why does homework help with time management

teaching you to manage homework effectively

Importance of Time Management for Students: How Homework Helps

Time management is a critical skill that can make or break a student’s academic success. Whether in high school or college or just a graduate student working on a thesis, managing your time effectively can help you set your priorities straight and reach your full potential.

Homework, in particular, plays a crucial role in helping students develop good time management skills. With the right strategies and techniques, you can use homework to create a schedule, prioritize tasks, and stay on top of your workload.

This article will explore how homework helps with time management and provide tips and tricks for making the most of your time.

Time management importance for students: why should they take it seriously?

Before we examine how homework can help students with time management, let’s evaluate its importance.

As you might already know, time management is planning, organizing, and allocating time effectively to achieve specific goals or objectives. It typically involves developing priorities, creating a schedule, and manufacturing strategies for achieving tasks efficiently.

So why is time management important for students?

Time management is important for students because it helps them prioritize their tasks, meet deadlines, and balance their academic and personal responsibilities. Effective time management allows even the most average students to make the most of their time, reducing stress and improving their academic performance.

Additionally, good time management skills are essential for success in college and the workforce, as they help individuals become more productive and efficient in completing tasks.

How does homework help students with time management in their schoolwork?

Homework can help students with time management in several ways, some include:

• Prioritization

Homework assignments provide students with a clear list of tasks that need to be completed, which helps them prioritize their time and focus on what is most important.

Homework is typically given with due dates, encouraging students to plan and schedule their time accordingly.

• Accountability

Homework helps students develop a sense of responsibility for their learning and progress. It encourages students to take ownership of their time and use it effectively.

Homework allows students to practice time management skills such as planning, scheduling, and prioritizing. It also offers long-term benefits that will serve them well in college and the workforce.

It is important to note that homework alone is not enough to develop good time management skills; it should be combined with other techniques such as creating a schedule, setting goals, and breaking down large tasks into smaller manageable chunks.

School homework management software: what is it and how does it work?

A critical aspect of homework time management is using various educational software that supports organizational learning. Various types of homework management system or software are available to help students and teachers manage and organize homework assignments. Some popular options include:

• Google Classroom

This free platform allows teachers to assign and collect homework digitally, provide feedback, and communicate with students.

• Show My Homework

This web-based platform allows teachers to create, assign and track homework. It also offers a student calendar, which allows students to view and keep track of their homework assignments.

• My Study Life

This is a cross-platform planner for students, teachers, and lecturers, which helps them to manage their classes, homework, exams, and assignments.

• Microsoft Teams

It’s part of the Microsoft 365 suite, and it allows teachers to assign homework and communicate with students, and also students can collaborate and communicate with their peers for assignments.

• Blackboard Learn

It’s a Learning management system (LMS) that allows teachers to create and manage homework assignments, and grades, and provide feedback to students. This software can help students to stay organized and keep track of their assignments, and also helps teachers to easily manage and monitor student progress, provide feedback, and communicate with students.

Bottom line

Now, if you’re ever asked how does homework help with time management? Time management is an essential skill for students, and it can be particularly helpful when managing homework. You can emphasize how they help create schedules, set goals, establish routines, and take care of students’ physical and mental well-being.

Developing good time management skills improves student performance in school and helps develop a sense of discipline and responsibility that will serve them well in their future endeavors.

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How Does Homework Help with Time Management

Many experts who provide professional homework help claim that dealing with home assignments regularly helps a student manage their time better. Solving your tasks, you’ll not only increase your knowledge on the needed subjects but also improve your skills with managing time.

How Homework Makes You Manage Your Time Better

• It makes you more disciplined.

If you have a lot of home tasks to deal with, it’s likely that you won’t have the time to procrastinate. You’ll begin your work soon and use the time you have effectively rather than take unnecessarily long breaks after solving each assignment.

• It helps you set the priorities.

Having plenty of home tasks to solve, you might not have the time to engage in all activities that you’ve planned for the day. As a result, you’ll have to learn to prioritize your actions and drop some entertaining activities for the sake of more important things.

• It helps you assume how much time you’ll spend on each activity.

Popular site Homework Help Desk confirms that if you regularly deal with different tasks, you’ll be able to calculate how much time you’re likely to spend on each particular homework assignment. This way, you’ll be able to assume how much time your entire set of tasks will take you to complete. As a result, you’ll know how much free time you’ll be left with after your work and will be able to plan your day better.

• It helps you learn to complete long-term tasks on schedule.

There are many types of home assignments that a student cannot complete in one day, like creating a research paper, for example. If you learn to manage your time properly and deal with such assignments in time, it’ll greatly help you in the adult life. It’s full of long-term planning.

Time Management Tips: How to Do Your Home Tasks Faster

• Start early. It’s recommended to begin dealing with your assignments during the breaks while you’re still in school or college. If you don’t have a clear understanding of how some of your assignments should be dealt with, you’ll have an opportunity to consult your teachers or other students.
• Keep your workplace organized. Once you return from school or college, it’s advisable to begin solving your home tasks immediately in order not to waste your time. Make sure that your workplace is convenient and that all the materials and instruments needed for your work are always kept in one place.
• Focus on your tasks. It’s important to make sure that nothing will distract you from your work. Switch off your television set and mobile devices. Use the Internet only for educational purposes. If it helps you concentrate, you may switch on quiet ambient or instrumental music.
• Work on one subject at a time. It’s not recommended to mix the assignments from different subjects. This might ruin your concentration. As a result, you’ll spend more time on the working process. It’s important to complete all the tasks in mathematics before moving on to geography, for example.
• Don’t complete all the assignments. If you need to finish your work as soon as possible, you may not work on the tasks that should be submitted in a week, for example. Solve only those assignments that you should submit on the following day.
• Take breaks. If you have plenty of tasks, it’s not recommended to deal with them in one fell swoop. This way, you’ll get tired very fast and the speed of your work will seriously slow down. If you take short regular breaks, however, some of your energy will be restored and you’ll be able to maintain the same working speed and effectiveness.

Getting Help with Homework

A good way to increase your speed of solving home assignments is using the assistance and advice of other sources. Enjoy the quality of professional essay writing services provided by  CustomWritings.com . Here are some other options that you may use:

• Inviting other students for help.

You may gather a study group consisting of you and several of your classmates. It’s likely that together, you’ll be able to solve even the most difficult tasks rather quickly.

• Taking educational courses.

If you have serious difficulties with a particular subject, you may go to a special educational center and sign up for additional courses in it.

• Hiring tutors.

Another way to get qualified college homework help is to hire a personal teacher to provide you with lessons in a particular subject.

• Dealing with writing companies.

On the web, you may find a lot of agencies that can complete your home tasks in exchange for payment. You may use this option when you don’t have enough time to work on your tasks by yourself.

As you can see, dealing with home assignments helps you significantly improve your skills with managing time. If you follow the correct guidelines, you’ll be able to complete your work in a very short period of time. To increase the effectiveness of your work, you may also go to different people for help.

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Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

A conversation with a Wheelock researcher, a BU student, and a fourth-grade teacher

“Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives,” says Wheelock’s Janine Bempechat. “It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.” Photo by iStock/Glenn Cook Photography

Do your homework.

If only it were that simple.

Educators have debated the merits of homework since the late 19th century. In recent years, amid concerns of some parents and teachers that children are being stressed out by too much homework, things have only gotten more fraught.

