[butterflies]

DD#1 has started high school this year and is finding it tough to be organised remember homework and remember what to take on which days.

Has anyone got a system they use for their highs schooler that works for them? If so I would love to hear from you.

[mumto3princesses]

I bought myself a student diary and kept a copy of her timetable in there. I made a note which days she needed her PE uniform or hair tied back for science etc. Then I kept a note of all her homework and assignments and when what was due too.

I encouraged her to check her diary too but I double checked her for most of her first year. She found it quite hard and often confused week A and week B on her timetable and remembering she had assignments/homework.

The teachers would get them to write down when their assignments were due in their diary but she would forget she had it when it was written on a date in the future. So, I made a note each day of what she had and she ticked it off when she had done it.

[BadCat]

Just copied what I put in the other thread:

My son has started high school this year as well and he is also a shocker for organisation.

What seems to be working fairly well for him is this:

He has display folder (the sort with the clear plastic sleeves in it) sectioned into subjects. As he is given assignment sheets or notes for any subject he slips them into the appropriate place in the folder. If homework is given verbally he notes it down on a sheet of paper attached to the front of the folder. That piece of paper also has reminders for things he needs to ask about, pick up, take with him, whatever, so it functions as a to do list for each day.

That way, in theory at least, all the important information is kept together. The idea was that he would transfer information to his student diary when he gets home each day, but in reality that just seems like doubling the work for no benefit so we might skip that.

[kadoodle]

Make sure his head is screwed on tightly because otherwise he'd be sure to lose it.

[archy's mehi...]

No practical advice here I'm afraid, but here's my experience.

My elder son is a poor organiser anyway, but first year of high school was the worst. Nothing seemed to make a difference, no matter how much I tried to provide solutions/back-ups by getting him folders, plastic sleeves, trying to get him to fill in his school diary, eventually asking him each day what he had for homework (and being told 'nothing', only to find out a few days later that he'd forgotten all about it). I was tearing my hair out, and then another mother mentioned that her son, at another school, had gone from being responsible to surprisingly disorganised. She thought it was the stress of adjusting to a new school environment and different routines and expectations.

After reflection, I thought the same applied to my elder son. He was laid back, doing well in class, and had made several friends, but even so, there was a huge adjustment to be made from a small community-minded primary school to a high school where the year 7 intake was as big as his entire primary school, being the small new kid against the virtually adult year 11s and 12s, instead of the oldest kids, managing his school things in a locker, with indivudally owned text books instead of class sets, getting to the locker between classes and making sure he had the right texts and exercise books, negotiating a huge campus and having to go to different classrooms instead of a small group of rooms, managing homework for different teacchers and subjects due on varied days instead of a weekly homework sheet ...

I think it was all a bit overwhelming and he just lost the plot a bit.

This post has been edited by archy's mehitabel: 26/02/2013, 10:34 AM

[JKTMum]

DD1 has started secondary school this year and has Aspergers so being organised is something she really struggles with and gets easily overwhelmed. This might be a bit late for you but it may help someone else.

These are the things we did to help her:

- her school has a compulsory student diary and the teachers have taught her to write each subject she has that day in the space for the appropriate day, then if she has homework for that lesson she can quickly jot down what it is. It also has a column for when it is due and she writes the date in there (there is another column for her to tick when the work is completed).

- they run a 10 day rotating timetable which she has a copy of in her diary, another in her locker door, one in her bedroom and another downstairs at home where she hangs up her bag. We colour coded the PE lessons where she has to take her PE uniform to change into so she can immediately see that it is required those days. Before she leaves for school she checks the appropriate day and makes sure she has all her books either in her bag or they are already in her locker at school.

- I went to Officeworks at the start of the year and bought these coloured folios

folios

for each subject. They only came in 5 colours at our local store so I had to double up as DD1 has 9 subjects. They have a canvas type material down the side so I was able to write the subject name down each side so when they are stacked in her locker she can easily see which is which. They are big enough to hold her textbook (even the big maths and science ones), writing book and any other special equipment (like her mathomat) for each subject. When she goes to her locker she checks her timetable, grabs the maximum of two folios she needs for the next 2 subjects, her diary and pencil case and off she goes, she doesnt have to waste time making sure she has the right textbooks or the right binder book. Also great in the afternoon if she has homework for certain subjects she knows that just by grabbing the folios she will have everything at home that she needs. They are big enough to hold extra sheets given out by the teacher and nothing gets lost between class and home.

I pick her up from school each day and we have to wait for her brothers bus to arrive in from the senior campus so in that time I just double check that she has all her folios she needs for homework, she then has time to dash back to her locker if need be (doesnt happen often, but it's better to do it then rather than finding out a few hours later when she realises it's still sitting in her locker).