how does homework teach students to set priorities

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Neag School of Education

How to use homework to support student success.

• by: Sandra Chafouleas
• January 13, 2022
• Community Engagement

Editor’s Note: Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Sandra Chafouleas shares insights on supporting students’ homework during the pandemic in the following piece, which originally appeared  in Psychology Today , where she publishes a blog.

COVID has brought many changes in education. What does it mean for homework?

School assignments that a student is expected to do outside of the regular school day—that’s homework. The general guideline is 10 minutes of nightly homework per grade level beginning after kindergarten. This amounts to just a few minutes for younger elementary students to up to 2 hours for high school students.

The guidance seems straightforward enough, so why is homework such a controversial topic? School disruptions, including extended periods of remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, have magnified the controversies yet also have provided an opportunity to rethink the purpose and value of homework.

Debates about the value of homework center around two primary issues: amount and inequity.

First, the amount of assigned homework may be much more than the recommended guidelines. Families report their children are stressed out over the time spent doing homework. Too much homework can challenge well-being given the restricted time available for sleep, exercise, and social connection. In a 2015 study , for example, parents reported their early elementary children received almost three times the recommended guidelines. In high school, researchers found an average of three hours of homework per night for students living in economically privileged communities.

“ Debates about the value of homework center around two primary issues: amount and inequity.”

Second, homework can perpetuate inequities. Students attending school in less economically privileged communities may receive little to no homework, or have difficulty completing it due to limited access to needed technology. This can translate into fewer opportunities to learn and may contribute to gaps in achievement.

There isn’t a ton of research on the effects of homework, and available studies certainly do not provide a simple answer. For example, a 2006 synthesis of studies suggested a positive influence between homework completion and academic achievement for middle and high school students. Supporters also point out that homework offers additional opportunities to engage in learning and that it can foster independent learning habits such as planning and a sense of responsibility. A more recent study involving 13-year-old students in Spain found higher test scores for those who were regularly assigned homework in math and science, with an optimal time around one hour—which is roughly aligned with recommendations. However, the researchers noted that ability to independently do the work, student effort, and prior achievement were more important contributors than time spent.

Opponents of homework maintain that the academic benefit does not outweigh the toll on well-being. Researchers have observed student stress, physical health problems, and lack of life balance, especially when the time spent goes over the recommended guidelines. In a survey of adolescents , over half reported the amount and type of homework they received to be a primary source of stress in their lives. In addition, vast differences exist in access and availability of supports, such as internet connection, adult assistance, or even a place to call home, as 1.5 million children experience homelessness in the United States

The COVID-19 pandemic has re-energized discussion about homework practices, with the goal to advance recommendations about how, when, and with whom it can be best used. Here’s a summary of key strategies:

Strategies for Educators

Make sure the tasks are meaningful and matched..

First, the motto “ quality over quantity ” can guide decisions about homework. Homework is not busy-work, and instead should get students excited about learning. Emphasize activities that facilitate choice and interest to extend learning, like choose your own reading adventure or math games. Second, each student should be able to complete homework independently with success. Think about Goldilocks: To be effective, assignments should be just right for each learner. One example of how do this efficiently is through online learning platforms that can efficiently adjust to skill level and can be completed in a reasonable amount of time.

Ensure access to resources for task completion.

One step toward equity is to ensure access to necessary resources such as time, space, and materials. Teach students about preparing for homework success, allocating classroom time to model and practice good study habits such as setting up their physical environment, time management, and chunking tasks. Engage in conversations with students and families to problem-solve challenges When needed, connect students with homework supports available through after-school clubs, other community supports, or even within a dedicated block during the school day.

Be open to revisiting homework policies and practices.

The days of penalizing students for not completing homework should be long gone. Homework is a tool for practicing content and learning self-management. With that in mind, provide opportunities for students to communicate needs, and respond by revising assignments or allowing them to turn in on alternative dates. Engage in adult professional learning about high-quality homework , from value (Should I assign this task?) to evaluation (How should this be graded? Did that homework assignment result in expected outcomes?). Monitor how things are going by looking at completion rates and by asking students for their feedback. Be willing to adapt the homework schedule or expectations based on what is learned.

Strategies for Families

Understand how to be a good helper..

When designed appropriately, students should be able to complete homework with independence. Limit homework wars by working to be a good helper. Hovering, micromanaging, or doing homework for them may be easiest in the moment but does not help build their independence. Be a good helper by asking guiding questions, providing hints, or checking for understanding. Focus your assistance on setting up structures for homework success, like space and time.

Use homework as a tool for communication.

Use homework as a vehicle to foster family-school communication. Families can use homework as an opportunity to open conversations about specific assignments or classes, peer relationships, or even sleep quality that may be impacting student success. For younger students, using a daily or weekly home-school notebook or planner can be one way to share information. For older students, help them practice communicating their needs and provide support as needed.

Make sure to balance wellness.

Like adults, children need a healthy work-life balance. Positive social connection and engagement in pleasurable activities are important core principles to foster well-being . Monitor the load of homework and other structured activities to make sure there is time in the daily routine for play. Play can mean different things to different children: getting outside, reading for pleasure, and yes, even gaming. Just try to ensure that activities include a mix of health-focused activities such as physical movement or mindfulness downtime.

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Prioritization Skills: How to Manage Tasks for Better Productivity

Published on March 23, 2022

Knowing how to prioritize tasks is an essential skill for students of any age. Students who know how to prioritize tasks and responsibilities have an advantage over classmates who approach homework and studying haphazardly. Prioritization keeps students organized and productive while ensuring they have plenty of time to finish assignments, study, complete household chores, and enjoy social and extracurricular activities.

Knowing how to prioritize work and responsibilities is a lifelong skill. Like any skill, prioritization improves with practice and can be taught at any age.

What Are Prioritization Skills?

Prioritization skills help students determine which tasks are the most important and urgent and how much time to allocate to each task. Knowing how to prioritize tasks helps students be more productive by making the best use of their time.

Prioritization is an executive functioning skill. Executive functioning describes the skills needed to plan, organize, focus, and follow instructions. Executive functioning skills include time management and organization .

