Skip to main content

Time Management for Students with Learning Challenges


A new year brings with it all the normal day-to-day tasks and responsibilities. For those of you who have added new tasks or activities based on your goals for this new year, time is often in short supply. Time management is a challenge for everyone, but for those with learning disabilities it is even more challenging. I came across an excellent article on the site LD Online"Teaching Time Management to Students with Learning Disabilities" that tackles this topic.

The article explains that even the concept of time can be difficult for a student with learning disabilities to grasp. Developing a sense of time and how long it takes to perform a particular task is essential for students to learn time management and achieve academic success.


Students with learning disabilities need high structure, explicit teaching, and extended opportunities to practice strategies until they develop independent skills. Here is how to best break down this concept and allow your student to understand and practice these valuable skills:

  1. First your student needs to understand Task Analysis - This is the process of identifying what needs to get done to finish a given task. To estimate time with accuracy, students need to know the steps required to complete a task. For instance, an assignment to read a chapter and define vocabulary for a quiz the next day requires a student to: (1) read, (2) look up the words in a dictionary and (3) identify and remember information for a quiz.
  2. Then they must be able to use Time Estimation effectively - Accurately estimating how much time it takes to complete tasks is essential for long-term planning. At the end of the article is a great activity you can have your student practice to develop both these necessary skills for successful time management.

Click this link to read this article and activity http://www.ldonline.org/article/23676/

At Learning Foundations we have an Executive Function Training program designed specifically to help students develop time management and organizational skills. If this is a constant struggle for your child or teen, give us a call today at 1-844-TX-LEARN, or

JOIN US and other parents at our Parent Information Meetings where you can ask questions and explore possibilities about how to best help your bright but struggling child. To RSVP for our upcoming meeting, CLICK HERE or call 1-844-TX-LEARN.