Organizational skills are important to a student's success at any age. That said, it can be a bit of a dry topic. Here are tips for how to teach it and make it engaging.

Make It Real and Personal

Lots of our students hear “you need to be organized” but don’t actually know what this means or what it looks like. My first step to teaching organization is to explicitly show students what it means to have an organized desk and backpack. I give them examples and non-examples.

Another important step is getting students invested in the importance of organization and its rationale, so I talk to them about how being organized can actually make their lives easier.

And lastly, I work with my students to create their own personal plan for improving their organization. Sometimes it’s them writing down steps to become organized, and sometimes it’s making a plan with their parents or teacher to have an adult facilitate regular “backpack cleanouts”.

Show Impact of Disorganization

I like talking about how long it takes us to get organized vs. unorganized. First, I give them a messy backpack full of trash and loose papers. Along with the backpack, I give them a “scavenger hunt” checklist of items to find inside. We time how long it takes us to find those items. We then repeat the process with a clean, organized backpack and compare our times. Afterward, I ask them to clean up the messy backpack, and we time ourselves again.

To debrief, we compare the time, energy, and effort used for each assignment, the feelings that go through the messy backpack, and, finally, what they would do with the “extra” time that organization brings.

Use Technology

I’ve addressed organizational skills in small groups and in individual sessions using this No Prep Study Skills Lesson. My main focus is to help students learn how to organize their time. My students have 1:1 technology, so I am helping students use the calendar app as an agenda. Students put project deadlines, homework, and test dates on the calendar, as well as non-school-related activities. This helps them to take ownership of their academics.

Incorporate It Into Lessons

Teaching students organizational skills is an important part of our job as school counselors! I work this topic into every guidance lesson as well as many group and individual sessions. I spend 10 minutes of every guidance lesson teaching a mini-lesson on organizational topics such as cleaning out your backpack, setting up your binder, or using a planner.

In group or individual sessions, we analyze a student's grades to identify weak areas and create a SMART goal to improve in those areas.

Here is my favorite SMART goal organizational activity; it can be used in groups or whole-class lessons.

In all of these lessons and sessions, I also use a fictional high school athlete named Chad to share his hard-earned life lessons in becoming an organized, successful student. The students love hearing how to stay organized from “Chad”. You can find Chad’s story in my book, Get Your Goal On Volume 2.