“Homework is complicated,” says developmental psychologist Janine Bempechat, a Wheelock College of Education & Human Development clinical professor. The author of the essay “ The Case for (Quality) Homework—Why It Improves Learning and How Parents Can Help ” in the winter 2019 issue of Education Next , Bempechat has studied how the debate about homework is influencing teacher preparation, parent and student beliefs about learning, and school policies.

She worries especially about socioeconomically disadvantaged students from low-performing schools who, according to research by Bempechat and others, get little or no homework.

BU Today  sat down with Bempechat and Erin Bruce (Wheelock’17,’18), a new fourth-grade teacher at a suburban Boston school, and future teacher freshman Emma Ardizzone (Wheelock) to talk about what quality homework looks like, how it can help children learn, and how schools can equip teachers to design it, evaluate it, and facilitate parents’ role in it.

BU Today: Parents and educators who are against homework in elementary school say there is no research definitively linking it to academic performance for kids in the early grades. You’ve said that they’re missing the point.

Bempechat : I think teachers assign homework in elementary school as a way to help kids develop skills they’ll need when they’re older—to begin to instill a sense of responsibility and to learn planning and organizational skills. That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success. If we greatly reduce or eliminate homework in elementary school, we deprive kids and parents of opportunities to instill these important learning habits and skills.

We do know that beginning in late middle school, and continuing through high school, there is a strong and positive correlation between homework completion and academic success.

That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success.

You talk about the importance of quality homework. What is that?

Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives. It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.

What are your concerns about homework and low-income children?

The argument that some people make—that homework “punishes the poor” because lower-income parents may not be as well-equipped as affluent parents to help their children with homework—is very troubling to me. There are no parents who don’t care about their children’s learning. Parents don’t actually have to help with homework completion in order for kids to do well. They can help in other ways—by helping children organize a study space, providing snacks, being there as a support, helping children work in groups with siblings or friends.

Isn’t the discussion about getting rid of homework happening mostly in affluent communities?

Yes, and the stories we hear of kids being stressed out from too much homework—four or five hours of homework a night—are real. That’s problematic for physical and mental health and overall well-being. But the research shows that higher-income students get a lot more homework than lower-income kids.

Teachers may not have as high expectations for lower-income children. Schools should bear responsibility for providing supports for kids to be able to get their homework done—after-school clubs, community support, peer group support. It does kids a disservice when our expectations are lower for them.

The conversation around homework is to some extent a social class and social justice issue. If we eliminate homework for all children because affluent children have too much, we’re really doing a disservice to low-income children. They need the challenge, and every student can rise to the challenge with enough supports in place.

What did you learn by studying how education schools are preparing future teachers to handle homework?

My colleague, Margarita Jimenez-Silva, at the University of California, Davis, School of Education, and I interviewed faculty members at education schools, as well as supervising teachers, to find out how students are being prepared. And it seemed that they weren’t. There didn’t seem to be any readings on the research, or conversations on what high-quality homework is and how to design it.

Erin, what kind of training did you get in handling homework?

Bruce : I had phenomenal professors at Wheelock, but homework just didn’t come up. I did lots of student teaching. I’ve been in classrooms where the teachers didn’t assign any homework, and I’ve been in rooms where they assigned hours of homework a night. But I never even considered homework as something that was my decision. I just thought it was something I’d pull out of a book and it’d be done.

I started giving homework on the first night of school this year. My first assignment was to go home and draw a picture of the room where you do your homework. I want to know if it’s at a table and if there are chairs around it and if mom’s cooking dinner while you’re doing homework.

The second night I asked them to talk to a grown-up about how are you going to be able to get your homework done during the week. The kids really enjoyed it. There’s a running joke that I’m teaching life skills.

Friday nights, I read all my kids’ responses to me on their homework from the week and it’s wonderful. They pour their hearts out. It’s like we’re having a conversation on my couch Friday night.

It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Bempechat : I can’t imagine that most new teachers would have the intuition Erin had in designing homework the way she did.

Ardizzone : Conversations with kids about homework, feeling you’re being listened to—that’s such a big part of wanting to do homework….I grew up in Westchester County. It was a pretty demanding school district. My junior year English teacher—I loved her—she would give us feedback, have meetings with all of us. She’d say, “If you have any questions, if you have anything you want to talk about, you can talk to me, here are my office hours.” It felt like she actually cared.

Bempechat : It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Ardizzone : But can’t it lead to parents being overbearing and too involved in their children’s lives as students?

Bempechat : There’s good help and there’s bad help. The bad help is what you’re describing—when parents hover inappropriately, when they micromanage, when they see their children confused and struggling and tell them what to do.

Good help is when parents recognize there’s a struggle going on and instead ask informative questions: “Where do you think you went wrong?” They give hints, or pointers, rather than saying, “You missed this,” or “You didn’t read that.”

Bruce : I hope something comes of this. I hope BU or Wheelock can think of some way to make this a more pressing issue. As a first-year teacher, it was not something I even thought about on the first day of school—until a kid raised his hand and said, “Do we have homework?” It would have been wonderful if I’d had a plan from day one.

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Senior Contributing Editor

Sara Rimer A journalist for more than three decades, Sara Rimer worked at the Miami Herald , Washington Post and, for 26 years, the New York Times , where she was the New England bureau chief, and a national reporter covering education, aging, immigration, and other social justice issues. Her stories on the death penalty’s inequities were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and cited in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Her journalism honors include Columbia University’s Meyer Berger award for in-depth human interest reporting. She holds a BA degree in American Studies from the University of Michigan. Profile

She can be reached at [email protected] .

Comments & Discussion

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There are 81 comments on Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

Insightful! The values about homework in elementary schools are well aligned with my intuition as a parent.

when i finish my work i do my homework and i sometimes forget what to do because i did not get enough sleep

same omg it does not help me it is stressful and if I have it in more than one class I hate it.

Same I think my parent wants to help me but, she doesn’t care if I get bad grades so I just try my best and my grades are great.

I think that last question about Good help from parents is not know to all parents, we do as our parents did or how we best think it can be done, so maybe coaching parents or giving them resources on how to help with homework would be very beneficial for the parent on how to help and for the teacher to have consistency and improve homework results, and of course for the child. I do see how homework helps reaffirm the knowledge obtained in the classroom, I also have the ability to see progress and it is a time I share with my kids

The answer to the headline question is a no-brainer – a more pressing problem is why there is a difference in how students from different cultures succeed. Perfect example is the student population at BU – why is there a majority population of Asian students and only about 3% black students at BU? In fact at some universities there are law suits by Asians to stop discrimination and quotas against admitting Asian students because the real truth is that as a group they are demonstrating better qualifications for admittance, while at the same time there are quotas and reduced requirements for black students to boost their portion of the student population because as a group they do more poorly in meeting admissions standards – and it is not about the Benjamins. The real problem is that in our PC society no one has the gazuntas to explore this issue as it may reveal that all people are not created equal after all. Or is it just environmental cultural differences??????

I get you have a concern about the issue but that is not even what the point of this article is about. If you have an issue please take this to the site we have and only post your opinion about the actual topic

This is not at all what the article is talking about.

This literally has nothing to do with the article brought up. You should really take your opinions somewhere else before you speak about something that doesn’t make sense.

we have the same name

so they have the same name what of it?

lol you tell her

totally agree

What does that have to do with homework, that is not what the article talks about AT ALL.