How to Prioritize Tasks

With proper planning, students can list tasks and prioritize them by urgency and importance, allowing order to emerge from chaos and preventing “analysis paralysis,” which increases stress and decreases productivity.

Students should spend some time each day listing their school assignments and other activities and then identify the tasks requiring their immediate attention. For younger students, this can be as simple as making a to-do list and assigning each item on the list a priority number using the Ivy Lee Prioritization Template . Students then work on the highest priority task first, then the next most important, and so on down the list.

Older students can use more complex prioritization tools, such as a prioritization matrix. Also called the Eisenhower Matrix, a prioritization index uses a simple table to prioritize tasks by importance and urgency, as follows:

Tasks that are urgent and important should be finished first. Once these tasks are complete, students can move on to tasks that are urgent but not important and then important but not urgent. Tasks that are neither urgent nor important can be completed when the student has less pressing responsibilities.

For instance, let’s say a student has to prioritize the following six tasks:

• Study for an exam at the end of the week
• Complete algebra homework for tomorrow
• Research a major science project due in two months
• Complete household chores
• Go swimming with friends
• Attend a family gathering over the weekend

Using a prioritization index, your child might organize their priorities like this:

A prioritization matrix helps students identify their most pressing tasks and responsibilities. Different students will prioritize tasks in slightly different ways. For instance, some might consider household chores urgent and important or move swimming with friends into the important but not urgent square.

Tips to Help Prioritize Work

• When prioritizing tasks, keep the Pareto Principle in mind. The Pareto Principle, or 80/20 rule, states that you get 80% of your results out of 20% of your efforts. Students should prioritize tasks that bring real, lasting results or move them toward a long-term goal.
• Make sure that each task has a clear deadline.
• Use a student planner to budget time each morning for prioritization.
• When in doubt, start with the least exciting task, as getting that out of the way will provide motivation for later assignments.
• Regularly reevaluate priorities as circumstances change. Learn to avoid the “ sunk cost fallacy ” of continuing tasks or activities that have decreased in urgency or importance due to changing conditions.
• Consider how spending time wisely today frees up time for other activities.

How Do Students Learn How to Prioritize?

A child’s prioritization and executive functioning skills begin to develop between ages three and five. According to the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, executive functioning skills strengthen once again during adolescence and early adult years. While these periods are prime opportunities to teach executive development skills, students can learn how to prioritize tasks at any age.

Some schools and individual teachers incorporate executive functioning skills into their curriculums, but this isn’t always universal. Many schools lack the resources to teach prioritization or expect students to have already mastered executive functioning skills. Revolution Prep tutors pride themselves on the teaching and application of prioritization skills — skills that provide both immediate and long-term academic benefits.

Need more information on prioritization and executive functioning skills? Check out our executive functioning guide . It’s a great starting resource for students to develop their prioritization skills. And consider working with a Revolution Prep private tutor for students who want to develop and hone their executive functioning skills.

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Designing Effective Homework

Best practices for creating homework that raises student achievement

Homework. It can be challenging…and not just for students. For teachers, designing homework can be a daunting task with lots of unanswered questions: How much should I assign? What type of content should I cover? Why aren’t students doing the work I assign? Homework can be a powerful opportunity to reinforce the Shifts in your instruction and promote standards-aligned learning, but how do we avoid the pitfalls that make key learning opportunities sources of stress and antipathy?

The nonprofit Instruction Partners recently set out to answer some of these questions, looking at what research says about what works when it comes to homework. You can view their original presentation here , but I’ve summarized some of the key findings you can put to use with your students immediately.

Does homework help?

Consistent homework completion has been shown to increase student achievement rates—but frequency matters. Students who are given homework regularly show greater gains than those who only receive homework sporadically. Researchers hypothesize that this is due to improved study skills and routines practiced through homework that allow students to perform better academically.

Average gains on unit tests for students who completed homework were six percentile points in grades 4–6, 12 percentile points in grades 7–9, and an impressive 24 percentile points in grades 10–12; so yes, homework (done well) does work. [i]

What should homework cover?

While there is little research about exactly what types of homework content lead to the biggest achievement gains, there are some general rules of thumb about how homework should change gradually over time.

In grades 1–5, homework should:

• Reinforce and allow students to practice skills learned in the classroom
• Help students develop good study habits and routines
• Foster positive feelings about school

In grades 6–12, homework should:

• Prepare students for engagement and discussion during the next lesson
• Allow students to apply their skills in new and more challenging ways

The most often-heard criticism of homework assignments is that they simply take too long. So how much homework should you assign in order to see results for students? Not surprisingly, it varies by grade. Assign 10-20 minutes of homework per night total, starting in first grade, and then add 10 minutes for each additional grade. [ii] Doing more can result in student stress, frustration, and disengagement, particularly in the early grades.

Why are some students not doing the homework?

There are any number of reasons why students may not complete homework, from lack of motivation to lack of content knowledge, but one issue to watch out for as a teacher is the impact of economic disparities on the ability to complete homework.

Multiple studies [iii] have shown that low-income students complete homework less often than students who come from wealthier families. This can lead to increased achievement gaps between students. Students from low-income families may face additional challenges when it comes to completing homework such as lack of access to the internet, lack of access to outside tutors or assistance, and additional jobs or family responsibilities.

While you can’t erase these challenges for your students, you can design homework that takes those issues into account by creating homework that can be done offline, independently, and in a reasonable timeframe. With those design principles in mind, you increase the opportunity for all your students to complete and benefit from the homework you assign.

The Big Picture

Perhaps most importantly, students benefit from receiving feedback from you, their teacher, on their assignments. Praise or rewards simply for homework completion have little effect on student achievement, but feedback that helps them improve or reinforces strong performance does. Consider keeping this mini-table handy as you design homework:

The act of assigning homework doesn’t automatically raise student achievement, so be a critical consumer of the homework products that come as part of your curriculum. If they assign too much (or too little!) work or reflect some of these common pitfalls, take action to make assignments that better serve your students.

