Planner/Diary Organisation & Templates

Daily Planner

Use a daily planner to plan for everything, not just study. This includes scheduling in exercise, chores, sport, after school activities and any social plans.

You don’t have to be too exact, your plan can be flexible. At first, it’s a bit of trial and error. You may find you’re not planning enough time for some subjects and too much for others. Tweak your plan as needed, the most important thing is using your plan to stay on track.

A daily planner could look like your school diary, a personal diary, a digital planning tool or calendar or one of the templates below. Due to the schools device policy, if you prefer to use digital planning tools, make sure you have a physical notebook to jot down homework tasks and assignment dates during school hours, and you can add these to your digital organiser before and after school.

Daily Checklist

Within or alongside your daily planner you should utilise a daily checklist/to-do list. Learning to prioritise is a big part of self management. Prioritising your goals and tasks is an essential part of planning out your schedule. Only you will know which of your subject areas need more attention than others and which assignments are most urgent.

Some people like to use a ranking system to help categorise their priorities. For example, categorising tasks into A, B or C etc. Others prefer to use numbers (1, 2, 3) or colours (red for most important, green for least). Use whatever works best for you.

Once you have prioritised your tasks, add the top priority tasks in your daily schedule. Aim to achieve the lesser priority tasks in a few days or weeks time. The ability to prioritise is a great skill to have as you start your adult journey.

You can write these in your diary alongside your daily plan or there are lots of apps you can use. You can pre plan your checklists by looking at the overall list of tasks you have for the week and then dividing them up across the week on different days. When you don't get a task done just move it to the following day so it doesn't get lost. Remember to put other things as well as study (exercise, catching up with a friend, walking the dog) to keep a balance and remind yourself visually of all the diverse and amazing things you complete each day. 

Weekly Planner

A general weekly planner is a great way to see an overview of your whole week, divide tasks into more manageable chunks and feel prepared and aware of the upcoming events and tasks. For some regularly using your diary and setting a time on Sunday afternoon to look at the pages for the week ahead and plan tasks works really well, but for others having a seperate weekly visual where you can see each day of the week all at once works better. 

A Template can be found below to download and adjust to your own needs.

School Term Study Planner

Sometimes it can feel overwhelming to remember when assignments are due, exams occurring and know when to plan time to prepare. Using a visual planner (either a file on your desktop you refer and add to frequently, or a printout above your desk) is a great way to not only stay on top of everything that is due, but work out what weeks are going to be busy with exams and assignments, and what weeks to utilise for study preparation. Use the template attached below and fill in when each assignment is due and what days you have exams. 

I have added a suggested colour code on the second page, but please change it to whatever works for you:

School Holidays: Purple

Exams: Blue

Assessments Due: Orange

Study Sessions: Yellow

Study Schedule

Use this (attached below) to plan your daily study goals and weekly holiday study schedule.

Digital Organisation Tools

My Study Life: The MyStudyLife planner app supports rotation schedules, as well as traditional weekly schedules. MSL allows you to enter your school subjects, organize your workload, and enter information about your classes – all so you can keep on track of your school calendar -  https://mystudylife.com/

Notion: A customisable digital planner platform , make your own setup or use a template to set up a daily planner - https://www.notion.so/desktop

Remember the Milk: To do app and reminder tool - https://www.rememberthemilk.com/

Habitica: Habitica is a free habit and productivity app that treats your real life like a game - https://habitica.com/static/home

Google suite: (Google Calendar, G-Drive, Google Keep)

Microsoft To-do: Simple to do list app that can be synced across your phone and computer

Study Planner Templates

If digital planners or apps are not for you and you prefer hard copy planning strategies come to the SSO room for a print out.  If you don't find the FSHS diary works for you, get a diary that is formatted in a way that makes sense to you and use that, as well as using these attachments either by sticking them up in your study space or inserting them into your diary and taking them with you each day. 

Alternatively, you can download these templates and keep them on your computer desktop as a word doc or make a duplicate copy to your own google drive and use them digitally. Consider colour coding subjects so exams or assignments added can be differentiated by colour, and add any other major events that may disrupt your study in order to plan around them.

Click the arrow in the right hand corner of each document below to open and download your own copy.