Yes, I think homework plays an important role in the development of student life. Through homework, students have to face challenges on a daily basis and they try to solve them quickly.I am an intense online tutor at 24x7homeworkhelp and I give homework to my students at that level in which they handle it easily.

More than two-thirds of students said they used alcohol and drugs, primarily marijuana, to cope with stress.

You know what’s funny? I got this assignment to write an argument for homework about homework and this article was really helpful and understandable, and I also agree with this article’s point of view.

I also got the same task as you! I was looking for some good resources and I found this! I really found this article useful and easy to understand, just like you! ^^

i think that homework is the best thing that a child can have on the school because it help them with their thinking and memory.

I am a child myself and i think homework is a terrific pass time because i can’t play video games during the week. It also helps me set goals.

Homework is not harmful ,but it will if there is too much

I feel like, from a minors point of view that we shouldn’t get homework. Not only is the homework stressful, but it takes us away from relaxing and being social. For example, me and my friends was supposed to hang at the mall last week but we had to postpone it since we all had some sort of work to do. Our minds shouldn’t be focused on finishing an assignment that in realty, doesn’t matter. I completely understand that we should have homework. I have to write a paper on the unimportance of homework so thanks.

homework isn’t that bad

Are you a student? if not then i don’t really think you know how much and how severe todays homework really is

i am a student and i do not enjoy homework because i practice my sport 4 out of the five days we have school for 4 hours and that’s not even counting the commute time or the fact i still have to shower and eat dinner when i get home. its draining!

i totally agree with you. these people are such boomers

why just why

they do make a really good point, i think that there should be a limit though. hours and hours of homework can be really stressful, and the extra work isn’t making a difference to our learning, but i do believe homework should be optional and extra credit. that would make it for students to not have the leaning stress of a assignment and if you have a low grade you you can catch up.

Studies show that homework improves student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college. Research published in the High School Journal indicates that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework “scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average.” On both standardized tests and grades, students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework. A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another – showed that take home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement. Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more than three hours of additional homework per week in high school.

So how are your measuring student achievement? That’s the real question. The argument that doing homework is simply a tool for teaching responsibility isn’t enough for me. We can teach responsibility in a number of ways. Also the poor argument that parents don’t need to help with homework, and that students can do it on their own, is wishful thinking at best. It completely ignores neurodiverse students. Students in poverty aren’t magically going to find a space to do homework, a friend’s or siblings to help them do it, and snacks to eat. I feel like the author of this piece has never set foot in a classroom of students.

THIS. This article is pathetic coming from a university. So intellectually dishonest, refusing to address the havoc of capitalism and poverty plays on academic success in life. How can they in one sentence use poor kids in an argument and never once address that poor children have access to damn near 0 of the resources affluent kids have? Draw me a picture and let’s talk about feelings lmao what a joke is that gonna put food in their belly so they can have the calories to burn in order to use their brain to study? What about quiet their 7 other siblings that they share a single bedroom with for hours? Is it gonna force the single mom to magically be at home and at work at the same time to cook food while you study and be there to throw an encouraging word?

Also the “parents don’t need to be a parent and be able to guide their kid at all academically they just need to exist in the next room” is wild. Its one thing if a parent straight up is not equipped but to say kids can just figured it out is…. wow coming from an educator What’s next the teacher doesn’t need to teach cause the kid can just follow the packet and figure it out?

Well then get a tutor right? Oh wait you are poor only affluent kids can afford a tutor for their hours of homework a day were they on average have none of the worries a poor child does. Does this address that poor children are more likely to also suffer abuse and mental illness? Like mentioned what about kids that can’t learn or comprehend the forced standardized way? Just let em fail? These children regularly are not in “special education”(some of those are a joke in their own and full of neglect and abuse) programs cause most aren’t even acknowledged as having disabilities or disorders.

But yes all and all those pesky poor kids just aren’t being worked hard enough lol pretty sure poor children’s existence just in childhood is more work, stress, and responsibility alone than an affluent child’s entire life cycle. Love they never once talked about the quality of education in the classroom being so bad between the poor and affluent it can qualify as segregation, just basically blamed poor people for being lazy, good job capitalism for failing us once again!

why the hell?

you should feel bad for saying this, this article can be helpful for people who has to write a essay about it

This is more of a political rant than it is about homework

I know a teacher who has told his students their homework is to find something they are interested in, pursue it and then come share what they learn. The student responses are quite compelling. One girl taught herself German so she could talk to her grandfather. One boy did a research project on Nelson Mandela because the teacher had mentioned him in class. Another boy, a both on the autism spectrum, fixed his family’s computer. The list goes on. This is fourth grade. I think students are highly motivated to learn, when we step aside and encourage them.

The whole point of homework is to give the students a chance to use the material that they have been presented with in class. If they never have the opportunity to use that information, and discover that it is actually useful, it will be in one ear and out the other. As a science teacher, it is critical that the students are challenged to use the material they have been presented with, which gives them the opportunity to actually think about it rather than regurgitate “facts”. Well designed homework forces the student to think conceptually, as opposed to regurgitation, which is never a pretty sight

Wonderful discussion. and yes, homework helps in learning and building skills in students.

not true it just causes kids to stress

Homework can be both beneficial and unuseful, if you will. There are students who are gifted in all subjects in school and ones with disabilities. Why should the students who are gifted get the lucky break, whereas the people who have disabilities suffer? The people who were born with this “gift” go through school with ease whereas people with disabilities struggle with the work given to them. I speak from experience because I am one of those students: the ones with disabilities. Homework doesn’t benefit “us”, it only tears us down and put us in an abyss of confusion and stress and hopelessness because we can’t learn as fast as others. Or we can’t handle the amount of work given whereas the gifted students go through it with ease. It just brings us down and makes us feel lost; because no mater what, it feels like we are destined to fail. It feels like we weren’t “cut out” for success.

homework does help

here is the thing though, if a child is shoved in the face with a whole ton of homework that isn’t really even considered homework it is assignments, it’s not helpful. the teacher should make homework more of a fun learning experience rather than something that is dreaded

This article was wonderful, I am going to ask my teachers about extra, or at all giving homework.

I agree. Especially when you have homework before an exam. Which is distasteful as you’ll need that time to study. It doesn’t make any sense, nor does us doing homework really matters as It’s just facts thrown at us.

Homework is too severe and is just too much for students, schools need to decrease the amount of homework. When teachers assign homework they forget that the students have other classes that give them the same amount of homework each day. Students need to work on social skills and life skills.

I disagree.

Beyond achievement, proponents of homework argue that it can have many other beneficial effects. They claim it can help students develop good study habits so they are ready to grow as their cognitive capacities mature. It can help students recognize that learning can occur at home as well as at school. Homework can foster independent learning and responsible character traits. And it can give parents an opportunity to see what’s going on at school and let them express positive attitudes toward achievement.

Homework is helpful because homework helps us by teaching us how to learn a specific topic.

As a student myself, I can say that I have almost never gotten the full 9 hours of recommended sleep time, because of homework. (Now I’m writing an essay on it in the middle of the night D=)

I am a 10 year old kid doing a report about “Is homework good or bad” for homework before i was going to do homework is bad but the sources from this site changed my mind!

