1.
Buy materials JUST at the beginning of the school year:
We all know that the best
time to stock up on supplies is during summer, prices fall impressively! In the U.S., stores burst out with deals
during late July and early August, that’s why you should buy your 100 pencils,
your 20 boxes of crayons and your 30 notebooks during this season. You save a
lot! However, as stated in the subtitle, I suggest you do this investment only
once a year in preparation to the beginning of the school year and not to
provide the kids with supplies throughout the year. Keep reading, everything
will make sense in a minute!
2.
Make an inventory of the supplies that children bring:
If your school does a
Meet-The-Teacher night, that’s awesome! Many parents take the opportunity to
bring school supplies that day, they can help you write names, numbers and even
help you store things. It is easy to see who brought things and who did not. At
that time they will tell you if something is missing or if they didn’t find
something. You can have a list of students in the classroom and take note of
the students who already brought their supplies. Take the time to give the
supply list to the ones who didn’t bring their supplies and ask them to bring
them the first day of school. Most of these parents will realize that other
parents have brought their supplies and keep themselves accountable, you just
provide the list, no hassle.
Another method is to make an
inventory item by item. In "Meet the Teacher Night", parents can help
to check off their own supplies. If you have to do the inventory during the
first week of school it is important to ask students to bring their supplies
with their name on to see who brought each thing. Sometimes they bring
everything in a bag or in a box, I immediately put their name to the bag or box
and then count the material. This method is more difficult but in many cases it
works better, especially when there is a lack of parental involvement. This way
you can send home a note specifying who lacks what.
3.
The supplies are for the classroom, the supplies are shared:
During my first year as a
teacher I was not very successful with materials, very few students brought
their things, I did not count the supplies and the worst part is that many
things were lost daily. I had to buy so much material. The following year, I
sat all the parents in my classroom on "Meet the Teacher Night", and
lectured them about how essential it is to cooperate with supplies, I was a bit
stiff and I stressed that it was their obligation to ensure that children had
the material needed to learn, I also asked them to put the name to all supplies
because every student would use only the material to bring to the classroom.
Obviously, parents didn’t love my lecture and that year I was not very popular
with the community, but somehow 90% of my students brought their material on
time, others brought it later and a few others never brought it. I had more
control over the material, but I was not satisfied. The problem was that if
someone had brought five pencils for the whole year, that child would be able
to use only five pencils, while the one who brought 20 would have access to
more pencils. The same happened with notebooks, erasers, glue, scissors, etc.
Moreover, when I moved from self-contained to departmentalized the problem
increased, instead of having 20 children I had 40 now going in and out of my
room with their pencil boxes, using material in 2 different rooms. I mean, it
was a nightmare, controlling the supplies sincerely drove me crazy! I realized
that my super system(s) would not work under this scheme. After this ordeal, I
decided to put together the supplies I had bought plus the supplies that the
parents had sent to the classroom, then I distributed the material evenly. I
wrote names only on notebooks and folders, it made more sense and my job was
simplified; on the other hand, I kept communicating with other parents who had
not brought their things, I gave them options, one of which was to allow them
to send their things slowly, another one was to bring used supplies from
previous years and so on. All this difficulty taught me many things but the
most relevant was: Shared supplies are used better.
4. Supply Distribution: The Number System
Sharing the material was not
the only thing that I learned with my ordeal, I also learned to organize the
material. To have a fair system of distribution of the material is also
important to hold accountable those who use the material: students. How can you
make students responsible for their material if things like glue or pencils do
not have their name? While the obvious answer is to assign a number, then I'll
explain what has worked for me better than any other material handling system.