[i] Cooper, H. (2007). The battle over homework (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

[ii] Cooper, H. (1989a). Homework .White Plains, NY: Longman.

[iii] Horrigan, T. (2015). The numbers behind the broadband ‘homework gap’ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/20/the-numbers-behind-the-broadband-homework-gap/ and Miami Dade Public Schools. (2009). Literature Review: Homework. http://drs.dadeschools.net/LiteratureReviews/Homework.pdf

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About the Author: Claire Rivero is the Digital Strategy Manager for Student Achievement Partners. Claire leads the organization’s communications and digital promotion work across various channels including email, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, always seeking new ways to reach educators. She also manages Achieve the Core’s blog, Aligned. Prior to joining Student Achievement Partners, Claire worked in the Communications department for the American Red Cross and as a literacy instructor in a London pilot program. Claire holds bachelor’s degrees in English and Public Policy from Duke University and a master’s degree in Social Policy (with a concentration on Education Policy) from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Successful Teens Know How to Prioritize

Prioritizing skills pay off in school and life success and satisfaction..

Posted June 12, 2023 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

• Why Education Is Important
• Find a Child Therapist
• The development of prioritizing skills during the school years is critical for time management in the future.
• Homework is a great starting place to build prioritizing strategies.
• Prioritizing involves separating information or material by relevance, value, and time requirements.

Guiding your teens to build their planning and prioritizing skills, pays off big time in their school and life success, satisfaction…and even leisure opportunities.

The development of prioritizing skills during the school years is critical for time management in higher levels of education or employment, when monitoring decreases and routines vary constantly.

What one gets from prioritizing skills

Prioritizing involves managing time effectively to make sure that the appropriate tasks are completed. When kids are successful at prioritizing, they can evaluate goals and allot more or less time to tasks based on difficulty, time demands, and importance of the outcome.

Heighten their motivation and prioritizing skill development efforts by encouraging them to think about things they don’t have enough time for now. What could they enjoy if they efficiently plan and prioritize where to dedicate their time and effort? When teens become skilled at prioritizing, they gain more control of their free time without guilt or pressure about tasks you know they “should” be doing.

Examples of benefits of prioritizing to discuss with kids to boost motivation include these:

• Completing daily homework in less time and increasing its quality
• Turning in papers and projects when due, instead of last-minute scrambling
• Saving time by having all work for reports, projects, and jobs together and in an accessible way
• Not missing appointments, meetings, deadlines, releases of ticket sales, or dates with friends

Setting the stage for their success

Prioritizing demands increase as school years progress and long-term projects and reports become more prevalent. It is also during these years when teens take on more social, athletic , club, and community activities.

Many teens think they are not good at prioritizing and never will be because they have not been successful so far. Build their motivation to put in the effort and try new strategies by helping them recognize successful prioritizing tasks they have already done:

• Selecting choices of which television programs to prerecord
• Choosing items to pack for their school backpack or small bag for a trip
• Picking the most important information to study for a test when they did well

Starting with the power of prioritizing homework

Homework is a great place to build prioritizing strategies. Guide them to consider which tasks are most valuable, challenging, and critical to do. Then, with that awareness, plan the amount of time and the order in which they’ll do the day’s assignments.

Written plans can help—especially when they create them for themselves. Here are examples of how they can create a day’s homework plan:

• List the tasks to be done to complete the assignments for each subject, including any items they need to bring in the next day.
• Rate each task from 1 to 5 to indicate its importance to the outcome or grade.
• Write down how much time they think they’ll need for each task. Take into consideration the rating of importance they designate for each task.
• Use these estimates to write down the predicted start and finish times for each task.
• Set a timer for estimated finish time to stay on track so they don’t overspend time on low-value tasks and run out before doing the high-value ones.

Kids can use a similar table for prioritizing in advance of future long-term projects.

• Include five-minute breaks after about 20 to 30 minutes of focused work time. These planned breaks reduce temptations to interrupt work to respond to texts, check email, or lose efficiency with other distractions.

When kids evaluate their insights about what worked and what they would change, it powers up their brains’ prioritizing skills. Encourage them to go back to the homework plans they prepared and followed for a few days and think about how things went.

Long-term projects

As teens develop the skill of prioritizing, they’ll be able to evaluate which tasks are the highest priority and break the habit of putting off the ones they like the least, but that count the most.

The goal is for them to prioritize how they’ll divide their time before starting a long-term project or for planning a study schedule for final exams. Help them use calendars or written plans to schedule time allotments based on their evaluation of the importance of that task.

Opportunities can include the following:

• Create a plan for breaking long-term tasks into doable daily steps.
• Make a list of all the parts of an assignment, project, long-term plan, or big goal. Just write down the tasks as they come to mind, and then revise the list in the order in which things should be done.
• Next to each item, write stars to indicate the importance or value of that task to the outcome or grade.
• Write estimates for the time they predict each task will take.
• Know when they do their best work and plan their schedule accordingly. Plan to do “high-value” tasks that are particularly difficult at the times when they feel their brain's power is at its best (for example, first thing after school, or after some exercise, or before others come home and the house is noisy).

Prioritizing the most relevant information

Prioritizing involves determining hierarchies of importance and separating information or material based on relevance, value, and time requirements.

Prioritizing is also used for students to evaluate the value of information they use to effectively solve problems. This type of prioritizing might include determining which information in math word problems is necessary to reach a solution, what is extraneous, and what information is needed to solve the problem. Similarly, in reading, prioritizing involves the ability to recognize main ideas and essential characters and give this information more attention than lower-relevance details.

Prioritizing skills are also critical for kids to separate less-relevant details from the main ideas of a text, analyze essay questions, select what lecture information to include in notes, and decide what material to study for a test. Ask them what strategies they would use for the most efficient use of their time and effort.

Guide them to prioritize relevance on topics of their interest in magazines, newspapers, Web sites, or instructions for games they want to learn. Have them tell you the main ideas they recognize and which facts they feel are consistent with the major topic.

To prioritize information—that is, to emphasize what they need to remember from a lecture or textbook reading or what to study for a test—teens can use the approach of a news reporter. This familiar nursery rhyme will show them how it works:

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown And Jill came tumbling after.