Homeowkr is god for stusenrs

I agree with hunter because homework can be so stressful especially with this whole covid thing no one has time for homework and every one just wants to get back to there normal lives it is especially stressful when you go on a 2 week vaca 3 weeks into the new school year and and then less then a week after you come back from the vaca you are out for over a month because of covid and you have no way to get the assignment done and turned in

As great as homework is said to be in the is article, I feel like the viewpoint of the students was left out. Every where I go on the internet researching about this topic it almost always has interviews from teachers, professors, and the like. However isn’t that a little biased? Of course teachers are going to be for homework, they’re not the ones that have to stay up past midnight completing the homework from not just one class, but all of them. I just feel like this site is one-sided and you should include what the students of today think of spending four hours every night completing 6-8 classes worth of work.

Are we talking about homework or practice? Those are two very different things and can result in different outcomes.

Homework is a graded assignment. I do not know of research showing the benefits of graded assignments going home.

Practice; however, can be extremely beneficial, especially if there is some sort of feedback (not a grade but feedback). That feedback can come from the teacher, another student or even an automated grading program.

As a former band director, I assigned daily practice. I never once thought it would be appropriate for me to require the students to turn in a recording of their practice for me to grade. Instead, I had in-class assignments/assessments that were graded and directly related to the practice assigned.

I would really like to read articles on “homework” that truly distinguish between the two.

oof i feel bad good luck!

thank you guys for the artical because I have to finish an assingment. yes i did cite it but just thanks

thx for the article guys.

Homework is good

I think homework is helpful AND harmful. Sometimes u can’t get sleep bc of homework but it helps u practice for school too so idk.

I agree with this Article. And does anyone know when this was published. I would like to know.

It was published FEb 19, 2019.

Studies have shown that homework improved student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college.

i think homework can help kids but at the same time not help kids

This article is so out of touch with majority of homes it would be laughable if it wasn’t so incredibly sad.

There is no value to homework all it does is add stress to already stressed homes. Parents or adults magically having the time or energy to shepherd kids through homework is dome sort of 1950’s fantasy.

What lala land do these teachers live in?

Homework gives noting to the kid

Homework is Bad

homework is bad.

why do kids even have homework?

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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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How to Help Students Develop the Skills They Need to Complete Homework

Middle and high school students can learn to work more efficiently by using strategies that improve their executive function skills.

The effects of homework are mixed. While adolescents across middle and high school have an array of life situations that can make doing homework easier or harder, it’s well known that homework magnifies inequity . However, we also know that learning how to manage time and work independently outside of the school day is valuable for lifelong learning. From the homework wars  to students who have little time for homework to students who don’t even know where to begin, everyone can agree that kids who can self-regulate and engage in independent rehearsal are better positioned for whatever the future holds.

How can we empower students to overcome barriers to doing homework well?

Executive Functioning

Homework is partially an assessment of executive functioning. Executive functioning and self-regulation take time to develop. They depend on three types of critical brain function: working memory, mental flexibility, and self-regulation .

Let’s break this down to consider how to improve their efficiency.

Working memory: Don’t hold everything in your head; it is not possible. When doing homework, students should write down their ideas, whether they are notes while reading, numbers when working through a math problem, or non-school-related reminders about chores, such as remembering to take the dog for a walk. Clearing working memory for the immediate task at hand allows the brain to focus as the strain is reduced.

Mental flexibility: As students build their independence and grow their homework routines, seeing an array of strategies, or more than one way to solve a problem, is important. Consider the results when a child gets stuck and doesn’t know what to do to get unstuck or when one keeps trying the same failed approach. Chunking homework helps simplify the process. When stuck, a student looks at a smaller piece, which makes it easier to see other solutions. More practice with mental flexibility happens when others model thinking in different ways, and students practice flexible thinking with partners by asking them: What is another way? Use this bubble map to chart out multiple ways.

Self-regulation: Learning how to prioritize work and stick with it by not giving in to impulses is a skill that students develop over time . One way to teach self-regulation is to have students practice control by concentrating for short periods of time with the goal of building up to longer, more sustained periods of time as the year progresses. For a child who struggles with reading for an extended time, start with five minutes and then build from there.

Another self-regulation tip is creating a plan to overcome distractions. What happens when the child stumbles? Three minutes into reading and a student is reaching for their cell phone. Recommend that they practice moving the cell phone away from the homework area, and summarize before returning to the reading. Stops and starts are frustrating and often result in lost homework time. Have students practice responses to distraction, and make this part of their homework. When a student struggles to stay on task, they should be encouraged to remove any distraction in order to regain focus.

Use classroom assessment as a tool to plan for and support student homework. Record the following information for students:

• Do they write, read, and/or solve problems in class? For how many minutes independently?
• What is the quality of their work? Are they actually learning, or are they just going through the motions?
• Do they know how to strategize on their own or get help from a peer when they’re stuck? Observe them and take notes, and/or have them reflect on this question.

We cannot expect that students will independently practice a skill they don’t engage with during class. If it doesn't happen in the classroom, it's not going to happen at home. The teacher should be able to realistically gauge how much and what students might achieve at home. A suggestion to build independence is to use task analysis . Here is a model . For students who struggle with getting homework done, at first they may not actually do homework; rather, they practice the routines of setting up and getting started.

Direct Instruction

The following are some techniques that help students with homework:

• Mindful meditation to gain focus
• Prioritizing and estimating time
• Filtering out distractions

Peers as Partners

Class partnership routines need practice. With strong partnerships, kids learn how to support and learn from each other. Access to teachers will never match the unlimited access to peers. The hours that students who achieve at high levels put in after class are often spent alone rehearsing the content or with peers who push each other to improve.

Class-to-Home Connection

While some students struggle with executive functioning, others rush through their homework. The most important step in having homework count is to make it seamless, not separate from class. Homework flows from classwork. Especially with a mix of synchronous and asynchronous work, now there is no homework, just work done for our classes. Consistent instructional goals with engaging and meaningful tasks help students see the value in working beyond the last bell.

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8 Time Management Tips for Students

Don't let a hectic schedule get the better of you with these time management tips.

Lian Parsons

College can be a stressful time for many students and time management can be one of the most crucial — but tricky — skills to master.

Attending classes, studying for exams, making friends, and taking time to relax and decompress can quickly fill up your schedule. If you often find yourself wishing there were more hours in the day, this guide will offer time management tips for students so you can accomplish what you need to get done, have fun with your friends, and gain back some valuable time for yourself. 

1. Create a Calendar

Don’t be caught by surprise by an important paper due two days from now or a dinner with your family the same night you planned for a group study session. Create a calendar for yourself with all your upcoming deadlines, exams, social events, and other time commitments well in advance so you can see what’s coming up. 

Keep your calendar in a place where you can see it every day, such as in your planner or on your wall above your desk. If you prefer a digital calendar, check it first thing every day to keep those important events fresh and top-of-mind. For greater efficiency, make sure you can integrate it with your other tools, such as your email.

Digital calendar options include: 

• Google Calendar 
• Outlook Calendar
• Fantastical

2. Set Reminders

After you’ve created your calendar, give yourself periodic reminders to stay on track such as to complete a study guide in advance or schedule a meeting for a group project. Knowing deadlines is important; however, staying on top of the micro tasks involved in meeting those deadlines is just as important. You can set an alarm on your phone, write it down in a physical planner, or add an alert to your digital calendar. The reminders will help to prevent things from slipping through the cracks during particularly hectic days.

