Good habit of the Month (1)

Teaching time awareness and management

Time is money – we all know that. If a job is meant to take you 1 hour and you get paid £10 for that work, then if we spend 2 hours to do the same work, then we are getting paid £5 an hour. Simple maths for everyday life. So we need to prepare our children to be aware of this. They need to learn from an early age how to be efficient in their work or be economically inefficient. As well as helping them perform better by completing their work, they will have more time and it’s a great way to get them ready to estimate the value of work. You are developing their ability to analyse the requirements of the work before them, know their abilities and knowledge at a given point in time, and come up with a realistic goal to achieve the job – in this case homework, but this can be applied to anything (cleaning a room, baking a cake, going to the shop etc.).

Once this habit is practised and has become a regular exercise your children will be experts in visualising the extent of a job and estimating the time and resources attached to it. An incredibly important skill if you want to know your true value and not underestimate it.

So how can we help children, or anyone  for that matter, develop these skills?

Here’s an example:

Haresh has homework to do. His mother asks him what he has for homework. Haresh replies that he has some Maths, English and IT.

Ok, Haresh my be the type of student who can organise himself very well, get on with his work and complete it, being left alone to do so. However, he may be a child with dyslexia, or a child that finds it difficult to focus, and finds it difficult to think and work in a organised way.

Let’s imagine Haresh is the second type of student. How can we help.Let’s define the work in more detail and put it on paper: His mother sits with him and asks him to tell her what exactly he has to do –

• Maths – 10 problems to solve
• English – Write about an event you celebrate
• IT – Research on the event you are writing about and print/save your research.

His mother has written this out on a piece of paper for Haresh to make the goal more specific. They both know what he needs to do to complete the homework for the day.

His mother decides to sequence this list according to how the work will be done. She asks Haresh what he would like to do first the Maths or the English. Haresh is not too sure. His mother knows that he prefers English so she suggests he does the Maths first to get it out of the way. This is a good idea because it would be better to tackle the more difficult subject before he gets tired.

She also asks him whether he would do the English task before the IT to check his awareness of sequencing. They reorganise the list:

• Maths – 10 problems to solve
• IT – Research on the event you are writing about and print/save your research.
• English – Write about an event you celebrate

Now, we have a list of specific goals to achieve to complete his homework for the day. His mother will be able to see if they have been achieved by the end of the day because the work is measurable. For Maths there are 10 questions to complete; IT – research to be carried out and saved; English – a short essay to write. Mum might further define this and say that he needs to get all of the Maths correct – (she will mark, explain and ask him to redo the ones he got wrong); Mum reminds him to make sure he proof reads his work and corrects spelling and punctuation to the best of his ability (Mum reads it and explains to help Haresh make improvements – just guiding not writing for him).

Now they have defined the work, they need to estimate the time it will take to complete the tasks and make sure this is attainable.

• Maths – 10 problems to solve Haresh thinks this will take 15 minutes, but Mum knows it is his weaker subject and thinks it will be closer to 30 minutes by the time she has looked through it, marked it, explained and remarked it. She suggests to Haresh they allocate 30 minutes instead. Haresh agrees to go with this suggestion.
• IT – Research on the event you are writing about and print/save your research. Without a time limit Haresh could spend a long time researching, and his time would quickly pass away before he knew it. So Mum and Haresh agree he will only spend 20 minutes researching. Mum will help him with this to make sure he doesn’t get distracted and stays focussed on the subject matter. She can talk about the subject matter to him as they look through articles, but he also needs time to read alone.
• English – Write about an event you celebrate. Collaboratively they decide that he will write the short essay in 30 minutes. Mum will then read through it and give him another 10 minutes it correct following her feedback.

Haresh will spend 90 minutes in total on his homework, then he will stop. He will have a short break after his 30 minutes on Maths. He will then have another short break after his research. He can have another short break while his mother is reading through his work. Get Haresh to set a timer with a mobile phone, an egg timer etc.

If Mum carried on doing this with Haresh he would eventually get used to the method and be able to do it for himself. Mum can slowly get him to this stage by decreasing the amount of help over time. Though the continued support will be needed as the work gets harder perhaps.

Haresh will learn to define his targets specifically (the tasks will be measurable if there is homework to produce for marking), and allocate time to them (this time will become more realistic with practise, until he will be able to judge quite accurately how long each task will take).

Haresh is not only learning ‘time management’, but he is also learning to organise his work methodically and establish SMART targets (targets that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time bound).

In order to motivate Haresh Mum could discuss a reward for Haresh once he has fulfilled his task before starting the work.