Review - AgendaWorks Planner

Clayton over at AgendaWorks sent me a planner to review and try out on my 13-year-old foster daughter. This will be her third planner for the school year - need I say more? The AgendaWorks people design planners for Sylvan Learning Centers, schools, ADD students, and for the general public. Their agendas are suitable for middle school through college.

The planner begins with a section on how to use the planner, how to prioritize tasks, and a daily action checklist comprised of reminders, focus-keepers, and work-ahead prompts. Next comes a section on study strategies and guidelines.

The next section has every kind of schedule you can imagine - yearly, monthly weekly, class schedule, grade tracking, and finally daily calendars - one page per day, except for the weekend where Saturday and Sunday share a page.

Each daily page has a column for an hourly schedule, followed by a to-do list. The other column has sections for six classes, including the assignment, its priority compared with other tasks for the day, when it is due and a box to check when the assignment is completed.

Following the daily calendar pages is a section called "Your Life Is Now," prompting the student to consider his/her purpose in life, multi-slacking(tasking), making a difference, building relationships, being aware of current events, and cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset.

Learning Resources follow: a learning styles inventory with descriptions of each type of learning style, setting goals, test taking, reading to learn, guidelines for creating an essay, project planning, and note taking. "Cheat sheets" contain pages on equivalencies; formulas and equations for circumferences, surface, volume, algebra, geometry, trig, and physics; the periodic table; and world maps.

The final section of the planner is a personal directory for friends' names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses.

I must say that this is the most comprehensive planner I've seen for students! I wish I had written it! It provides students with a calendar that keeps them focused, and the resources needed to understand and use the calendar, as well as to be successful in school and life.

I highly recommend the AgendaWorks planner. I've not seen any other calendar that comes close to the way that the AgendaWorks planner helps students get organized, stay focused, set priorities and goals, and adopt life and learning skills.

We've tried the agenda for one day, and my foster daughter loves it! She got her homework done in record time yesterday. I think she likes the fact that she's using something college students use. I'm having both of our foster daughters read the Learning Resources section - a couple of pages a day.

Comments?

More on homework:
Getting Organized for School - Organizing Homework
Helping Your Child Organize Large Homework Projects
Getting Organized for School - Study Shows Flashcards Help Improve Memory