Make sure you’ve allotted enough time to study for that big test or write that final paper. Time management is all about setting yourself up for success in advance and giving yourself the tools to accomplish tasks with confidence. 

Read our blogs, Your Guide to Conquering College Coursework and Top 10 Study Tips to Study Like a Harvard Student , for more suggestions.

3. Build a Personalized Schedule

Each person’s day-to-day is different and unique to them, so make sure your schedule works for you. Once you’ve accounted for consistent commitments such as classes or your shifts at work, add in study sessions, extracurriculars, chores and errands, and social engagements.

Consider your personal rhythm. If you typically start your day energized, plan to study or accomplish chores then. If you fall into an afternoon slump, give yourself that time to take a guilt-free TV break or see friends.

Having a schedule that works for you will help maximize your time. Plus, knowing exactly when your laundry day is or when your intramural volleyball practice is every week will help you avoid trying to cram everything in one day (or running out of clean socks!)

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4. Use Tools That Work For You

Just like your calendar and schedule, the tools you use to keep you organized should be the right fit for you. Some students prefer physical planners and paper, while some prefer going totally digital. Your calendar can help you with long-term planning, but most of these tools are best for prioritizing from day to day.

Explore what best suits your needs with some of the following suggestions:

Planners can help you keep track of long-term deadlines, such as important essay deadlines, upcoming exams, and appointments and meetings. They often provide a monthly overview each month, as well as day-to-day planning sections, so you can stay ahead. 

• Papier – Offers a 20% student discount 

If your schedule is jam-packed and you have trouble figuring out what to do and when, scheduling day by day—and sometimes even hour by hour—can help you slot in everything you need to do with less stress.

• Structured app

Note Taking

From class to study sessions to errands, keeping track of everything can feel overwhelming. Keeping everything in one place, whether on the go or at your desk, can help keep you organized.

• Bullet journals

5. Prioritize

Sometimes there really is too much to do with too little time. In these instances, take just a few minutes to evaluate your priorities. Consider which deadlines are most urgent, as well as how much energy you have. 

If you are able to complete simple tasks first, try getting them out of the way before moving on to tasks that require a lot of focus. This can help to alleviate some of the pressure by checking a couple things off your to-do list without getting bogged down too early.

If you are struggling to fit everything in your schedule, consider what you can postpone or what you can simply say no to. Your friends will likely understand if you have to meet them for coffee another time in order to get in a final library session before a challenging exam. 

6. Make Time to Have Fun — And For Yourself

Time management isn’t just about getting work done. It’s also about ensuring that you can put yourself and your mental wellbeing first. Consistently including time for yourself in your schedule helps to keep your mental health and your life in balance. It can also be helpful to have things to look forward to when going through stressful periods.  

Whether it’s going for a bike ride along the river, spending time with your friends and family, or simply sleeping in on a Sunday, knowing you have space to relax and do things you enjoy can provide better peace of mind. 

7. Find Support 

Preparation and organization can sometimes only get you so far. Luckily, you have plenty of people rooting for your success. Keep yourself and your classmates on task by finding an accountability partner or study buddies. Remind your roommates when you need extra space to work on a paper. 

Your school’s academic resource center is also there to support you and point you in the right direction if you need additional help. Getting—and staying—organized is a collaborative effort and no one can do it on their own. 

8. Be Realistic and Flexible 

Sometimes unforeseen circumstances will come up or you simply may not be able to get to everything you set out to do in a given day. Be patient with yourself when things don’t go exactly to plan. When building your calendar, schedule, and priorities list, be realistic about what you can accomplish and include buffer time if you’re unsure. This can help to reduce obstacles and potential friction.

Time management isn’t just about sticking to a rigid schedule—it’s also about giving yourself space for change.

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About the Author

Lian Parsons is a Boston-based writer and journalist. She is currently a digital content producer at Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education. Her bylines can be found at the Harvard Gazette, Boston Art Review, Radcliffe Magazine, Experience Magazine, and iPondr.

Managing Stress in High School

Our reasons may vary, but everyone experiences stress. Here are some of the common reasons high school students feel stressed, and what they can do about it.

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How Does Homework Help With Time Management

The motive behind the exercise of homework is to keep the student abreast with the daily goings-on of the class and through thorough practice improve the student’s foundation in a particular topic. Besides those, homework develops one’s researching capabilities since often it extends beyond what is just being taught at school; it is a furtherance of the student’s knowledge and for that the student often has to spend a quite an amount of time looking up the internet or the library for some kind of aid.

Time Management

In-time submission is a universal pre-requisite for any piece of work. Marks deduction, denying to consider the homework or other such penalties on failing to meet the deadline act as a form of driving force for students. Students, therefore, are forced into putting their priorities to check and order them accordingly. In future, when in employment, these students have to meet several such deadlines and then it will be this exercise of college homework that would come in handy.

In addition, college assignments help with time management by enabling us to order our priorities. In this way, we get clear up some time for ourselves and engage in things we love doing, have a hobby. We can binge-watch TV shows, have a movie-marathon, go on a long drive and what not. Yet all of it without compromising on the important stuff since we will learn, eventually where to draw the line.

Recruiting help

Not everybody can master the management task. After bouts of driving around with friends, social networking, binge watching TV shows there is not much energy nor enthusiasm that could drive some out of their bed or couches to invest the remainder of their time into a productive exercise of homework, not even if he is made to write down a million times, in order to ascertain, the numerous benefits of this exercise.

Besides the non-enthusiast, there are those who just could not make out time from numerous engagements. There are many who genuinely cannot do homework, some probable conceptual fault that has remained unclear. For such folks, expert advice and suggestions are advisable. But how does one know whom to trust? The internet is flooding with homework help websites that are made up of a bunch of fraudsters.

How are online homework services helpful?

Offline or online, homework services offer a great deal of relaxation to those with too much on their desk and those who always love to relax. Employing expert professionals, these services go to the core of the problem a student is facing with a particular topic that his/her homework deals with. They will not just write the answers to your questions but also improve your understanding of the topics so that you do not have to seek further assistance from such service providers. The services are reasonably priced and can be availed 24*7.

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Learn How to Support Stressed and Anxious Students.

20 Effective Time Management Strategies and Tools for Students

Teachers can use these too!

One of the most important life skills for anyone to master is time management. Keeping track of everything that we have to do and carving out the time to get it all done can be a real struggle. Try these time management strategies and techniques, plus find helpful tools for staying on track.

General Time Management Strategies

Time management techniques, time management tools.

These time management strategies work for everyone, helping you set goals and prioritize, then set a schedule to get things done.

Visualize the big picture

Use a calendar of some type to lay out all your big-picture goals for a year, month, or week. Include major projects and assignments, as well as school and personal events. This is your place to get an overview of everything that’s on your plate. Keep items to broad descriptions: “History Project” or “Spring Play Opening Night.” You’ll get into the details next.

Break it down

The next step is to take major projects and assignments and break them down into smaller, more manageable parts. This is an incredibly effective way to overcome that feeling of “I’ll never get this all done!” It also prevents procrastinating on an entire project until the very last minute. Set smaller, more manageable goals with their own due dates in advance of a complete project or event.

