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Study Planners

"Study Plan - The Prequel"

Go To Guard Rails For Study Plans That Stick

If delivering on study plans raises red flags for you, start with the hacks that work - yes, including for neurosparkly brains that do their own thing. This video from Anti-Boring Learning Lab guru Gretchen is a blockbuster go-to how to deliver on study plans!

Big Picture Thinking Brings Wisdom to Planning for Study

Setting academic goals and working hard towards them is great, but your wellbeing is a big priority too. We would argue that your wellbeing should be your highest priority. You won't be able to perform at your best if you are at your worst. With that in mind, remember to strive to find a balance with your study where you also maintain your social, mental, emotional, spiritual and physical health as well. You will find it very difficult to get through school if you do not also look after your wellbeing.

Sometimes we feel pressured to do well; that pressure can come from ourselves or from people around us. A healthy amount of pressure can be motivating. Ideally, it is delivered in a way that feels positive and encouraging. But when that pressure is too much, or we are not able to achieve the desired level of achievement (be that results, hours studied etc.), then that pressure can result in a loss of wellbeing. Be realistic and sustainable in your goals and efforts and long term you will be more likely to succeed in life.

According to Beyond Blue "Young people can support themselves getting through some of the tough times in adolescence by learning and practising useful skills and habits. There’s a wide range of apps out there that can help build these positive approaches by helping young people to:

develop resilience and coping skills
track and manage their mood and thoughts
improve their learning and communication skills
track physical health, including sleep, movement and nutrition." (2021)

Learn about developing these skills through their website with helpful tips and tools.

Just as we don't expect that you will intuitively know solutions to Year 12 Physics problems, we don't expect that you will be able to always know how to navigate wellbeing problems. When you are finding it tough, reach out for help and learn new strategies. Sometimes your friends and family can help, sometimes you need to reach out to school teachers, support teachers or counsellors. Beyond Blue have a great list of tips and tools for when you want to try to manage your wellbeing yourself.

Needing help does not indicate that you are not intelligent, but reaching out for help when you need help does indicate that you are intelligent!

At Smith's Hill High School, if you need help with your wellbeing, please speak to your Year Advisor, a trusted teacher, or you can make a request to see the school counsellor via email (provided to you by the wellbeing team), or use the paper referral form available from Student Services Reception in A Block. This paper referral is also available outside the school counsellor's door (top of A-Block). Talking to a parent, carer or GP is a great strategy for help outside of school as well.

Big Picture Tools For Seeing Your Year: Planning for Study, Planning for Fun - The Yearly Planner

Keeping an eye on the big picture can make a real difference to how you manage school and life. A year planner helps you map out assessment tasks, birthdays, holidays, and special events all in one place.

Below you will find a range of planners that include NSW term dates; ideal for printing and placing near your study space so you can see your term at a glance. A year or term planner won’t replace your diary, it helps you stay ahead, avoid surprises, and feel more in control of your commitments.

Download Your 2026 Calendar and Planners

(Source: NSW Department of Education 2026 Term Dates, Calendars & Planners)

2026-School_Planner-A4.pdf

Download an A4 4-page year planner for 2026 -this is a single-page per-term. Great for being able to make your own notes and have a whole-term overview.

2026-School_Planner-A3.pdf

Download an A3 2-term per page 2026 year planner -this is the same as the 4-page year planner, but it is on just two A3 pages.

2026-Calendar_A4-Eastern.pdf

Download a 1-page A4 2026 calendar. This is a whole-year view of the school calendar for 2023.

Watch this video for some quick inspiration and facts about how to use a year/term planner. It is "The Best Planners That Work for my ADHD Brain" by How to ADHD with Jess..

Weekly Study Planner

Managing your home learning time doesn’t have to be overwhelming; with some planning and structure, you can feel in charge of your time, live a balanced life, and stay on top of your work. And it pays off: studies have shown that students who plan their time are more efficient in allocating their individual study time, prepared more appropriately for classes, and achieved higher scores on cognitive tests (Van den Hurk, 2006). Either write a new one or have a standard version that you adapt to accommodate new goals as they arise.