• Who? Jack and Jill
• When? Not known
• What? A fall
• Where? A hill
• How? Using pails
• Why? To get water
• What is the important message? When on top of a high place, watch where you step.

Now invite them to use the same system to recognize the most important information to remember from a section of one of their textbooks or literature reading assignments.

Each time teens try this strategy, their brains will become more efficient at recognizing high-priority material.

Reflections about the outcome of their efforts

Teens can use these questions as guides for self-evaluation:

• What did I do that was the best use of my time?
• What improvement did I first notice?
• What did I try that I’d do again?
• What would I do differently next time?
• What other strategy do I think will boost my success?

It increases effort and future motivation when your kids take time to recognize and appreciate the impacts of their efforts. They might first note their greater success in things such as staying on top of assignments, class preparedness, or timely completion of long-term projects. Continue to encourage them to acknowledge their evolving skills and independence in using them. Share with them the recognition of the reduction in family strife, nagging, and frustrations. As your teens improve, give yourself a pat on the back for your efforts that supported their successes.

Judy Willis. Unlock Teen Brainpower . Rowman & Littlefield. November 2019.

Judy Willis , M.D., is a board-certified neurologist and middle school teacher, specializing in classroom strategies derived from brain research.

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How to prioritize homework assignments: 5 steps

Katie October 18, 2021 executive function , good habits , homework , productivity , time management

By Katie Azevedo, M.Ed.

Knowing how to prioritize homework is one of the keys to not feeling overwhelmed and falling behind in school.

There are some basic steps to prioritizing homework, which I explain below. But first, let’s get clear on the definition of prioritization.

Prioritization Definition : ranking tasks in order of importance and/or urgency for the purpose of determining which items to give primary attention to.

The goal with prioritizing homework assignments is to figure out which assignments to do first, on days when there’s limited time to begin with. Of course, the expectation is to complete all assignments eventually – but sometimes it really is impossible to complete everything within the time we have available. ( Are you doing too much? )

If you have fallen behind in your homework assignments and feel overwhelmed with getting it all done, the following homework prioritization tips can help you climb out of the hole.

Once you’re in the clear, though, it’s critical that you improve your time management skills so that you don’t end up in the same situation again. At the bottom of this post, I list my top time management resources to get you started.

How to prioritize homework assignments in 5 steps

1. find clarity.

You can’t prioritize what you don’t know. Here’s how to get clarity:

a. Get absolutely clear about everything you need to do. Gather all the information from your various sources (Google Classroom, Canvas, Blackboard, emails, classroom whiteboards, assignment notebook , syllabus, teacher, classmates, etc.).

b. Write all of the assignments down on a piece of paper and include the due date of each assignment. Don’t worry about organizing the list right now – just write things down.

2. Sort assignments by due date.

a. Organize your list by putting assignments in order of the earliest due date (at the top) to the furthest due date (at the bottom of the list).

b. Put all overdue assignments in another list on the same sheet of paper.

c. Highlight or star all the assignments due the earliest (most likely tomorrow)

3. Start with the assignments with the earliest due date.

You should start with the assignments due first, which you highlighted in step 2. If you don’t know whether to start with the easy ones or the hard ones, read this .

The reason you should start with the assignments with the earliest due date is so that they don’t become late assignments; we have to stop the bleeding at the source. Also, if you “can’t find time” to work on these assignments, read this .

4. Move on to late assignments.

After you’ve completed all the assignments that are due today or tomorrow, move over to your list of late assignments, which you created in part b of step 2. 

a. Start with the assignment worth the most points. Late is late at this point, so we should prioritize this list by IMPORTANCE instead of DUE DATE.

b. Chip away at this list, one or two assignments at a time, until you’ve completed all the assignments, even if it takes you a few days. Try your hardest not to add any items to this list.

5. Chip away at assignments with further-out due dates.

I suggest alternating step 4 and step 5. In other words, go back and forth between completing late assignments (1-2 at a time) and moving forward on upcoming assignments. Focus on the ones that have the most weight, are the most complex, and will take the longest. This includes assignments like essays and projects.

Final notes on how to prioritize homework assignments

Here’s a quick summary of the 5 steps above:

• Figure out exactly what you have to do, and make a list of all your assignments.
• Organize the list by due date, and make a separate list on the same paper of late assignments.
• First, complete all your assignments that are due today or tomorrow.
• Next, move on to completing late assignments and making progress on forthcoming (not due yet) assignments. Alternate between these two lists until you’re done.

Of course, to ensure that you’re not in a situation like this again, tighten up your time management skills with the following resources:

• How to batch assignments
• How to use the Pomodoro Technique
• How to handle multiple projects at once
• How to plan time to study: 3 tips

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7 Top Tips for Setting and Managing Homework

Homework is still considered an integral part of the learning process in schools. After all, it has benefits for both teachers and pupils. Students – while they may not always enjoy working outside of the classroom – always learn a valuable lesson about managing heavy workloads independently. Meanwhile, homework allows teachers to further assess their pupils based on their understanding of the subject, skills to succeed, and attitude towards education. If you are currently teaching in the UK, you can enjoy these benefits just by making sure that you have the right approach to setting and managing homework. Here are seven top tips that will help you get started.

1. Establish a firm routine

Homework shouldn’t be sporadic or random. Instead, your pupils should quickly learn that it’s part of their routine. This means that you should set it with some sort of consistency and work to establish a pattern. A great way to start would be to decide how many hours should be completed each week (a figure that will vary depending on the age group you’re teaching). In addition, the work should be spread across both evenings and weekends. Don’t forget, lack of a routine might cause pupils to struggle with managing their homework and lead to it remaining incomplete.

2. Gather parents’ support

Parents must be clued up when it comes to homework. You can accomplish this by letting mums and dads know – perhaps with a letter or an email – that you’ll be setting regular out-of-hours work and that you expect it to be completed to a high standard. The best way to gain parents’ support is by proposing an amount that everyone will deem reasonable. From this point onwards, you should keep mums and dads in the loop when their children are failing to complete the agreed amount of homework and let them know how they can help.

