This week's free download is an assignment or essay planner suitable for high school or university. Its purpose is to act as a project management tool as opposed to being a content or outline planner. However, it's comprehensive enough to keep with you from the moment you're handed an assignment through to submission.

Download Assignment Planner here (94KB)

The first page is a summary that's flexible enough for most subjects or courses. Special attention should be given to the "Tips" and "Ideas" sections, as this is where you note any hints or special requirements the teacher has shared, as well as your own ideas and keywords that will set your assignment apart from the rest. The “Planning” section at the bottom of the page should be used for large milestones, such as complete first draft, finalize sources, or an early submission date target.

The second page continues on from the end of the first for more detailed tasks. Tasks you could add to this page could include refining specific sections or paragraphs of the paper, debugging a module or class in your code, or cleaning up your reference list. Depending on how many tasks you have or how detailed you manage tasks, the page can be reprinted as many times as required.

The third and fourth pages are reference-keeping sheets. Bring these to the library, when downloading and selecting online or journal articles, and when checking footnotes, in-line references (e.g. to insert a year or author name), or when inserting and formatting your bibliography. For courses that require more fields (such as law), try using the columns flexibly as there are many different types of sources that could be used in any single assignment. The second version of the reference sheet can be used when you have more than 15 sources, as the first column is unnumbered.

Feel free to share with your friends and come back for more free downloads soon. Good luck!