Anil is one of our home schoolers who participate in our Open School project. He has been struggling over the past one year to finally make a daily plan for himself whith which he is organising his studies. The plan also includes a wrap-up of the day! Here is what he has wrtten on facebook about it!
“I am a homeschooler and I work with various people from all over the world to pass the Open School exam, offered by NIOS. Therefore I don’t get a schedule from any school – instead I have to make my own. I was struggling very much and it took me a long, long time to organise my studies and find a way to schedule and plan my work. But now I’ve reached a stage where things become smoother. I manage a daily schedule and plan for my studies. The daily schedule includes what subjects I will cover during the day and how much time I will spent on it. It also includes what I want to learn during the sessions – we call it learning outcome. At the end of the day I write an evaluation where I go through all my daily sessions and write down what I have achieved and what I haven’t achieved. This evaluation also helps me to revise what I was doing and because I write short summaries it is a very good exercise for revision as well. According to this evaluation I make my schedule for the next day.
It took me more than year to finally understand why this is helpful and I now do it every day. And the outcome is, that I don’t waste so much time any more. I know what I am going to do during the day. I am much more focussed and I see what I need to so. I have long working days – but I have free time between the sessions and short breaks. My sessions are rather short. When I get tired I take a break and exercise – so I re-gain energy.
My daily plan is embedded in a weekly and monthly plan. I am still working on these. I follow this process every day! Sometimes I have to re-arrange my schedule because unexpected things occur – but I always try to manage them.”