Pencils and my students drive me insane! Seriously, what do they do with them? I think they eat them or maybe I have a pencil fairy in the room taking pencils. Every time we start an activity at least 3 or 4 kids can't find their pencil. Pencils are always on the floor too! Then I find them and and the erasers are gone and even the metal caps.
Then when they have the pencils, it is the sharpening..... If you sharpen one pencil suddenly everyone needs their pencil sharpened. I try to have a cup of sharpened pencils and a cup of pencils to sharpen. Although the sharpen pencils are taken and the "to be sharpened" cup never has pencils in it.
I am at a loss of what to try. I have desks so I can't have a table bucket with supplies. Should I number pencils with their student numbers and give every student 2. Should I put little flags on the pencils with their names, I am teaching first this year, although some of my kids really are more like K. I mean they will actually sit there and just look at the paper and half way through the assignment when I ask why they have not started they say "I don't have a pencil." Really!
I need tips and suggestions, what do you do?? Am I the only teacher who has this problem?