3. Avoid overnight homework

It’s best to steer clear of setting homework to be completed overnight. For starters, it doesn’t give pupils a chance to approach you for help in between if they are unsure about how to tackle the project. Secondly, you’ll be making a somewhat unrealistic assumption that your students have spare time during that night to devote to homework. Some pupils may have other commitments – such as a family occasion to attend or a dance lesson that’s already been paid for – that would mean they’re too stretched to complete the work in the space of just one evening.

4. Don’t dawdle with marking

Homework is a two-way street and the rules are quite clear: pupils complete it and teachers mark it. This is why it can be problematic if you dawdle on the marking and subsequently create the illusion that you’re not holding up your end of the bargain. Of course, teachers often find themselves pressed for time and forced with juggling different tasks. However, you should make every effort to ensure that homework doesn’t remain unmarked for days on end or else you could send the message that it doesn’t really matter.

5. Collect homework in the morning

You should try to collect homework promptly at the first opportunity you get. If you don’t, you could find that some of your pupils are completing it throughout the day – including at break time, during lunch hour and when you’re teaching at the front of the class. This won’t just mean that the students could fall behind with the syllabus, it can also be demoralising for others who have sacrificed their free time to complete the work and they could begin to ponder whether it’s worth holding off on their own homework in future.

6. Reward effort

Pupils who have clearly put in a lot of effort with their homework should be rewarded regularly. The individual doesn’t necessarily have to have done an amazing job as long as it’s clear that they have tried to work independently and devoted time to the project. Whichever avenue you go down – whether it’s giving out gold stars or sending letters of praise to parents – the reward should always encourage pupils to continue devoting the same amount of effort to their homework.

7. Consequences for lack of effort

There should be consequences for those students who have failed to complete their homework or have clearly rushed through it. The best punishment is usually to issue an after-school detention in which the individual will be made to have a second attempt at the project. The best form of discipline will always make pupils think twice about whether it’s worth skipping their homework in future and instil in them that there are consequences for those who don’t try hard.

Now let’s set some homework

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Homework: Helping Students Manage their Time

Two simple strategies for guiding students to improve a crucial skill.

This is the second of two parts. Part one can be found here: Is Homework Helpful?: The 5 Questions Every Teacher Should Ask .

Teachers assign work each and every day, either in class or for homework. That is the easy part. Put it on the board, tell students to copy it down, and move on to the next item on the day’s agenda. But why don’t teachers help students figure out how much time to allot to assignments? How do students know if an assignment should take 10 minutes or 40?

It is a blind spot in my own teaching. I never realized until lately that I wasn’t supporting students with time management skills. I wasn’t developing their ability to assess an assignment and correctly evaluate how much time it should take. 

Why is this important? With good time management, students know how much time they have, how long it will take to get assignments done, and what they can accomplish in the time they have. This gives them more breathing room, which reduces the feeling of being rushed, which in turn leads to less frustration and stress.

Here are two ways to support students in understanding time management.

Do the assignment yourself.  See how long it takes you to complete the work. Then remember, you are the expert with this material. Ask yourself, how long would it take for a proficient student to complete it? What about students with disabilities, what might hinder their progress? Then provide students with a range of times. If you believe an assignment should take 15-25 minutes, let them know. The benefit of this is that it allows students to plan better. They can situate homework in the context of their entire day. A student may get home from school at 3:30 and has soccer practice at 5pm. He now knows that he can complete your homework in any 25-minute window between the end of the school day and the start of practice. The downside to this is that some students may lose confidence and doubt themselves if an assignment takes much longer than you suggested. 

Rate the assignment.  Classify assignments into three categories with time frames for each so that students know what type it is and how long it should take to complete. Here are three ways that I categorize assignments:

Quick checks:  These assignments are measuring sticks of understanding and they are short and sweet. I expect students to spend 20-50 seconds on each question on these types of assignments. A 20-question quick check should take 6-10 minutes.  

Thorough Responses:  When you want answer with more substance and more development, I look for thorough responses. These types of assignments are different than quick checks because I expect students to spend 2-4 minutes per question. Thorough responses typically have fewer questions consequently.Thorough response assignments take my students 20-35 minutes.

Sustained Thought:  When students must access new material, when there is challenging reading, or when they must chew on ideas before they formulate responses,  students can expect to spend 30-40 minutes to complete an assignment. 

This piece was originally submitted to our community forums by a reader. Due to audience interest, we’ve preserved it. The opinions expressed here are the writer’s own.

January 31, 2023

How to prioritize tasks.

Mastering the skill of prioritizing is essential for success at school, and even in your social life away from it. Without developing this ability, you will very quickly become overwhelmed and drown in chaos. Luckily, there are some simple steps that you can integrate into your routine for completing daily tasks that make the entire process far simpler. In this article, we will present you with tips on how to develop your prioritizing skills, with a view to ensuring that you are able to complete critical tasks, meet tight deadlines, and realize your full academic potential.

What is prioritizing?

Prioritizing is a process in which you rank the tasks at hand in a logical order. How you curate your priority list is completely up to you. For example, you can put your most urgent task at the top of your priority list, or you could start with your most difficult task.

The aim of prioritizing is to make your day easier . When you know exactly what you have to do, and in what order, it provides you with a structure. This is essential for school because you have an array of complex tasks to complete every single day. From homework to daily classes, to extracurricular activities, you need to develop prioritization strategies that work for you, so that you are able to handle everything on your plate.

How to encourage students to do their homework?

Why is prioritizing important?

Prioritizing is important because it ensures that students don’t feel overwhelmed with school work. Prioritization skills allow students to improve their time management and productivity.

Statistics indicate that a majority of students experience high levels of workload-related stress and anxiety. A recent study found that 69% of students report feeling overwhelming anxiety and 52% experience severe depression . This problem can be countered by teaching students how to identify high- and low-priority tasks.

5 tips for prioritizing tasks at school

To help students learn how to prioritize, we have collated some expert tips to exemplify the prioritization methods that students can use to make school work more manageable.

