How to plan an assignment

Often, the most challenging part of an assignment is just getting started. We spend hours procrastinating, putting it off, searching for anything else to consume our time (maybe now’s the time to finally clean your room). Then, we find ourselves days before the deadline trying to pull something together 🤦

The top tip you'll hear from any high-achieving student is to plan the assignment before starting. But how do we actually do this?

1. Use the assessment criteria

The first step in planning an assignment is to make use of the assessment instructions or marking criteria. This will tell you when the assignment is due and what you need to include.

2. List the tasks that make up the assignment

Attempting to start one large assignment is much more difficult than many smaller, more manageable tasks. Let’s look at an example from our Study Skills lesson, Planning an Assignment.

As we can see, the assessment requires us to:

1. Choose a few products to investigate
2. Record the method and results from the investigation
3. And, write up the report.

By listing each of the individual tasks that you’ll need to complete, we can see exactly what the assignment involves.

3. Write out the process for each task

For each task, there will be a process you need to follow. For example, you might need to find or buy three products to carry out the investigation, and you'll need to conduct some secondary research to write the introduction of the report.

By writing this all down, we can see just how much work is required to complete the assignment.

4. Break things down

From here, we need to break the assignment down into more manageable pieces. Luckily, Atomi's Planning an Assignment video covers a step-by-step process for doing this, plus some extra tips.

You can watch the video here:

• New South Wales
• Queensland
• Victoria
• Western Australia
• South Australia

You can also download and print the Atomi Assignment Planner, which covers everything you need to plan your next assignment.

So, be sure to:

• Log in to your Atomi account
• Watch our lesson on planning an assignment
• And, download the Atomi Assignment Planner!

With a little bit of planning, you’ll be on your way to acing your assignments (and making the process that much easier).

For more tips to help you stay productive, follow us on Instagram or TikTok. See you there 👋.