Four Fun Techniques to Help Children in Organizing Schoolwork & Assignments

Organizing Schoolwork & Assignments

Disorganization, indiscipline, and difficulty maintaining focus are common factors that prevent children from achieving their true potential. Although there are diagnosed conditions that are linked directly with these “symptoms” such as ADHD, autism, and learning disabilities, in most case scenarios, it’s just a mild and temporary phase that most children go through.

Organizational Challenges for Kids

The organizational problems that children face at a certain age can generally be attributed to challenges with being able to plan and prioritize tasks that are given to them. Some of the causative factors behind a disorganized situation as a child would include sensory issues, executive functioning, attention difficulties, cognitive deficits, visual motor difficulties, behavioural issues, language processing problems, compromised impulse control, memory issues, lack of self-motivation, and problems with emotional instability.

Children having problems organizing their time to complete the daily tasks assigned to them could be having one or a combination of a couple of the problems mentioned above. These issues are relatively common obstacles and the good news is that there are always ways around them to develop organizational skills and accomplish tasks consistently and successfully. The key is to provide organization ideas that spark the child’s natural potential.

Here, we will be shedding light on some techniques that help you bring your child back on track and get him/her to develop the skill of organizing school work at home in a fun and efficient way.

Creating a Routine – Humans are creatures of habit. Some habits are formed spontaneously, others through choice, and still others, forced by circumstances. The good thing about a routine is that you don’t waste time wondering what you are going to do with your time. If you give your child a routine to follow and make sure that he/she sticks to it initially, it forms a foundation for life.  Also, make a physical representation of the routine on a timetable or chart. The routine could be a series of minor actions like unpacking the school bag at a certain time, sitting at the desk at a particular time, starting to study. It’s important to add fun elements in between in the form of game time or TV time so it looks doable.

See the Big Picture: Help your child to develop visualization skills. When they receive an assignment, train them to spend 5 to 10 minutes just visualizing performing the task at hand. This helps organizing school work allowing them to get a clear picture about the potential challenges and how to overcome them. Get them to think about the different techniques they can utilize to complete the assignment quickly and comprehensively. You also need to build a strong image about completing the task. Once you develop this habit in your child, it is surely going to help the child later in college and even in his or her career.

Checklists – Checklists are a great organizational tool. It gives the child a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction to tick off the tasks completed in a day. The sense of writing down the tasks for a day gives the child a better representation of the day’s work. It also actually makes it look easier and more achievable.

Break it Up – Any large task becomes achievable if you can learn to break it up into smaller segments. Starting on a large task can be intimidating and it might induce periods of procrastination. Sit with the child and show how a task can be broken down into segments. This helps the child to recognize just about any task as achievable. Also, don’t forget to assign deadlines to finish each segment. This helps them in organizing assignments according to their natural abilities effectively.

These are just some of the basic organization assignments tips for school that you can implement with your child. It’s important to have a clear communication between yourself and your child. Understanding your child and his/her special needs and personality traits will help you to devise a personalized plan to complete assignments in an effective and timely manner.