1. Be realistic

If students try to get every little task completed, they will become overwhelmed with the amount of work on their plates. It is, therefore, important to understand and accept that there are a finite number of hours in a day, and that you can only get so much done. Once students accept this, they will recognize the need to prioritize which will help reduce their stress.

Improve your prioritizing skills with a digital planner

2. Identify important and unimportant tasks

At the core of prioritizing is the ability to distinguish between important and unimportant tasks. The best way to do this is by creating a comprehensive list of tasks and ranking them from most to least important. Bear in mind that labeling something as unimportant doesn’t mean that it will never get done. It simply means that it can wait.

Our top tip for ranking tasks is to try and visualize the outcome, if it is not done right away. For example, if there is a choice between finishing homework that is due tomorrow, and going to the store to buy a new hockey stick for practice this weekend, it is clear which one should take precedence. Being unable to do your homework will have more dire consequences than turning up to practice without a new stick.

3. Think about deadlines

Deadlines play an important role in determining the urgency of a task. Using a calendar is one of the greatest time management strategies available, as it allows you to keep track of when your tasks need to be completed. If you are struggling to determine whether a task is important or not, simply look at your calendar to see its deadline. Using a digital calendar will ensure that you know what is due when. This will allow you to prioritize your tasks more easily.

4. Break down your week

Many students take a day-to-day approach to prioritizing. However, this is a surefire way to become overwhelmed, as you will try to fit every single task into a single day. When you take a step back and break down your week, as opposed to individual days, you will realize that you actually have more time than you think to get everything done.

Once you have an overview of your week, you can prioritize your tasks by simply assigning them an individual day. Instead of telling yourself that you have to do your math homework at 4 pm today, your dry cleaning at 5 pm, your science project at 6 pm, catch up with friends at 7 pm, and finally write your English essay at 9 pm, you can create daily priorities.

5. Leave yourself some free time

It can be easy to only prioritize school work. However, you need to remember that setting aside time for yourself is just as important. Something as simple as taking an hour or two, out of your schedule, to watch your favorite show or read a book will do wonders for your mental health. If you become overwhelmed, you will be unable to perform the most basic of tasks and all your priority planning will amount to nothing.

Smart prioritization with Studyo

With the help of a student planner, you can visualize your tasks and deadlines and stay organized. At Studyo , we recognize how integral planners are to student success and have developed one that is both comprehensive and easy to use.

Our planner has an array of features that make it easier than ever for students to stay on top of their work. For example, Studyo's planner automatically syncs to Google Classroom. As a result, all lessons and homework assignments are automatically uploaded to it, thereby ensuring students never miss a deadline. What’s more, since our planners are fully customizable, they can be personalized to individual schools and students can track their task progress throughout the year.

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How to... set successful homework

Homework is so often feared and loathed that we are constantly rebranding it. “Home learning”, “extended learning”, “independent study”…take your pick.

But our issue with homework stems from an unspoken truth: a lot of the time we just aren’t very good at setting it.

With teachers straining under the weight of a five-period day, homework is too often an afterthought; an irritating byproduct of an awkward school policy that we struggle to wrangle into something useful.

Still, let’s not write off the untapped potential of homework just yet. Instead, let’s draw from the well of best evidence and start setting homework with something like success.

• Consolidate and review, don’t tackle anything new We often expect our students to learn with varying degrees of independence, but perhaps ironically, homework isn’t the time to start learning something new. We should save new learning for our classroom and instead use homework to provide the time for consolidation and practice of material we have already taught.  
• The best-planned homework often goes awry Children (come to think of it, all of us) have lazy brains. As a consequence, they hate to plan, and when they do, they do it badly. They think they’ll do homework quicker and with more ease than they ever will in reality - and homework quality falls as a result. With these flaws in mind, walk through each step of students’ likely planning when you are setting homework. Give them timings and explicit steps to get it done successfully.  
• Don’t ‘give homework over to Google’ You’ve heard the claim “why do you need a teacher when you have Google?” Our students might be the spawn of Snapchat, but if you leave them researching unattended, they will get lost down the bottom of the Google garden. Procrastination and poor search skills will reign, with dubious sources and illiterate online essays besmirching their homework like coffee stains. If the homework requires tech research, this needs to be tightly structured. Give students specific sources; otherwise learning gains will be slashed by criminal cut-and-paste attempts.  
• Help students to strategise when stuck There is a Goldilocks principle for homework: not too easy, but not too hard. It needs to be tough enough to sometimes trip them up, but we need to plan with that in mind. With every piece of homework you set, supply your students with three potential strategies to use if they get stuck.  
• Avoid the homework afterthought Setting homework at the end of the lesson often means we’re squeezed for time, so that all the aforementioned principles go up in smoke. Instead, set homework at the start of the lesson so that students understand its importance, or at a planned-for moment that gives you the time to handle it with care.

Alex Quigley is an English teacher and director of the research school at Huntington School in York. He is the author of The Confident Teacher .

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Home > Blog > Setting Priorities for Work, Home, and in the Classroom

Setting Priorities for Work, Home, and in the Classroom

Going with the flow seems like a relaxing way of life, but do it for too long and life gets completely out of control. The truth is that most people need some organization their lives. Vacation is a great time to run without a plan, but in regular life setting priorities is essential to making sure everything gets done. In all areas of life there are urgent tasks, important but less pressing ones, and things that can be done anytime. To get everything taken care of in a timely manner you have to be willing to prioritize your responsibilities. Here are some tips and tricks for setting priorities and getting your life on track.

At work, you likely feel like you have a long, never-ending list of tasks to complete. In fact, if you don’t have a list, a great first step to prioritizing work is to create one. Take a few minutes at the end of your day or the beginning of the next one to organize a  work to-do list . The good news is that every minute spent planning saves as many as ten minutes in execution. Think about it—it only takes ten minutes to prioritize work tasks, and it can save you as much as two hours in wasted time and diffused effort throughout the day.

Once you have your tasks down on paper, rank them in order of urgency. If you have clients waiting for something, you’ll probably want to  put these tasks ahead of the in-house ones . When new tasks come into play, rank them and add them to your list. Having a listing of your must-dos and being able to cross items off as you go will help keep you on track and boost feelings of accomplishment.  

