360 Thinking Plan-Ahead Calendar
Make long-term planning actually click.
A visual sticky-note calendar that helps students use executive function skills to plan long-term projects, study sessions, and weekly homework. Built on the award-winning 360 Thinking methodology.
Free Chrome extension. Syncs to Google Calendar.
Install Free from Chrome Web Store
Why long-term projects can be challenging
Ask a student to plan a project, and you'll often hear two words: "I will." Then nothing happens. It's not that they don't care — it's that the work in their head looks like a single assignment labeled "history project," not a sequence of steps stretched across two weeks. They can't yet see what Done looks like. They can't see time. And when a project does get started, it's often the night or two before it's due.
For thirty years, Cognitive Connections has helped students develop the executive function skills they need to plan. The pedagogical method we built—360 Thinking—teaches students to start every project by sketching what it will look like when it's Done, then work backwards to figure out what they need to Do and what they need to Get Ready. Physical sticky notes on a paper calendar make each step visible. Time becomes visible. Procrastination becomes visible. And students learn — through their own hands — how to actually break an assignment down into a manageable steps so it is a doable task.
The 360 Thinking Plan-Ahead Calendar is the digital version of that paper-and-stickies method. Same pedagogy. Same metaphor. But now the calendar syncs to your student's actual Google Calendar, so the plan lives on their phone, their laptop, and their school Chromebook — everywhere they already check. Mini analog clocks on each sticky note show the volume of time each step needs, to help students with EF challenges experience time. When stickies get pushed to a later day, they pile up — making procrastination impossible to ignore. And when the project is finished, there's confetti.
If you're a teacher, a special educator, an EF coach, a speech-language pathologist, or an occupational therapist, you already know the problem. This tool is for the kids you're already trying to help, and for you — who has been trying to teach the steps without a way to make them stick.