Planning is Success.
The One Thing Every Student Needs
For years I was an academic coach and I noticed a problem.
I spent half my time with students planning their schedules, and half on their actual work.
Young people aren’t taught how to prioritize tasks and get organized, and the adolescent brain isn’t developed enough yet to plan. They desperately need structure.
So I got to work.
I designed a weekly worksheet to write down homework and due dates. When my tutoring students starting using my worksheet, I saw two things:
They became better planners
Week after week of focused planning helped them manage the details of school and life.
My tool gave them the structure they needed
to focus on one task at a time, complete work for deadlines, and decide which items take priority.
Founder and CEO, Lesley Martin
Why our planners are better
Designed to support and teach executive function skills
Students at each academic level need different levels of structure to support their developing adolescent brain. Class Tracker planners are intuitive, simple, and designed to support student’s lives from middle school through college. Each edition incorporates level-specific, science-informed design principles to support the development of executive function skills. Our weekly planning pages offer structure with flexibility. When they see their entire week at a glance students are able to plan and prioritize their studies and extracurriculars, so nothing gets overlooked or forgotten. These student-focused designed features contribute to our students’ academic success and separate our planners from the rest.
Developed by Educational Expert Lesley Martin
Lesley has worked with students in every capacity, including as a teacher, tutor, and coach, for more than 25 years. In that time, she’s seen firsthand how hard it is for middle and high school students to stay on track, which is what provided the inspiration for the best school planners in the first place. Lesley has published two books that provide insights on time management, organizational skills, studying, planning and prioritizing: Where’s My Stuff?: The Ultimate Teen Organizing Guide with Samantha Moss, and Make the Grade: Everything You Need to Study Better, Stress Less, and Succeed in School.
Backed by Years of Success
As a woman-owned business, we’ve been working directly with schools and academic support programs for nearly 20 years, and we always deliver on-time, high-quality planners produced in the United States.
Designed to support and teach executive function skills
Students at each academic level need different levels of structure to support their developing adolescent brain. Class Tracker planners are intuitive, simple, and designed to support student’s lives from middle school through college. Each edition incorporates level-specific, science-informed design principles to support the development of executive function skills. Our weekly planning pages offer structure with flexibility. When they see their entire week at a glance students are able to plan and prioritize their studies and extracurriculars, so nothing gets overlooked or forgotten. These student-focused designed features contribute to our students’ academic success and separate our planners from the rest.
Developed by Educational Expert Lesley Martin
Lesley has worked with students in every capacity, including as a teacher, tutor, and coach, for more than 25 years. In that time, she’s seen firsthand how hard it is for middle and high school students to stay on track, which is what provided the inspiration for the best school planners in the first place. Lesley has published two books that provide insights on time management, organizational skills, studying, planning and prioritizing: Where’s My Stuff?: The Ultimate Teen Organizing Guide with Samantha Moss, and Make the Grade: Everything You Need to Study Better, Stress Less, and Succeed in School.
Backed by Years of Success
As a woman-owned business, we’ve been working directly with schools and academic support programs for nearly 20 years, and we always deliver on-time, high-quality planners produced in the United States.
Every student – middle schooler, high schooler, or college student – faces a mountain of assignments, activities and deadlines every single week.
How do young learners juggle a busy schedule, prioritize tasks and make time for extracurriculars?
The answer is simple: They write it all down.
In our hyper-digital age, it’s tempting to look to screens for the answer. But we’ve found through years of 1-on-1 student coaching, research, and brain science that using good ol’ pen and paper to plan is best. That’s why we created Class Tracker Planners.
Students of every academic level need a practical way to get organized, manage their time and take control of their busy lives.
Our simple, intuitive planners give students a clear path forward, so that they can feel prepared – and succeed – in school, and beyond.
How paper planners supports student success
Using a paper planner is critical for academic success. Check out these data-driven benefits to see for yourself!
Writing down assignments activates more regions of the brain than typing. This cognitive-motor connection makes it easier for students to remember what’s on their to-do list. Capturing individual tasks in a school planner attaches a greater sense of importance to each one and motivates students to tackle them long before they’re due, helping to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
In a school planner, students break down seemingly overwhelming tasks into smaller, more manageable steps. These steps help students visualize a path forward, so they complete their assignments on time, every time.
Using a paper planner designed with brain science-backed principles makes it easier to master executive function skills. Students can draw upon these skills, such as planning and prioritizing, to succeed both in and out of the classroom.
Related Blogs
Case Studies
Want to see the best school planners in action? Check out these case studies and learn how students have benefited from each edition of our Ultimate Student Planner! We love sharing stats and quantifiable metrics showing just how powerful a paper planner can be!
How Class Tracker’s School Planners reducing stress, increasing sleep and improving student learning and outcomes at La Jolla Country Day’s Middle School Students. READ
How Class Tracker’s Custom School Planners Supports The Teaching Of Executive Function Skills for Colorado Academy’s 9th Grade Students. READ
How Class Tracker’s Ultimate Student Planner helps improve student accountability, time management, planning and prioritization skills for the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee’s TRIO Support Services students. READ
Based on Science, Built with Care
We all want to multitask and tackle everything on our to-do list at once.
But the reality is that we can only handle one thing at a time. This is especially true for adolescents, whose brains are still developing.
Drs. Adam Gazzaley and Larry Rosen, authors of The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World share that our brains are limited in their ability to pay attention. We’re driven to seek immediate gratification, which is why we like to switch to new tasks, rather than tough through the hard work to complete a project.
For young students, distraction is everywhere. Phones, friends, activities, and a myriad of assignments, tests, and deadlines.
But focusing on a single task at a time is the only way forward, and it’s what students at every level need to do to accomplish their goals.
This is why an effective planner is so crucial to student success. Students need to write down their tasks, prioritize, track their progress, and enjoy the satisfaction from completing an assignment.
“You can help your teenagers better manage time and organize tasks by giving them calendars and suggesting they write down their daily schedules. By doing so on a regular basis, they train their own brains.” — Dr. Frances Jensen, The Teenage Brain,
At Class Tracker we understand the unique challenges that young learners face. Our planners were designed to meet the needs of students at each academic level — both what their developing brains can handle, and what their schedules require of them.