For example, imagine your big-picture calendar says “History Project Due Feb. 23.” Breaking that down could look like this:

• Choose topic and presentation method: Jan. 9
• Initial research: Jan. 10-30
• Presentation outline: Jan. 31
• Write presentation script: Feb. 1-5
• Create visual aids: Feb. 6-12
• Rehearse presentation: Feb. 13
• Fine-tune presentation: Feb 14-16
• Final rehearsals: Feb. 17
• Give history presentation: Feb. 23

At first, this method might feel a little overwhelming, because it may make you feel like there’s too much to get done. But as you use it, you’ll see how it can actually make you feel more prepared and in control, and make your time easier to manage.

Determine priorities

Sometimes it’s simply true: You don’t have enough time in a day to get all the things done that you’d like to. That’s where setting priorities becomes vital. In the “Time Management Techniques” section below, you’ll find several different ideas for determining the priority of different items on your lists.

Once you’ve figured out which items are the most important, try a color-coding system to indicate which items get a higher priority. This will help you identify at a glance what you need to do now and what can wait until another day.

Make daily to-do lists

Make it a habit to start each day by creating a to-do list. (Not a morning person? You can do this the night before too.) Include high-priority items, as well as things you’d like to do but may not have to complete. Throughout the day, as you complete an item, revisit your list and check it off. It’s incredibly satisfying to cross things off, and checking in with your list a few times a day ensures you don’t forget important things.

Limit multitasking

Today’s world places a lot of value on multitasking (doing several things at once). But when you’re doing multiple things at the same time, you’re probably not doing any of them well. So keep your multitasking to a minimum. When it’s time to work on something, set your focus to that particular thing. Other stuff can wait.

But some multitasking is OK. For instance, you might throw your clothes in the washing machine, then work on your math homework while waiting for them to be ready for the dryer. Later on, you could fold and put away the laundry while practicing conjugating Spanish verbs out loud. This type of multitasking works because the physical tasks are ones that don’t require much concentration, leaving your brain free for academic subjects.

On the other hand, avoid something like trying to listen to a podcast for your history class while also doing your math homework. Your attention won’t be fully on each, and your learning will suffer.

Remove distractions

Some people are capable of deep focus no matter what’s going on around them. Most of us, though, need to find ways to remove distractions when it’s time to get down to work. Here are some examples to try:

• Turn off your phone, or set it to alert you only in case of emergencies.
• Wear noise-cancelling headphones or earplugs to block out distracting sounds. A white-noise machine or app can help with this too.
• Close miscellaneous tabs in your web browser (like social media or news sites), and use only the tabs you need for your work.
• Go into a quiet room and shut the door. Ask friends and family not to disturb you.
• Check your to-do list before you start to make sure you’re on track. Then, clear your mind of other projects or tasks, and focus on what’s at hand.

Do an end-of-day review

At the end of each day, sit down with your to-do list. Was there anything you didn’t get to? Move it to another day. Did you feel too rushed today? Think about how you might make tomorrow run a bit more smoothly. Where do you stand in terms of your big-picture goals? Take a few minutes to adjust any plans accordingly.

Try a time audit

It’s OK if you don’t get to everything on your list every day. But if you find that there’s never enough time to get things done, you might benefit from a time audit. Over the period of a week or two, write down exactly how you spend your time, hour by hour. Then, look it over and see if you can identify problem areas. You might need to cut down on some optional activities and give that time to high-priority items instead. Learn how to do a time audit here.

The time management strategies we’ve talked about so far are general ways to stay on track and get stuff done. But there are multiple ways to approach some of these strategies, especially when it comes to actually settling down to work. Check out these popular time management techniques and choose one or more that seem right for you.

Eisenhower Decision Matrix

President Eisenhower developed this matrix and used it to help him prioritize his tasks. He looked at each item to evaluate it by importance and urgency, then broke them into four categories:

• Do First: These are urgent, important tasks with high priority.
• Schedule: These are important tasks that aren’t quite as urgent.
• Delegate: You may be able to delegate less important but still urgent tasks to someone else.
• Don’t Do: These non-urgent, unimportant items can be eliminated entirely or postponed indefinitely.

Here are some possible student examples for each category:

• Do First: Homework that’s due tomorrow takes top priority, as might doing laundry if you’re out of clean clothes.
• Schedule: Set aside time (see Time Blocking) for smaller parts of long-term projects, such as research time or writing an outline. That could be today or one day in the near future.
• Delegate: Students aren’t always able to delegate their tasks, but they can ask for help. For example, if your schedule is incredibly tight, you could ask your dad if he’d be willing to throw your clothes in the dryer when the washer is done.
• Don’t Do: These are often bad habits you need to break, like surfing the web aimlessly instead of working, or texting your friends for hours instead of doing your chores.

Find out much more about the Eisenhower Matrix and how to use it for time management strategies here.

ABCDE Method

This is another time management strategy for prioritizing the tasks at hand. Assign each item a letter:

• A: Highest priority
• B: Should do soon, if not today
• C: Could do, but no serious consequences if not done
• D: Delegate or ask for help
• E: Eliminate from your list

This is very similar to the Eisenhower Matrix, with a little more flexibility around should-dos and could-dos. Learn more about the ABCDE method here.

Most Difficult First (Eat That Frog)

This method is based on a quote often attributed to Mark Twain: “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”

In other words, don’t put off the biggest, hardest tasks. Get them out of the way first. Then, everything else you have to do will seem easy in comparison.

For some people, though, this concept can be counterproductive. If you’re already feeling overwhelmed, tackling something extremely difficult can be too much and cause you to shut down entirely. In that case, it’s just fine to choose smaller, simpler items. The key is to make progress, one step at a time.

Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro Technique is a simple time management method: You work for 25 minutes at a time, then take a 5-minute break to rest and recharge. Simply set a timer for 25 minutes, and focus on one single task until it goes off. Then, you can spend 5 minutes stretching, resting your eyes, or checking your social media feeds. When the 5 minutes are up, set the timer for another 25 minutes, and get back to work. If you do four 25-minute sessions in a row, take a longer break afterwards. Learn more about the Pomodoro Technique here.

If 25 minutes seems too short and you’d like a little more uninterrupted time, try Flowtime instead. This stretches out both the work and break time proportionally. If you work for 25-50 minutes, take an 8-minute break. For 50-90 minutes, you get a 10-minute break. And if you’ve been at it for more than 90 minutes, take 15 minutes to recharge. Learn about Flowtime here.

Parkinson’s Law says that work will always expand to fill the amount of time available. Timeboxing seeks to shrink tasks back to the size they truly need to be. When you timebox, you set a specific amount of time for a task and complete it within that time.

In other words, you might look over your study planner and decide that you need one hour for tonight’s geometry and chemistry assignments, plus you’d like to spend another hour working on your English essay.

Set a timer and work on your geometry and chemistry for an hour, with no other distractions. When the timer goes off, reassess and adjust your goals as needed. Since you have to finish that homework tonight, you’ll probably need to add more time if you’re not finished.

Your English essay isn’t due for two weeks, though, so if you’ve boxed out one hour for working on it today, that’s all you need to do. Set a timer, determine your goals for day, and get to work. When the timer goes off, you’re done for today.

Here’s more on timeboxing.

Time Blocking

This method is similar to timeboxing, but it involves setting blocks of time aside on your calendar for specific tasks. For example, you might block out 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. each day for daily homework, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. for working on your biology research paper, and 7 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. for piano practice. Some people like to start each day by blocking time out on their calendar, figuring out how they’ll make the most of their time. Find out more about time blocking here.