As mentioned earlier, I have
two classes with about 22 children each: A and B. That means I have to manage
supplies for a total of 44 children, or in the case of some fellow teachers up
to 66 students with 3 classes instead of 2. No, no, no! I cannot imagine myself
listening to the song "I have no pencil" every day, especially with
the number of observations we have lately. Well, to solve part of this problem,
I decided to manage 22 boxes of pencils instead of 44. How do I do this? I
assigned a pencil case per desk, each desk and each box are given a number (for
purposes of this example let's focus on desk number 3), I then put 10 pencils,
in each box of pencils, ½ eraser (cut an eraser in half, add one half to the
box and keep the other half), add 1 glue stick, 1 box of crayons, 1 erasable
marker. In all this stuff I write the number 3 with a permanent marker. Now
every student who sits on desk # 3, has access to all the material that has the
# 3 on it. It is important to assign a number to each student as well, so they
know what supplies correspond to them. In other words, in my classroom I have a
student # 3 in Class A and another student # 3 in Class B, both use the pencil
box # 3 and sit on the desk # 3, they share everything on that #3 pencil case.
This makes it possible to share the material in an organized way and if you're
like me and you have to have everything under control, you will like this
method and save tons of money and time.
 |
| Pencils for students number 3 |
5.
Implementation:
You're probably thinking
that I need to get a life because I have to put numbers to all the material, don’t
worry, other teachers have told me that; however what they do not know is that I
only invest a few hours at the beginning of the school year and only a few
minutes a week the rest of the year. This gives me a little extra time to get focused
on other aspects of my life but that's another story, let's focus on the
material.
The hardest thing will be
sharpen pencils and put the number to all, but trust me it’s worth it, I’ve
seen other teachers put different color tape on top of the pencil, I personally
like the number system. I used an electric pencil sharpener and my pencil stash.
My pencil reserve is like a loan, if I lend my students 100 pencils, then at
the end of the year I get 100 pencils back from what they brought, it is only
fair no?, however it's a real challenge to finish the year with 100 pencils
right? I like to leave extra sharpened pencils and I explain why later on. This
year it took me three hours to sharpen 10 pencils per child (with distractions
and all) and make stacks of 10, but last year I invited a friend and did all
this in one hour. Once you're done with pencils, write numbers on the glue, box of crayons (no, I did not put
numbers to each crayon, only to each box, I'm a little crazy but not that much),
the dry-erase marker, the half eraser and of course all the pencil boxes. This
will take about 1 hour.
The first week of school pass
the material for students to put into their boxes, then take a moment to
explain the system. It is important to explain that the box will stay in the
room, yes you read right, the case will not go to other rooms nor will not go
home. The box is to be used in our room ONLY.
 |
| 1)Sharpen pencils |
 |
| 2) Sharpened pencil stash ready to begin! |
 |
| 3) Assign a number per student and write it on his supplies. |
|
| 4) Numbered Pencils |
 |
| 5) Grouped pencils |
 |
| Voila! Boxes with everything numbered in them! |
6. Maintenance:
What
if a student loses a pencil or an eraser?
In my room, the material is
replenished only once a month, if students lose something they will have to
wait until the end of the month to replace what was lost. This will teach them
to be responsible with the material. At the same time, they have other 9
pencils ready for use, and sometimes I lend them whatever supply they’re
missing as a temporary loan and we call it "temporary material" which
must be returned to me by the end of the day. Another solution is to have to ask
a partner while I replace lost supplies in their boxes.
How
often will be needed to sharpen the pencils?
Each group of students in my
classroom has a cup to exchange pencils. Students leave their unsharpened
pencils there at the end of the day. I sharpen them when they go home and the
next day students will be responsible of putting those pencils back in their
boxes by finding pencils with their own number on it. EASY!
How
do I ensure that the boxes have the necessary supplies?
Sometimes I like to give a reward to responsible children, for example once
every two months (this year I'll verify boxes more often, probably every month)
I make the children in each class take out the material from their boxes and
count it all: pencils, eraser, scissors, glue and marker. It is possible that
many children have all their material yet others will not. ONLY children who
still have all their material receive a sticker; then immediately replace lost
supplies to children who lost one or more of the items in their box. It is
truly amazing what a sticker and positive reinforcement can do! If you decide
to do the same you will notice that the children are increasingly responsible
for their own material.
Where
I can store the pencil boxes?
My students have a basket per
group of desks where they keep their boxes before leaving my room. They can
also leave them under their desks or in any storage system you have in your
classroom. The trick is, without doubt, that the boxes are accessible to all
classes at all times.
I hope you can implement this
system, or at least part of it. I know you will not regret it!
Well,
if you have implemented this system already please share your results!
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