Those in school, particularly students who are living away from home, have to learn about setting priorities in both school and life tasks. Much like prioritizing work duties, when organizing school tasks it’s best to start by making a list of assignments. You may even want to break down the assignments into steps and allot a certain amount of time to each component. As explained by Jessica Edmondson for Daytimer, “Major academic assignments, in particular, can easily be broken down into their component parts. For example: instead of scheduling 3 hours to write a 1,000-word paper, instead plan 20 minutes to outline, 20 minutes to write each paragraph, and 20 minutes to proofread.”

You can use your weekend to take care of as many of your household tasks as possible. Grocery shop and prep meals for the week ahead. Wash all of your dirty clothes, pay the bills, and set appointments. Don’t forget to leave time for some fun and relaxation so that it’s easier to focus when you get back to the grind.

When you’re busy with work, school, and family it’s easy to let your household duties get away from you. Yes, even at home, prioritization skills are key. Few people love household chores, but staying on top of them keeps the situation from getting overwhelming. As in other areas of life, taking care of tasks in order of urgency is the way to go.

Everyone needs to eat, so setting out a plan for getting everyone in the house fed is a top priority. If you have a hectic schedule, planning really helps. Consider  laying out a meal schedule  a week or a month in advance and then get the groceries you need on your days off. You may even choose to prep meals ahead of time by chopping and refrigerating or freezing either uncooked or ready-to-eat meals. Doing so cuts down on the day-to-day cooking stress.  

Setting priorities for household chores is also a smart idea. Decide which tasks are most important to your day-to day living and go from there. Having clean clothes is usually necessary, so laundry may get top billing. You also need clean dishes to eat off of.  Removing the clutter can make a home feel less stressful overall. Cleaning bathrooms, dusting, and vacuuming can often be left until the end of the week. To avoid wasting an entire day off scrubbing the house from top to bottom,  try creating a chore schedule . Designate one or two chores to each day of the week (in order of urgency) so you never have to face a staggering amount of housework. If there are multiple people in the house, give each person a day or two of chores to take care of.

Learning prioritization skills may seem stressful, but it will actually help eliminate a lot of strain. It can be very comforting to have a plan and to see things coming together.

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5 Steps to Set Priorities in School (Manage Your Time)

When I first got into college, I never got in the habit of setting priorities. This caused me to have really poor time-management skills. So, with some trial and error and research, I discovered a simple process to set priorities in school. So what are the 5 steps to set priorities in school?

• Write down all your priorities and their due dates
• Order your priorities by due dates
• Estimate how long it will take to complete each task
• Re-order your priorities by the estimated times of completion
• Add your tasks to a calendar

Now, I’m going to explain exactly how you should follow each step. Keep on reading to follow along! I promise that by the end of this guide, you’ll learn how to manage your time better.

1. Write down all your priorities and their due dates

This step is very straightforward. Grab a piece of paper or an electronic device to write down everything you have to do in the next month. We’re starting with the next month so that you don’t get overwhelmed in this guide. Once you get the hang of setting priorities in school, you can move on to the next two, three, six, or even twelve months.

When I say write down everything you have to do in the next month, I’m being literal. This includes:

• Tests and assignments
• Paying bills (credit cards, insurance, rent, subscriptions)
• Picking up siblings
• Appointments
• Buying groceries
• Doing laundry
• Renewing licenses

To help you come up with a list of your tasks, take a look at your bill statements and to-do list if you have one. You can also think about all the important things you’ve completed in the past few months.

Don’t worry if you feel like you’re missing something. You can always add more tasks to your priority list later on. Great! Now that you have all your tasks written down somewhere, add their due dates. You can do this right beside the task name.

At this point, you should have something like this:

2. Order your priorities by due dates

Now that you have your tasks and due dates written down, it’s time to order your priorities by due dates. This should only take you a minute if you’re following along electronically. If you wrote your tasks down on a piece of paper, you can order your tasks by ranking them (#1 being the closest from today).

Your tasks should now be ordered like this:

As you can see, “Buy groceries” is at the top of the priority list because it’s coming up soon.

3. Estimate how long it will take to complete each task

It’s important to have a good idea of how long it will take to complete each task so that you give yourself enough time to complete them. Just because you’ve ordered your tasks by due dates, that doesn’t mean you’ll always complete them in that order.

If you look at the tasks in the image from step two, you’ll notice that most of them can be completed on the day they’re due (for example “Buy groceries”).

If most of your tasks can be completed on the day they’re due, know that it’s a good situation to be in. It can be very annoying to have tasks that you don’t know how long it’ll take to complete them. An example of one of these annoying tasks is the “Math case study” that I wrote down.

I don’t have a good idea of how long it’s going to take me to complete the math case. So, I have to make an educated guess.

Go ahead and estimate how long it will take to complete each of your tasks. Write them down beside the due dates, preferably in another color.

Your list should now look something like this:

For my example, I didn’t add any estimated time of completion for the tasks that can be completed on the day they’re due. Doing this makes sense to me, and it also saves me time from writing more than I need. Do whatever you need to make your list make sense to you.

4. Re-order your priorities by the estimated times of completion

To re-order your priorities by the estimated times of completion, take the number of days you’ve estimated to complete each task and subtract them from their due dates. That new date will determine how you should prioritize your tasks.

Here’s an example using my list of priorities:

As you can see, “Math case study” is now ranked second on my priority list as opposed to third . This is because I estimated that it’s going to take 4 days to complete it. If I want to complete the case study on time, I have to start working on it on April 4.

However, “Buy groceries” remains at the top of the priority list because it is actually due on April 4. This means that after I buy groceries, I should start working on the math case study.

If I estimated that “Math case study” would take 5 days to complete, it would be ranked at the top of my priority list.

I hope you’re not totally confused, but if you are, make sure to leave me a comment down below so I can clarify things for you.

5. Add your tasks to a calendar (PC)

If you’ve followed along to the last step, you’re doing an amazing job. All you have to do now is add your tasks to a calendar. You can do this on your phone or computer.