Once you’ve selected some time management strategies to try, you’ll find plenty of tools to help make them work. Check out these top time management tools for students, from planners to timers and beyond.

Student Planners

Traditional paper planners come in a variety of styles, with some made especially for students. The most important thing is to choose one you’ll actually use, and keep it on hand at all times. See our selection of the top student planners here.

Planner Apps

Planner apps and online calendars are nice because you have access to them everywhere you go. For students, we really like:

• My Study Life

See more details on each of these here, plus more options.

Study Planners

Study planners are specific to academics, and they are a simple way to keep track of both short-term and long-term assignments, projects, and more. Check out these free printable options:

• Develop Good Habits: Study Planner
• Alex Marie: Weekly Assignments Due
• Sophia Lee: Homework Planner Pack

Time Management Apps

Planner apps are a good start, but other time management apps can help you stay on track by eliminating distractions or setting time limits. Here are a few to try:

• Pomofocus : A free online 25–5 timer with the ability to add a task list for each work segment
• Rize : An AI productivity coach that uses time tracking to improve your focus and build better work habits
• Forest : Eliminate distractions, stay on task, and grow a digital forest to celebrate your achievements

Bullet Journal

Bullet journaling has a lot of benefits, and some page setups are especially good for time management:

• Daily Schedule
• Project Planner
• Study Tracker

Check out our big roundup of bullet journal ideas here.

What time management strategies do your students find most effective? Come share your thoughts and ask for advice in the We Are Teachers HELPLINE group on Facebook .

Plus, ultimate study skills guide: tips, tricks, and strategies for every grade ..

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Time Management Is About More Than Life Hacks

• Erich C. Dierdorff

Your productivity hinges on these three skills.

There is certainly no shortage of advice — books and blogs, hacks and apps — all created to boost time management with a bevy of ready-to-apply tools. Yet, the frustrating reality for individuals trying to improve their time management is that tools alone won’t work. You have to develop your time management skills in three key areas: awareness, arrangement, and adaptation. The author offers evidence-based tactics to improve in all three areas.

Project creep, slipping deadlines, and a to-do list that seems to get longer each day — these experiences are all too common in both life and work. With the New Year’s resolution season upon us, many people are boldly trying to fulfill goals to “manage time better,” “be more productive,” and “focus on what matters.” Development goals like these are indeed important to career success. Look no further than large-scale surveys that routinely find time management skills among the most desired workforce skills, but at the same time among the rarest skills to find.

• Erich C. Dierdorff is a professor of management and entrepreneurship at the Richard H. Driehaus College of Business at DePaul University and is currently an associate editor at  Personnel Psychology.

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Students Struggle With Time Management. Schools Can Help

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When I started teaching, most meetings I had with students had nothing to do with class lessons. They would come into my office, sit down, and whimper, “I’m stressed out, exhausted, and my life is all over the place.” Sometimes bursts of tears would ensue. They aren’t alone: Solid research shows that students feel that society is more and more demanding of them. Mental-health issues in young children and teenagers are on the rise.

Students didn’t come to me because I’m a therapist. Neither had my course anything to do with mental health. They came to me because I’m the time-management guy—I’ve been doing research on time management for years. They came to me because of a simple but insidious assumption: If I can be just a little more productive, everything will be all right.

Why do students think productivity is the answer to their malaise? Because that’s what they’ve been told their whole life. By parents, television, the internet, peers, coaches, and, yes, schools. Schools play a major role in instilling this productivity mindset in young children, according to Vicki Abeles , author of Beyond Measure , a splendid book on how school performance pressures harm students. This mindset, especially in excess, can make students’ relationship with time fraught. If being obsessed with productivity makes students tired, anxious, and depressed, then the way schools think about time is neither conducive to their well-being nor, ironically, to their long-term productivity.

What would it take to make dramatic and effective changes to how schools think about time? Obviously, much of our obsession with productivity does not start with school. Public policies, culture, parents’ socioeconomic background, and a host of other factors play a major role. But historically, schools have been where children learn about time, punctuality, and schedules. Maybe it’s time for schools to use that power to teach students a healthier way to use their time. Here are a few actions school communities can take at a local level.

1. Conduct time-use surveys. We don’t really know what we do with our time until we measure it. That’s why governments around the world have been conducting time-use surveys for decades. These surveys essentially ask people what they do every half-hour or so over a 24-hour period. When we scale this up to a whole population, we get a clearer picture of how people use their time and whether it makes them happy and healthy. That’s how we know, for instance, that people who spend less time watching TV and more time with people are happier than those who do the opposite.

Why do students think productivity is the answer to their malaise? Because that’s what they’ve been told their whole life."

With time-use surveys, schools can better understand where students’ time goes, which is the first step toward tackling time issues. Doing this at a local level is key because time-use patterns will likely change from one school to another, especially for students with different socioeconomic backgrounds.

2. Lower the pressure. It’s far from clear whether, past a certain threshold, homework actually boosts students’ grades. The amount of homework assigned to students has increased a few times in the past—at one point the U.S. government feared students would be outperformed by their Russian counterparts during the Cold War. Whether homework is still increasing is not clear, but one thing is: The American public has been consistently in favor of more homework despite contrary expert opinion. Thankfully, several school districts, including in Hillsborough, Calif., and Somerville, Mass., have implemented reduced-homework policies, although not without resistance. These policies can go a long way toward alleviating students’ unnecessary time pressure.

Another worrying trend is the decline of recess time. The logic here isn’t that different from that of corporate employers: Reduce break times so people will spend more time working and thus boost performance. But that logic isn’t supported by science. Recovery, physical activity, and enjoyment are crucial for school performance and well-being, and that’s what recess is for. Reducing recess means reducing the break time necessary to recover the resources necessary for learning and creativity. Fortunately, many schools are now upping recess time, but it’s not just quantity that matters: How and with whom students enjoy recess time are important as well. (For instance, having more adults present during recess time increases physical play and helps conflict resolution among kids.)

3. Intentionality over productivity. Students today have more ways to spend their time than at any other point in history: watching TV, browsing the Internet, piano lessons, acting classes, community service, football, and countless other activities. We also live in a society that encourages busyness: If you’re not doing something at any given time, you’re a nobody.

Schools, parents, and peers push students to engage in a seemingly infinite number of activities, extracurricular or otherwise. These activities can be important for students’ well-being, but too much can backfire, as research shows .

Not only does overscheduling kids with activities make them miserable, but it also fails to teach them an essential lesson: It is better to do a few things intentionally and deliberately than to crowd one’s schedule with activities. An abundance of activities fails to teach children an even more important skill: focus. Doing too many things inevitably saps our ability to immerse ourselves fully in whatever we’re doing.

Schools can help by talking with parents about what constitutes a reasonable—healthy—amount of extracurricular activities. Schools can also encourage parents to think about “digital policies” to govern the use of digital devices at home and how social media and smartphones should be used responsibly. Most importantly, schools should emphasize un structured time. The more time children spend in unstructured activities, the more they learn how to structure time on their own. Conversely, if you structure all of children’s time, they will fail to learn how to structure their own time. This makes sense—how would you learn self-discipline if you’re never given the opportunity? You can’t teach proper time management to people if you manage all of their time.

