A Time Management Matrix helps you prioritize tasks that are most aligned with your long-term goals. This leads to progress toward those goals and a sense of satisfaction. The matrix is a great way to organize your own time, but what about your reading block?
The Time Management Matrix (Eisenhower Decision Matrix) can help you answer these questions about your reading block:
- How do I want students to spend their time?
- What do I want them to do daily?
- What should they do weekly? Monthly?
- What prevents them from meaningful reading, writing, etc?
- How can I support students through routines, expectations, and preparedness?
Here’s how the Time Management Matrix might look when applied to your reading workshop:
Quadrant 2—Important, but Not Urgent Let’s start with Q2, because this is where we work toward long-term goals (if you’re confused, see the original post). Think about what you want your students to be accomplishing throughout the year, and to what end. Some things you might include:
- Read good fit books that represent a variety of genres
- Become better readers (be able to read increasingly challenging books with understanding)
- Interact positively with peers to build a reading community
Each of these goals requires time and repeated practice, that’s why they are in the “important, but not urgent” category. Independent reading is a good example of a Q2 task, it is important and requires lots of time. You want to spend most of your time in Q2.
Quadrant 1–Important and Urgent Q1 tasks are important (they helps students make progress toward longterm goals) and urgent (they need to be completed immediately). Some Q2 tasks during reading workshop might be:
- Responding to a daily reading prompt–this is “urgent” because it must be done before the end of class, and important because it helps students become better readers.
- Make additions to a reading notebook–some information helps students reflect on their reading, and must be recorded before they forget (which makes it urgent).
- Physical and emotional wellbeing helps students make progress to their longterm goals, so these needs are urgent and important.
Too many Q2 tasks distract students from their long-term goals.
Quadrant 3–Urgent, but Not Important These are tasks that must be completed immediately, but don’t really contribute to long-term goals. Some Q3 tasks that might be seen during reading workshop:
- Rush overdue library books to the library
- Find lost books/assignments
- Sharpen pencils
- Complete assignments for another class
- “Household” tasks like reviewing routines that are often disregarded
The easiest way to shrink Q3 tasks is to establish and maintain good routines. An organized, well-run classroom makes for a smaller Q3 quadrant.
Quadrant 4–Not Urgent & Not Important These are tasks that aren’t urgent, and don’t contribute to long-term goals–basically, they are time wasters and distractions. These should be eliminated, or at least greatly reduced. Examples:
- Finish reading a book that is much too hard/much too easy
- Distractions from other classes
- Off-task behavior
- Unpreparedness, bad transitions
- Line behavior that makes class late
- Bathroom routines that use up too much time
If you’re interested in filling out a Time Management Matrix yourself, you can download a free one here.
What do you think, is this a helpful tool when designing your reading block?
