Pre-Thanksgiving Productivity Hack

Your son or daughter has now accomplished the first quarter of their high school year. Gratefully Thanksgiving is coming up as a relaxation break and reward. Family downtime is needed.

Please don't make this a work or catch up weekend. Let it be about fun. Adolescents need some unstructured time to just be themselves.

Instead, ask your student to check their own grades or assignments and try to get everything up to date in the next two weeks.

 

 

Your Best Work in High School  will soon display some more hacks for hammering through homework.

Tune into Yourbestworkinhighschool.com  and go to this blog.

But for right now, 

Hack 1: faster is better.  Don't draw it out. Turn your phone off so that you can  keep focused for 45 minutes.  Then turn it on to check your messages for 5 minutes.  Make sure to turn off your phone again to put in another 15 minutes if your assignment needs it.  Motor through. If you have questions or get stuck, email your teacher for answers.

 

Real World Professionals Model What Twice Exceptional Adolescents Need the Most

 

                Twice exceptional adolescents have this in common with many gifted real world professionals: the need for an assist in getting daily tasks done so that they can focus on their favorite information and ideas.  It is these professionals, who hold the key to what 2e adolescents  need the most: tech strategies for time management and organization that support their weaker executive functions. Twice exceptional adolescents usually experience the relentless tasks of high school homework, as drudgery, if not torture. But fortunately they can achieve immediate mastery the of variety of tech tools known as Apps. Apps are, of course, the lingua franca of social networking, a primal area of adolescent expertise. So it is effortless for a variety of 2e adolescents to use these same tech skills to get other important things done!

                Innovative business professionals are now using time management and productivity Apps to organize not only their own agendas, but those of whole project teams.  A twice exceptional tenth grader, independently figured out all the bells and whistles of Trello.com, billed for laymen as a "Planner for Procrastinators" and now used widely by professional business work teams.  This 2e student reported that Trello made homework planning so much fun that it was easier to pay attention to her assignments!

                 An 11th grade 2e student self-selected" Microsoft To Do: Lists, Tasks and Reminders", to keep track of homework tasks and to create a study plan for an upcoming AP Calculus test. There are a variety of free Productivity Apps, that provide real world practice at time management for 2e students who need an executive thought assist.  A 2e's use of adult time management tools is not only a motivator for high school work but preparation for work in the real world.

 

Deborah Katz, Ed.D.

For more info about the wide variety of professional productivity Apps for 2e students and to learn more about how real world professionals can motivate them, visit Yourbestworkinhighschool.com. There you can also subscribe to a blog about homework management.

 Homework Hack #1  The Most Popular Planning Tools

https://www.Yourbestworkinhighschool.com

As a high school student, you probably access assignment calendars that enable teachers to show deadlines for homework and other projects in most of your classes. These school platform-based calendars are a good starting point.  

But, I do need to warn you here, that unless you are naturally and automatically hyper-organized, you still need to do at least some of your own homework management in order to consistently meet the deadlines on your school-based display. And since homework points boost your grade, being on time really helps you.

Now, this involves good news too because, if you gravitate to anything in App form, the choices from the list below enable you to plan using a model you really like.  And all of these choices synch across devices. You can also program reminders!

Investigate the links below for some best choice Apps for getting homework done. 

My Homework Student Planner APP (the Pro version) at https://myhomeworkapp.com/ is rated #1. "Student" includes those attending any of the colleges and universities you may want to attend!   

If you were using a paper planner, this electronic format will be familiar to you. The difference is time, with this App you can add your upcoming and reaccuring deadlines in just a few minutes. That is the first step to having all of your information in one place. A calendar event feature allows you to add customized homework events for each day. And, you can cross these off right as do them! You can also alert yourself electronically to what's coming up next.  Invite a coach or peer mentor to your scheduling process to help you keep up your homework pace.

Google Calendar  https://www.google.com/calendar/about

So many adults utilize Google Calendar, which as you know, works across devices. Just be aware that if your page shows up as a layer in your family's calendar, their events can populate onto your interface. That can be helpful but also complicate things too. Sometimes it's best to create your own Google account option so you can use a separate Google calendar.

Trello    https://trello.com/b/ZGFQcYNz/a-planner-for-procrastinators

 Trello advertises as the best planning App for Procrastinators, and you are not the only ones, adults are included in this group.  It allows you to plan for those days when homework just won't get itself done. With Trello, you create specific task cards that move through different stages of completion.  It's so gratifying to move a task card to "Done!"  It also has an excellent calendar feature that allows you to list day-specific homework tasks.   Trello can synch with all of your devices and other people's too so you can invite members of a school project group to plan it with you.

 And if you are a visual learner, Trello is definitely for you because it's colorful and creative with a variety of spatial options. 

You may want to subscribe to this blog so that you can automatically get each new Homework Hack in the sequence. With this attention to assignment completion, you will be on your road to managing your time like a real-world pro!

Introducing Homework Hacks for Your Best Work in High School

As an experienced student, you may still hear "Have you done your homework?" from your parents at times in your high school career when you feel really sensitive and even secretive about not being able to "get into it".

That's the reason I'm blogging to offer you Homework Hacks that are so popular, your parents will never ask you that question again! 

Tune in to these next blogs for great ways to:

1. Start and Complete Homework! (When you become this productive, you create more free time for yourself)!

2.  Make your homework time less isolating. (Who said you have to go it alone?)

3. Enlist your parents as your supporters. (Get them to confess that when they were in high school, they may have avoided or even skipped some of their own homework!  And, now they just had to learn how to work at home again!)

4.  Keep your teachers in the loop! Waiting for homework to be submitted is so boring; make things more lively for your teachers by keeping them in the loop!  (Networking this way will get you some great tips for doing an assignment and an extension if you need it!)

Stay tuned for Homework Hack 1!  The Most Popular Planning Tools.

Yourbestworkinhighschool.com