Strategies for Organizational Skills

The following strategies are to be used within an instructional design for students with TBI. The effectiveness of any strategy should be evaluated for each student.

• State the obvious; it may not be as clear to the student.
• Use a picture-form daily planner to help the student understand the organization of the day (younger). Use a calendar to plan long-range projects with the student (older).
• Tell the student's parents what chapters or topics will be covered in the upcoming week.
• Provide parents with a list of required assignments and projects for the semester (older).
• Provide checklists or cue cards with steps for completing a task; organize the checklists into a small notebook for easy reference.
• Provide goal-setting and planning sheets and tell the student the number of steps in a task or the number of items to be completed.
• Use graphic organizers as guides (e.g., diagrams showing the proper location of items in one's desk or backpack, the relations of concepts, discourse analysis).
• Divide large tasks into smaller steps.
• Divide complex tasks into a sequence of numbered steps or sub-goals.

Adapted from:

Colorado Department of Education. (2001). Brain injury: A Manual for Educators.

Szekeres, S.F. Meserve, N.F. (1997). Appendix 18-2: Modifying materials, instruction, and the learning environment to meet individual needs. In M. Ylvisaker (Ed.), Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation (pp. 411-414). Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Kentucky Department of Education. Technical Assistance Manual on Brain Injury.