Weekly-Planner_30-minute-intervals.pdf

Download your own copy of the Weekly Study Planner:

Click here for a PDF Weekly Planner
Click here for a Word Doc Weekly Planner (can be edited to suit your needs)

Tips On Planning Your Planner

Mark and label time slots already committed, eg. employment, sports, chores, and commitments.
For each class, create a weekly to-do list, estimating how much time to allow for each reading, assignments and study prep. Insert these tasks into open slots in your planner, building in buffer time.
Use colour to differentiate classes and activities visually.
Reduce your tasks to manageable steps or segments, rather than doing assignments in long sessions.
Know when and where you work best. Plan for your hardest studying when you are most alert.
Maximise breaks in your schedule. Set a timer to remind take a quick break after 25min for 5min. Incorporate movement or exercise into your breaks to help you stay focused during study time.
Strive for balance. Schedule time for self-care (exercise, meditation, etc.) and free time if you want it.
Adjust your plan as needed. Unexpected events happen; be flexible and creative to prevent derailment. If your schedule gets thrown off, readjust as best you can, be realistic and kind to yourself.
Plan mini and bigger ‘rewards’ for yourself when you stick to your schedule.
Set a healthy stopping time at night. Sleep deprivation affects attention, cognition, and memory.

3 Tips for Powering Up Your Weekly Study Planner

Study Planner Power Up Tip #1: The Pomodoro Technique

Any timetable should split time into learning aims with manageable chunks of time so that you don’t lose concentration. One way of doing this is to use the ‘Pomodoro Technique’. There are five basic steps to implementing the technique:

Decide on the task to be done
Set a timer for 25 minutes
Work on the task until the timer rings
Take a short break (5 minutes of something like exercise or hydrate or reward or a rest)
Repeat. After four pomodori, take a longer break (30-60 minutes)

Study Planner Power Up Tip #2: Distributed Practice For Revision (aka Spaced Practice)

When it comes to revising your learning as a part of general good study practice, or when revising for exams, rather than cramming all of your revision for each subject into one block, it’s better to space it out – from now, through to the exams. Why is this better? Bizarrely, because it gives you some forgetting time.

This means that when you come back to it a few days and weeks later, you will have to think harder, which actually helps you to remember it. Furthermore, the more frequently you come back to a topic, the better you remember it. Look at the ‘forgetting curve’ diagram (Curtis-Brignell, 2021). If find this interesting and want to learn more about the scientific research behind this, read this website.

Study Planner Power Up Tip #3. Distributed Practice and Interleaving for Revision

The two concepts of Distributed Practice and Interleaving are very similar:

Distributed Practice is revision throughout the course
Interleaving is switching between ideas while you study.

Although interleaving and distributed practice are different interventions, the two are linked because interleaving inherently introduces distributed practice.

When you are revising a subject, the temptation is to do it in ‘blocks’ of topics. Like below:

The problem with this is, is that it doesn’t support the importance of repetition – which is so important to learning. So rather than revising in ‘topic blocks’ during a study session, it’s better to chunk these topics up in your revision program and interleave them (Curtis-Brignell, 2021):

Managing Your Priorities and Expectations Within Study Blocks

Okay, you have a lovely and helpful study planner that breaks down your available time into blocks. Some people find it helpful to break it down further, even if you just read this once, it is worth it to understand the principles of managing blocks of time. Here are two options that might help you:

Must-Do, Should-Do & Could-Do.

Within a study block, break down what your tasks are using the categories of Must-Do, Should-Do and Could-Do. Decide which column to list each item by considering due dates, difficulty of task, length of time needed to complete task, etc.. You can't realistically put everything in Must-Do; rarely do you have the time to do everything and you can set yourself up for negative self-judgement when you always fail your goals; so be realistic, celebrate your victories.

Download the Must-Do, Should-Do, Could-Do planner.

Study Homework Planner.pdf

Alternative Study Planner: Structured Daily Homework Planner

Would it help you to work with a planner where a parent or teacher checks in with you? The following daily homework planner reminds you to check if you have everything you need to do your homework and more. Download the Daily Homework Planner authors' website. It was created by Dr P. Dawson and Dr R. Guare, authors of Smart but Scattered. There are strategies in this sheet that would help any student improve their organisation.

HomeworkPlanner.pdf

References

Dawson, P., & Guare, R. (2021). Smart but Scattered. https://www.smartbutscatteredkids.com/

Curtis-Brignell, J. (2021). Improving Learning Through Effective Study Skills. Thomas Tallis School, https://www.thomastallisschool.com/uploads/2/2/8/7/2287089/improving_learning_through_effective_study_skills_and_revision.pdf

Van den Hurk, M. (2006). The relation between self-regulated strategies and individual study time, prepared participation and achievement in a problem-based curriculum. Active Learning in Higher Education, 7, 155-169.

NSW Department of Education (2021). Calandars. https://education.nsw.gov.au/public-schools/going-to-a-public-school/calendars#tabs0

Content on this page is in part copied or adapted from the following sources: The Learning Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/using-planners/). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License.

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