5 Great School Organization Tips from Online School Parents

No doubt you’re excited to start your journey as a Learning Coach (a parent who guides, motivates, and supports their child in online school) at Connections Academy! You completed the registration process, you’ve set up your child’s online school schedule, and now you just need to figure out how to organize all the lessons, portfolios, and assessments that come with the job.  

And you’re not alone if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed; many Learning Coaches worry about managing the abundance of everything involved in online school. That’s why many of them post helpful tips on the Connections Academy message boards. They want new Learning Coaches like you to see how they got organized and became the coaching rock stars that helped their kids succeed. 

Check out some of the most common school organization tips below.  

1. Keep an outline of all course lessons.

Lay out what your child will learn in each class for the semester ahead of time so you’ll be up-to-date on what they’re studying. This also helps them prepare in advance for topics that they might have struggled with in the past.   

2. Use color coding to help your child organize materials by course.

Color code each subject so the folders, notebooks, and whatever else you may use correlate to each subject. Perhaps everything for science class is yellow, history is blue, and so on. This allows for easy organization across all subjects.

3. Make weekly assignment sheets.

After you’ve made the outline, you’ll still need to break everything down into chunks so they can focus on small amounts of information at a time and not get overloaded.

By making a weekly assignment sheet, you can prepare for every project, quiz, or test that your student might encounter.

4. Create three assignment folders for each class.

It’s your call if you want to go the physical or digital route, but this practice organizes everything into three separate (yet of the same color) folders so you won’t get confused and possibly miss something or do it way ahead of schedule. 

Once you’ve created them, label them so you have:  

• A folder for assignments in progress
  • Homework and/or projects that you’ve started and will finish before their due dates.
• A folder for upcoming assignments
  • Homework and/or projects that you'll start later in the semester.
• A folder for completed assignments
  • Homework and/or projects that you’ve finished. 

5. Watch some virtual classroom sessions and take notes.

Sit with your student and see how the live (or recorded)  virtual classroom sessions operate and take notes. Virtual classroom notetaking will give you a better idea of how your child is learning and give you a reference point to use if they come to you for help.   

Congrats again on the beginning of your Learning Coach journey at Connections Academy! We hope these study organization tips will help your student succeed like so many others already have.