The first has been the pencil situation! I think we have gone through about 200 pencils in 5 weeks. I never have sharpeners at student desks because they tend to be distracting, but our grade level sets the list as a whole and I have yet figured out a way to rid the classroom of the sharpeners they love so much! We started the pencil game this week! Have you heard of it:? I read about it on a blog, but can't remember which one. I would be happy to give credit if anyone knows. The idea is that the kids have a pencil with their magic number on it. The last person to have their pencil wins the game and gets a prize. In my classroom, it is eating lunch in the classroom with a friend. This encourages them to be responsible for their pencil, make sure it is not left on the floor, and to not sharpen it into a mini-pencil (argh!) So far, my floor has been pencil free and I let the kids know that pencils on the floor or left on there desks will not be returned.
Now to figure out how to combat the messy desk syndrome!
This must be a third grade thing because the pencil issue drives me nuts also! Thanks for the magic number pencil game. I'm going to give it a try..it can't hurt.
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Messy Desk Syndrome... You can make it a job for one student to be the desk checker at the end of the week and make it a rule to have them clean off the top of their desk before they leave.
ReplyDeleteIn my classroom, I give students approximately 10 minutes at the end of the week to clean out the inside of their desk and the desk checker will check each desk. If the desk is clean, they earn $1.00 (our behavior system). You can have them put stickers on a punchcard and when they fill out the punchcard, they get a prize of something...
Kelly