Schools are said to prepare children for real life, an often busy and hectic place. But does school conspire in making life busier and more hectic? That’s very likely. By fundamentally reassessing the way they think about time, schools stand to make future adults—a future society—happier, healthier, and more intentional with their time. Schools have been teaching us the importance of being punctual. Maybe they should now teach us the importance of healthy time management.

A version of this article appeared in the February 26, 2020 edition of Education Week as It’s Not About Productivity. It’s About Time Management

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How My Homework Helped Me With Time Management

Students often find themselves struggling with time management as they get older. This article will explore how homework can help students learn to be more responsible for their time, organize their workloads, and plan their days better.

Table of Contents

Introduction

As a student, you probably know the importance of time management. After all, there are only so many hours in a day, and you must use them wisely. Homework can help you to develop good time management skills.

When you have homework, you must plan your time carefully to complete it. This means you have to be very organized and efficient with your time. You can’t just start working on your homework whenever you feel like it; you need to sit down and figure out when and how long you will work on it. This can be tricky, especially if you have other commitments like sports or extracurricular activities.

However, managing your time and completing your homework efficiently will free up more time for other things. And, as a bonus, your grades will probably improve too! So, doing homework can be helpful if you’re struggling with time management.

What is Time Management?

Time management is the ability to use your time wisely to accomplish more daily. It involves setting priorities and ensuring you use your time wisely by first working on the most critical tasks.

Homework can help you with time management because it forces you to prioritize your work and use your time efficiently. If you have a lot of homework, you need to be able to figure out what is most important and work on that first. This can be an excellent skill to practice to learn how to manage your time better.

In addition, homework can help you learn how to budget your time. You may have limited time to complete your homework, so you must be careful about how you spend that time. This can teach you how to be more efficient with your time, which is a valuable skill.

How Homework Helps with Time Management

Homework can help students learn essential time management skills in academic and real-world settings. By teaching students how to budget their time and break down larger tasks into smaller, more manageable steps, homework can help them develop the time management skills they need to succeed in school and their future careers.

In addition to learning essential time management skills, homework can help students develop other vital skills such as organization, prioritization, and task completion. These skills are often transferable to other areas of life, allowing students to better manage their time inside and outside the classroom.

While some students may find homework a burden, when used correctly, it can be an invaluable tool for helping them develop the time management skills they need to succeed.

Tips to Improve Your Time Management Skills

If you struggle to complete your homework on time, it may be time to start thinking about improving your time management skills. Here are a few tips that can help:

1. Make a list of all the tasks you must complete, including homework and other commitments. This will help you to see exactly what needs to be done and plan your time accordingly.

2. Try to set aside a specific time each day for homework. This will ensure you have enough time to focus on and complete the task correctly.

3. If possible, break up your homework into smaller tasks that can be completed over time. This can make the overall job seem less daunting and make it easier to stay on track.

4. Use any spare moments during the day to work on your homework. Even if it’s just for 5 minutes, every little bit helps!

5. Seek help from others if you find the task challenging. Sometimes another person’s perspective can help get the job done efficiently.

My Personal Experience

I remember when I was first assigned homework in school. I thought it was the most pointless thing ever. Why did I have to do more work when I was already doing it all day at school? But as I got older and my workload increased, I started to see the value in homework. It taught me how to manage my time better and get work done even when I didn’t feel like it.

Now that I’m in college, managing my time is more critical than ever. There’s a lot on my plate with classes, extracurriculars, and a part-time job. But I can juggle everything without feeling overwhelmed because of the skills I learned from doing homework.

Homework may not have been fun when I was younger, but it’s helped me in the long run. If you’re struggling with time management, don’t be afraid to ask for help from your parents or teachers. They’ve been through it before and can offer some valuable advice.

Overall, doing my homework helped me improve my time management. By juggling different assignments and deadlines, I was forced to learn how to prioritize and use my time more efficiently. This skill has been incredibly helpful in school and my personal life. If you’re struggling with time management, I recommend trying homework!

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This post has been updated as of December 2017.

It’s not uncommon to hear students, parents, and even some teachers always complaining about homework. Why, then, is homework an inescapable part of the student experience? Worksheets, busy work, and reading assignments continue to be a mainstay of students’ evenings.

Whether from habit or comparison with out-of-class work time in other nations, our students are getting homework and, according to some of them, a LOT of it. Educators and policy makers must ask themselves—does assigning homework pay off?

Is there evidence that homework benefits students younger than high school?

The Scholastic article Is Homework Bad? references Alfie Kohn’s book The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing , in which he says, “There is no evidence to demonstrate that homework benefits students below high school age.”

The article goes on to note that those who oppose homework focus on the drawbacks of significant time spent on homework, identifying one major negative as homework’s intrusion into family time. They also point out that opponents believe schools have decided homework is necessary and thus assign it simply to assign some kind of homework, not because doing the work meets specifically-identified student needs.

“Busy work” does not help students learn

Students and parents appear to carry similar critiques of homework, specifically regarding assignments identified as busy work—long sheets of repetitive math problems, word searches, or reading logs seemingly designed to make children dislike books.

When asked how homework can negatively affect children, Nancy Kalish, author of The Case Against Homework: How Homework is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It , says that many homework assignments are “simply busy work” that makes learning “a chore rather than a positive, constructive experience.”

Commenters on the piece, both parents and students, tended to agree. One student shared that on occasion they spent more time on homework than at school, while another commenter pointed out that, “We don’t give slow-working children a longer school day, but we consistently give them a longer homework day.”

Without feedback, homework is ineffective

The efficacy of the homework identified by Kalish has been studied by policy researchers as well. Gerald LeTendre, of Penn State’s Education Policy Studies department points out that the shotgun approach to homework, when students all receive the same photocopied assignment which is then checked as complete rather than discussed individually with the student, is “not very effective.”  He goes on to say that, “If there’s no feedback and no monitoring, the homework is probably not effective.”

Researchers from the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia had similar findings in their study, “ When Is Homework Worth The Time ?” According to UVAToday, these researchers reported no “substantive difference” in the grades of students related to homework completion.

As researcher Adam Maltese noted, “Our results hint that maybe homework is not being used as well as it could be.” The report further suggested that while not all homework is bad, the type and quality of assignments and their differentiation to specific learners appears to be an important point of future research.

If homework is assigned, it should heighten understanding of the subject

The Curry School of Education report did find a positive association between standardized test performance and time spent on homework, but standardized test performance shouldn’t be the end goal of assignments—a heightened understanding and capability with the content material should.

As such, it is important that if/when teachers assign homework assignments, it is done thoughtfully and carefully—and respectful of the maximum times suggested by the National Education Association, about 10 minutes per night starting in the first grade, with an additional 10 minutes per year after.

Continue reading — The Homework Debate: How Homework Benefits Students

Monica Fuglei is a graduate of the University of Nebraska in Omaha and a current adjunct faculty member of Arapahoe Community College in Colorado, where she teaches composition and creative writing.

You may also like to read

• The Homework Debate: How Homework Benefits Students
• Ending the Homework Debate: Expert Advice on What Works
• Advice on Creating Homework Policies
• Elementary Students and Homework: How Much Is Too Much?
• Homework in Middle School: Building a Foundation for Study Skills
• Homework Helps High School Students Most — But it Must Be Purposeful

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