuck on the inside of his/ her locker. If your child needs to leave school spot on the bell to catch a bus or whatever, get him/ her to pack his/ her bag at lunchtime and just add the afternoon’s books in quickly. This should save forgetting things.
- Consider having spare protractors, rulers, dictionaries et cetera at home in case things are left at school.
- Get your child into the habit of packing his/ her bag the night before, while looking at his/ her timetable. This should cut back on leaving things at home, be it maths homework, PE uniform, Japanese assignment, permission slips for excursions et cetera.
- Work out which afternoons and evenings of the week are busy due to music lessons, sports training, Girl Guides etc and try to do the bulk of homework on quieter nights. Quieter nights and weekends are a good chance to get assignments down too.
I hope that you and your kids can find some order if needed – let me know how you go!
Libby
For more advice on school and learning issues, go to www.makemathseasier.com/index.html
(September 2007) (
Lexi xxx
