Posts Tagged ‘StudySkills.com’

“What? Me disorganized?” – Doc Meek

chaos photo: Creative Chaos creativechaos.jpgImage from: Photobucket.com
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Today I am full of gratitude for disorganization! It gives us a chance to learn to create order out of chaos. – Doc Meek
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This is your HowToLearn.com Newsletter from Pat Wyman:
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Today: In her continuing series, our expert Susan Kruger of StudySkills.com has a new article for you about organization and how to make is simpler for your child or student.
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Dear Doc,
Disorganization is one of the top complaints I hear from parents and educators.
Teachers tell many stories about students who fail classes because they lack the organizational skills to keep track of their assignments.

School counselors and psychologists tell about the huge number of students referred to them for suspected learning disabilities, only to discover that a large percentage of these students simply lack organizational skills.

Parents are totally dismayed because they try to keep everything organized, but they aren’t at school to oversee organization, when it seems to matter most.

Why Is This Happening?

There are three main reasons students have trouble staying organized:

  1. They have too much “stuff.”  Most students have 12 to 16 different folders and notebooks to keep track of across a whole lot of transitions: from home, in the car/bus, to school, in the locker, back into the book bag, into class, back to the locker, and then home again.  (Elementary students may only have a half dozen folders, but that’s still five more than they should have!)

  1. Everything looks alike.  When those folders and notebooks are stacked in the locker or book bag, they all look the same!

  1. Any time students are managing papers, they are in a hurry.  Whether they are rushing out of class at the end of an hour, rushing from their locker at the end of the day, or rushing to finish their homework at home, they are always in a hurry.

Read the full article here:

Let’s Relate This to Our Lives as Adults

Imagine having 12 to 16 different email accounts to maintain every day.  Imagine if you were expected to log into each account several times each day, respond to emails and retrieve old/sent emails at the snap of a finger?  It would be overwhelming to transition between them quickly.

This is what students deal with every day, managing so many different school supplies.  They have the added burden of managing these materials across several daily transitions.  Teachers have good intentions when they ask students to maintain a separate folder and notebook for their class; they think that separate supplies will make it easier for students to keep science papers organized in the science folder and math papers organized in the math folder.

However, this traditional system is actually creating the problem.  The sheer volume of folders and notebooks (not to mention textbooks and workbooks) makes it hard for students to find the right ones, especially when they are in a hurry!

As a result, students haphazardly throw papers the first place they can.  Later, they have no idea what they did with their papers.  Papers can be anywhere…
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Pat Wyman, The Center for New Discoveries in Learning, Inc., 4535 W. Sahara Ave., Suite 200, Las Vegas, NV 89102

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Thank you, Pat Wyman and Susan Kruger!

Doc Meek, Saturday, August 31, 2013, at Sherwood Park, Alberta, CANADA