Put Time Management on Your Side in the Classroom

by Guest Blogger Donna Wilson

Learning to manage time and meet deadlines are valuable skills for workers of the future—and the students in your classroom right now!

Through explicit instruction on time management, you can guide students to understand the importance of scheduling tasks to finish school assignments and to complete big projects on time without cramming at the end and turning in half-finished, subpar work.

Time management is one of 25 cognitive assets covered in the Thinking for Results approach (Wilson & Conyers, 2011). Guiding students to learn to “think about their thinking”—to become more metacognitive—and develop their thinking and problem-solving skills is a central tenet of the graduate degree programs with a major in Brain-Based Teaching that we co-developed and are being offered through Nova Southeastern University’s Fischler School of Education.

Keri Shaver, who earned her Ed.S. degree with a Major in Brain-Based Teaching, has told us that students realize many benefits by becoming more self-directed and “learning to learn” through metacognition.

“Their confidence level increases once they realize they have potential to learn and achieve. The cognitive assets I found especially useful were the ones that had to do with time management. I was able to use those as strategies to keep them on schedule,” Ms. Shaver explained. “I could say, ‘You want to get this class done by December, correct? And how many weeks is that?’ I put the ownership in their hands.”