During the winter, it is inevitable for many people to get sick with a flu or cold. However, due to COVID-19, there may be even more possibilities of you staying at home and having to miss those vital lessons in school. If you have just missed a day, a week or even a few weeks of school and you are concerned about how you will catch up with this huge pile of work, then do not fear as in this article, I will share some simple steps to catch up with any schoolwork you have missed. 

Step 1: Find out what work you have missed

For each of your subjects, ask someone in your class or your teacher about what you have missed. They can show you and you can understand how much work you have to catch up with. 

Step 2: Try not to miss any more school

After seeing this huge amount of work, you may feel overwhelmed and confused on how you are supposed to catch up with previous lessons and stay on top of the current lessons. The best thing to do is not to add extra work on yourself and just try not to miss any more school. 

Step 3: Make a revision timetable and a routine

For the first few days or weeks of catching up, you may feel disorganised. My tip would be to create a routine with times designated to do work that is being set now but also times where you are completing tasks from the previous lessons that you missed. Try to focus on one or two different subjects every day and if you follow this, you will see progress. 

Step 4: Create to do lists with deadlines

Now that you have made a routine and know at which times you will study (remember to incorporate breaks!) you now want to start creating daily to-do lists with deadlines. I like to use my bullet journal and I can also migrate tasks for future dates. Plan every day and make sure what you have to do and this will keep you on track to finish the work. 

Step 5: Remove distractions

Now you may sit at your desk, your couch or the floor (wherever you study) but you don’t feel motivated to get started. Is it because you have your phone next to you? If so, remove your distractions and start being productive.

Step 6: Seek help from your teachers, friends and parents

Whether you are feeling stressed with this work, or you don’t understand the catch up work, I would advise you to seek help from your peers, teachers or parents. It is okay to share your feelings and get some help.

Step 7: Ask for a time extension

If your teacher has set a specific deadline for an assignment, and you feel that you cannot keep up with it, it may be worth asking for a time extension to your teacher so you have more time to complete it. 

Step 8: Don’t stress

Please do not stress. It is just not worth it and will end up wasting more time and energy than actually doing the work.

Step 9: Catch up on holidays

If you have a few tasks that are not urgent and you know you can delay, perhaps you could migrate it for the weekends or the holidays. Since lessons do not happen on the weekends or holidays, you won’t have the current lessons to go to and you can spend this time catching up. 

Step 10: Manage your time efficiently

Catching up is all about time management. When you make your routine, please do include some breaks and maybe some extracurriculars, skills or hobbies that you can also do alongside studying. This will ensure you are not getting bored with studying.

Those were some of my tips and advice on how to catch up. It is okay to catch up with work. As always, comment down below how you catch up with work when you miss school.

Please check out my other articles relating to Islamic content, My Experiences, Teenage Advice, Book Reviews and Poetry.

Thank you for reading, and have a lovely day!