Many students and adults struggle with budgeting their time. With a limited number of hours in a day, finding a way to balance projects and due dates can quickly become stressful. Students need a solid foundation to teach them how to manage schoolwork deadlines. Providing kids with strategies for meeting deadlines helps them develop essential skills and sets them up for success in school and beyond. Let’s look at some tips for meeting school deadlines.
Time Management Skills
Having good time management skills is key to meeting schoolwork deadlines. Kids need help implementing time management skills because they don’t yet have the experience to know how long something should take. They can’t portion out activities easily without already knowing how much time each activity will consume.
Using pre-made planners or your own custom-made sheets, write deadlines and important dates that might prevent your child from working on their project that day. Break the project down into mini-deadlines to make things easier for your student. Additionally, you can make mini-timelines for each task step. The timeline can have an hour for research, an hour for outlining, two or three hours for writing, and so on. Timelines give them a concrete idea of how long their project will take and when they need to sit down and do it.
Aside from setting up project timelines, you can also remove distractions to help kids with time management. TVs, phones, and gaming devices all increase the likelihood of distraction. Have kids work in an area free of all unnecessary devices. They can use their phones to set up timers but put them in work mode so kids won’t have easy access to distracting apps. Give them headphones for listening to concentration-enhancing music so they aren’t pulled out of work by activity around them.
Reducing Stress and Anxiety
You can help students with deadlines by reducing their stress levels. Children often feel overwhelmed when they look at the schoolwork they must complete — how can they get it all done in time? School is a significant stressor for kids of all ages — once they’re in the middle of the year, you might begin to notice signs of stress like:
- Frequent illness
- Poor sleep
- Avoiding responsibilities
- Reduced or changing food habits
- Shifting behavior
Whether or not your child has displayed any of the above stress signs, you should take steps to help reduce sources of stress in their life. The more anxious kids are about school, the worse they’ll perform — they won’t be working at their best and will begin to feel worse as a result. As parents, you can help your children learn to manage stress and anxiety by:
- Teaching them good coping skills.
- Talking to them about their feelings and how you’ve dealt with stress and anxiety.
- Providing love and support.
- Encouraging them to exercise, take breaks, and get enough sleep.
Kids can often seem like a mystery to the adults around them. The important thing to remember is that children are like adults internally — they just don’t have the skills or framework to express or manage their feelings. Be a model for your children by showing them the strategies you use to meet deadlines. As parents and caregivers, you can help develop these skills in your children so they’re prepared to handle anxiety and stress in healthy, constructive ways.
Breaking Down Tasks
This tip can work for a variety of needs in addition to schoolwork. Anyone would feel overwhelmed by a big project due a ways away. It’s easy to ignore it and procrastinate until the last minute or feel utterly helpless in the face of some tasks. Breaking the whole task down into smaller parts is a great way to help kids with deadlines.
Setting up small milestones makes kids feel like the project isn’t so big. Additionally, they’ll get more opportunities to feel rewarded — completing five smaller goals feel more rewarding than finishing one large one. If a project has multiple steps like planning, writing, and editing, make each a separate goal. Have your child meet a goal each day or two so that they feel like they can tackle the project more efficiently.
Go over their progress and what they’ve completed at each step — you might need to adjust steps further to help them succeed. If they take longer on one portion than you thought they would, split it into smaller pieces. Talk to them about why it took them longer and what pieces they need more help with. This way, you can adjust task breakdowns to your child’s strengths.
Keeping a Schedule
Keeping a schedule ties in with time management skills. The best time management strategies are tied in with good scheduling. Employing regular, well-kept schedules is one of the most effective ways to ensure due dates are met.
Schedules help keep you and your child on track and ensure nothing gets lost or overlooked. Getting familiar with schedules from a young age will help kids establish good habits early and prepare for the academic, personal, and professional tasks they’ll juggle in the future.
Help kids prepare their schedules by using your own as models. Place the plan somewhere they’ll frequently walk by and announce changes you’re making to them in advance. Encourage them to work on prioritizing activities — for example, ask them how they’ll complete a science project when they have a book report due the same week. Suggest breakdowns, time slots, and strategies for dealing with multiple close due dates.
Taking Breaks to Reset
Teaching children to meet deadlines is about more than just finishing work on time. While getting caught up in due dates and constant goal-meeting is easy, kids need breaks to rest their minds and bodies. Break time is essential for reducing depression, anxiety, and stress. It’s also key to providing kids a chance for socializing, physical activity, and rest. Giving your children time to pause their brains and unwind helps them be more productive when they return to work.
Having them only do work all the time leads to burnout and stress when faced with challenging school projects. Support kids with regular breaks to let them refresh their minds and stay motivated about work.
CCA Promotes Essential Skill Building
Kids need guidance to develop the essential skills and strategies they’ll use to succeed in life. While traditional schooling often requires them to sit for hours without personalized assistance, cyber school provides students with flexibility and individualized support. At CCA, we believe in helping students achieve their fullest potential through flexible schedules and effective support techniques.
Our personalized learning programs allow students to learn at the most effective pace and give them room for essential breaks and rest. Additionally, our programs assist parents and students in learning the best tools for developing strong, independent habits. Request more information about our cyber schooling and how we help set students up for lifelong success online today!