Step 1. Download Calendar

If your computer or laptop doesn’t already have a Calendar app, download one from your device’s App Store.

Step 2. Open Calendar

Once you download the app, open the folder where you downloaded it and install the file. After it’s done downloading, you should see the app on your desktop screen. Open the app.

Step 3. Click on “+ New Event”

Click on the “+ New Event” button for Windows or just “+” button for Mac. You should find them at the top left of the app.

Step 4. Fill in the information for your first priority

You should now see a bunch of empty fields. You only need to fill in the event name, start date, and end date. You may have to click “More details” to set the start and end date. If you want, you can set a reminder to send yourself a notification to start working on completing the task. Do this for your top task in your priority list.

Using my “Math case study” example, I would set the start date on April 4 and the end date on April 8. If you did this right, you should see the event/task span across those dates in your calendar.

Step 5. Repeat step four with your remaining tasks

After adding your top priority, repeat step four with your remaining tasks. You can always make changes and add more events as necessary.

Add your tasks to a calendar (phone)

Most phones should already have a Calendar app. If you don’t have one, make sure to download one from your phone’s App Store.

Once you download the app, you should see it somewhere on your home screen. If you have a lot of apps, you may have to swipe your screen to the left to find it.

Step 3. Press the + sign

Click on the + sign to add a new event. You should find it at the top right of the app.

You should now see a bunch of empty fields. You only need to fill in the title, start date, and end date. If you want, you can set a reminder to send yourself a notification to start working on completing the task. Do this for the top task in your priority list.

Using my “Math case study” example, I would set the start date on April 4 and the end date on April 8. If you did this right, you should see the event/task span across those dates on your calendar.

After adding your top task, repeat step four with your remaining tasks. You can always make changes and add more events as necessary.

Once you add your tasks to Calendar, all you have to do now is check your calendar on a daily basis. I recommend doing this as soon as you wake up so you have a good idea of what you need to get done during the next few weeks.

A tip from my experience

If you forget to check your calendar on a daily basis, tape a sign on your wall that reminds you to check it. If you have anything important due, you won’t want to miss it. You can also use the Reminders app on your phone to set a reminder to check your calendar as soon as you wake up. Set the reminder at the same time your alarm goes off.

Recurring tasks

If you have recurring tasks such as buying groceries, I’ll explain what to do. Don’t worry, you don’t have to add the task over and over again. Why? Because Calendar can do that for you!

Open the app on your computer or phone and edit any task that is going to recur on a periodic basis. Select the “Repeat” button and choose how often the task will repeat. You can also choose which day you want the task to repeat. Lastly, you can set an end date for the task to stop repeating itself. Pretty cool right?

Repeat a recurring task (PC)

Repeat a recurring task (phone)

Now your recurring task will show up on your calendar every week, month, or even year, depending on how often you set it. This is great for buying groceries, paying bills, going for check-ups, and renewing licenses.

Tasks that suddenly come up

Without a doubt, you’re going to have tasks that suddenly come up. And yes, they can be very inconvenient. You have to be adaptive. If new tasks arise and they’re urgent, you may have work long nights.

The last thing you want to do is push back due dates. For example, let’s say you have to finish studying for a test the next day but a family member desperately needs a ride to the airport. It’s better to stay up a bit late to finish study than begging your professor to give you another day to study. Your professor most likely won’t allow it. It’s just not worth the risk.

However, if you have less urgent tasks that randomly come up, it’s easy to add them to your calendar. All you need to do repeat steps 3-5 of this guide. Steps 1-2 are only for those who have never set priorities before.

A good practice to follow

After you learn how to set priorities in school, a good practice to follow is trying to keep your calendar empty.

Remember, having an empty calendar is a good thing because it means you have no priorities to take care of. This leaves you with more time to fill your calendar with things you want to do, for example starting a side project. Unfortunately, you’re never going to have a completely empty calendar. You are always going to have things to do.

If you check your calendar and you see that you have no priorities to take care of during the upcoming week, get started on tasks that are due a month out. Imagine how great it would feel to finish a school assignment that’s due a month from now.

Of course, you might not be able to complete the assignment, but you can at least get started. You can read through your textbooks, look at online tutorials, or ask your professor for some guidance on how to start.

Benefits of setting priorities in school

There are many benefits when you set priorities in school. Here are a few of them:

• You’re improving your time-management skills. When you set priorities in school, you’re teaching yourself how to manage your time from a macro standpoint. This will help prevent you from getting stressed out when you have too many things on your plate.
• You’re upgrading your to-do list. Everyone has a to-do list. Unfortunately, most to-do lists are very basic. Most people just write down what they need to get done. If you follow this guide, you’re creating a comprehensive to-do list that will make sure you never leave things incomplete.
• You become more organized. When you set priorities, you’re not just doing things whenever you feel like it. You’ll know how to prioritize your tasks so that you’re not doing 20 things at once. Trying to multitask too many things can get really messy.
• You can give yourself more free time. Like I mentioned earlier, a good practice to follow is to try and keep your calendar empty. Setting priorities in school gives you a good opportunity to get ahead of your priorities such as completing assignments.

If you’re really looking to improve your time-management skills, you need to start setting priorities. It is hands down one of the best ways to stay on top of your workload.

I hope this guide was easy to follow. If you have any questions or suggestions that would make this guide better, make sure to leave a comment down below!

What did you think about this blog? Comment below! Also,  subscribe to my newsletter  for updates on new content, including videos on YouTube!

Andy Nguyen

Andy Nguyen is the owner of YourCollegeBlog. Learn more about him at https://yourcollegeblog.com/about/.

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10 Practical Steps to Start Freelancing (2021 In-Depth Guide)

At the time of writing in May 2021, the Coronavirus stripped many people from their jobs and made it impossible for some to find work. Many people are now trying to work remotely as freelancers....

4 Ways to Use a Whiteboard to Stay Organized

When I got to college, I tried to stay organized with just my phone, but I found that it was quite challenging. There was too much information to look at on a tiny screen. So, I turned to...