Jill Keppeler - In Charge and Unstoppable: Developing Organizational Skills

Published in 2020 by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. 29 East 21st Street, New York, NY 10010

Copyright 2020 by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer.

Editor: Elizabeth Krajnik

Designer: Michael Flynn

Photo Credits: Cover kate_sept2004/E+/Getty Images; cover, pp. 1, 34, 6, 8, 1014, 1620, 2224 (background) TairA/Shutterstock.com; p. 5 (main) Westend61/Getty Images; p. 5 (inset) Veja/Shutterstock.com; p. 7 Reggie Casagrande/Photolibrary/Getty Images; p. 9 Vincenzo Lombardo/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images; p. 10 Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock.com; p. 11 Charles Ommanney/Getty Images News/Getty Images; p. 12 Syda Productions/Shutterstock.com; p. 13 Photographee.eu/Shutterstock.com; p. 15 Niall Carson/PA Images/Getty Images; p. 16 Slavoljub Pantelic/Shutterstock.com; p. 17 Leszek Glasner/Shutterstock.com; p. 18 Littlekidmoment/Shutterstock.com; p. 19 Savicic/Shutterstock.com; p. 21 Africa Studio/Shutterstock.com; p. 22 Dima Sidelnikov/Shutterstock.com.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Keppeler, Jill.

Title: In charge and unstoppable: developing organizational skills / Jill Keppeler.

Description: New York : PowerKids Press, 2020. | Series: Spotlight on social and emotional learning | Includes glossary and index.

Identifiers: ISBN 9781725302044 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781725302235 (library bound) | ISBN 9781725302143 (6pack)

Subjects: LCSH: Time management--Juvenile literature. | Organization--Juvenile literature. Classification: LCC HD69.T54 K47 2020 | DDC 646.7008352--dc23

Manufactured in the United States of America

CPSIA Compliance Information: Batch #CSPK19. For further information contact Rosen Publishing, New York, New York at 1-800-237-9932.

CHAPTER one

SO MANY THINGS

Even though youre young, you probably have a lot of things going on in your life. You have school and homework. You may have chores and duties you do to help your parents around your home. You might have sports practices or music lessons or other things you do for fun. Even if these things are fun, though, you still need to find time for them.

To get everything done, its important to be organized. You need to know where your schoolbooks, assignments, and sports and hobby equipment are and make sure youre ready for your activities. You might find this easyor you might find it to be really hard! Maybe you sometimes feel like everything is out of control. But you can take charge and get organizedyou just need to take things one step at a time.

Kids today can have lots to do! Good organizational skills can help make it easier to stay on top of everything.

CHAPTER two

WHY BE ORGANIZED?

Organization can help keep you from being overwhelmed with things you have to do and give you more time for fun things. Imagine this: You have to do your math homework after school and then practice your violin before you can play video games with your friends. But what if you cant find your assignment? Maybe you wrote it down on a little piece of paper somewhere.

You dig through your backpack and spend a long time looking for it before you find it crumpled up at the bottom. And then, wheres your math book? Do you have a sharpened pencil to work with and a good eraser? And then, what happened to your violin? Is it in your room? Did you leave it at school? Being organized knowing where all these things are and being ready to gowill help you avoid wasting time.

Do you lose things a lot? It can be annoying and waste a lot of time. If you lose your homework, your teacher might give you a zero.

CHAPTER three

ITS A SKILL

Some people seem naturally organized. Theyre always ready and they always seem to know where everything is. Even if this doesnt come naturally to you, though, you can learn organizational skills. You can practice them just like you practice sports or music. With practice, youll get better at them. One important place to start is to figure out your priorities. What do you need to do? Those things come first. Then, what do you want to do?

Sometimes it helps people to make lists of what they need to do and what they want to do. Then you can check off one need-to-do thing at a time until you get to want-to-do things. You can also use lists to keep track of your extracurricular activities such as sports practices or music lessons.

Even famous people use lists! Businessman and billionaire Richard Branson, pictured here, has written about how he uses to-do lists to help get things done.

CHAPTER four

BREAK IT DOWN

Breaking things you need to do down into smaller pieces can help you stay organized and keep you from being overwhelmed. First, get ready to do a task. This means getting together everything you need (for homework, this could mean assignments, pencils, books, and paper) and going to the place where you need to do the task. This includes making sure you know where to get all the things you need, such as having your assignments all written down neatly.

Former First Lady Michelle Obama has spoken about the importance of organization. In November 2016, she said about being a mother, You have to be fiercely organized to get anything done.

Next, you need to focus on the task and do it. It sounds easy, but this can be the hardest part! You have to learn to deal with distractions. Last, you need to finish the task and make sure everythings organized. It doesnt matter if you did your homework if you forget to take it into school the next day.

CHAPTER five

WRITE IT DOWN

For the first step, sometimes you need to think ahead. Its too late to figure out that you need a book for a school project when youre already home, the project is due the next day, and the book is at school. This is why it can be valuable to write things down and keep an assignment notebook. You can write down all the information about your school assignments in your assignment notebook and check it before you leave school each day.

Writing things down is a great way to help you remember them!