If you are a teacher at any level you know exactly what this is. Every day, in every class there is at least 1 and up to 10 students who shout out “I don’t have a pencil” right while you’re in the middle of teaching. It’s frustrating and disappointing at the same time. However, I have to giggle as I look back to my first day of school in my first year of teaching: I had a box of maybe 200 pencils that I sat in a bin by the pencil sharpener. I figured they would last me a while; and they did. By the end of the first week I had about 175 left, by the end of the second week there were probably still over 100. But something happened after that and the pencils started disappearing and I realized not as many students came prepared to class with pencils as I would have expected.
Since then, I have tried many methods to solve the Pencil Battle. I have created sign out sheets that I left on a desk. I have made sign out sheets and used it as student jobs to rent out while charging school money. I made pretty tape flags for the tops to signify which pencils were mine and I even went out and bought fancy pencil flags so I could keep an eye on them while I was teaching (these were more of a distraction than anything else).
Sometime about a month ago it came to me to have students write their name on the board. I realized that my biggest issue was remembering which students had a pencil and reminding them to return it. If their names are written on the board, I could easily look over and remind them to return the pencils before I dismiss them. This has worked WONDERS in my class. Last week I kept all 6 of my pencils ALL WEEK! That is unheard of! Prior to this I was lucky if I could keep track of 6 pencils in one day.
I still put colorful tape at the top of my pencils so that I can keep track, but using the board has allowed me to not stress as much about the pencils. This may seem silly to non-teachers, but I used to get so annoyed when a student said they didn’t have a pencil. I might snap back with something to the effect of “Well, where did you think you were going today? You knew you would need a pencil!”. But now my response is “Just write your name on the board and make sure to put it back before you leave. Now I am not saying that it’s a perfect method, but it has made such a difference for me and I hope it does the same for you and your class!
Martina