I love the idea of nurturing independent learners, not that I don’t want to participate in the process (far from it); rather, I don’t want the process to depend on me. That’s why I really want to be training my son to take on more and more of his own planning for his work. This summer/fall will be the first trial of that, and I wanted him to have his own planner forms. Each week, I want to sit down with him, both of us with our planners, and train him to schedule and keep up with his own assignments. I looked all over the internet for planner forms and found a number of cute options for sale on Currclick.com. But, none of them were exactly what I wanted—naturally. So, I worked on creating my own.
The student planner is for 36 weeks, with memory work from Psalm 1, Exodus 20, Matthew 5, etc.
Grant it, folks. I’m no graphic designer. I’m a writer. I took some design courses in college as part of my minor but just barely passed most of them. So don’t expect anything stupendous, just practical. I hope some of you will find this useful. (Created in Open Office power point and exported as pdf.)
I’m still trying to figure out how to create a pdf that you folks can edit and customize (add your own Bible verse, etc.) When I learn how to do that, I’ll post. Until then, I hope this works for some of you and maybe, for others, it will wet your creative appetite.
I love it, Tracy! Thank you for sharing this!
I came upon your site when looking for a student planner after being on a site that talked about using student planners for their children to know what is expected of them…etc I have 5 children ages 13, 11, 8, 6 and 2. I have trouble with my 11 yr. and 8 yr. old right now. My 11 yr. old has trouble with schedule where she’ll easily tell me at the end of the day when I ask well I did 2 problems. I’m just afraid that I’ll have to continue to chase her down. Sometimes it takes her until almost noon and chores aren’t finished yet. Do you have any suggestions? With my 8 yr. old I’m clueless. I feel I need to do more hands-on stuff. Not having a book for him to do as my others makes me nervous. I’m just unsure. If you have any advice how you use your planner that would be wonderful!! Thanks for sharing!!!
My intention is to sit down with my son and help him write out his assignments for the week. Then, for the first few weeks, I’ll supervise closely that he completes and checks off the assignments. After I’m sure he understands what is expected of him, I want to gradually back off and make a big deal about his growing independence, checking his work at the end of each day.
My son is young and just starting out, so my situation is vastly different from yours. It would be hard for me to give advice about your daughter without knowing a little more about the situation. Perhaps set a timer for each assignment and train her to manage her time in smaller blocks before expecting a day’s worth of work. Also, when I struggled with time management in jr. high/high school, my mom required that I write down time started/time completed for each task; every moment had to be accounted for, even if I went to the bathroom or switched out books those tasks were written down along with the amount of time it took me to do them. When I taught college students, this was something I also suggested for my freshman who struggled with managing their time. Hope that helps! Feel free to email me if you have more questions (link is in the right sidebar).