Materials Management
Passing Out/Turning In
Passing out materials
Take one and pass to your right.
Turning in materials
Stay in your seat.
Stack papers neatly in the middle of your table.
Wait for instructions.
Tote trays
To save time in passing out supplies, I like to have tote trays on hand with enough supplies for every student at a table. I use a plastic cup to hold pencils (make sure they are sharpened) and rulers. I put in a box of thick and thin markers (and yes, they are no longer in the boxes after the first day!). There would also be enough scissors for each child at the table (this picture was taken at home). Have the tote trays ready and any supplies counted out for each table ahead of time. Give directions, and then ask a student helper to get what is needed for his/her table. Things tend to go smoothly, because students have their materials quickly. (Nancy Alibrandi)
Colored Buckets
To save time as well I use colored buckets on my tables. They are the little metal ones that you can get in the Target dollar bins. I put pencils, erasers, scissors, and glue sticks enough for everyone and then there is school box of crayons at each table. The buckets are great because then I can use them to differentiate the tables by saying that a child sits at the table with the read bucket, or blue, etc. This works out great and once the students got over the novelty of having them there they forget they are even there and hate when they get moved and they don't have the right color bucket on their table any longer. Angelica
Baskets
On each table I have baskets with pencils and erasers. I also have art supplies in a small wheeled basket near the tables so when we need them they are easy to get to since we don't use them often. For turning in papers, students keep their papers in their folders until it's time for the papers to be graded then they go into a class folder. All work is returned to the students afterwards to keep in their folder. Melissa
Kindergarten Pencils for EVERYONE
In order to avoid ever sharpening pencils, I use kindergarden pencils w/o erasers. These pencils stay sharpened for at least 3 weeks before I need to sharpen them. They NEVER break. I also don't keep erasers. If students make a mistake, I tell them to draw 1 line through it and keep writing. With only 40 class minutes, we have no time to waste. (Keisa Williams)
Beginner's Pencils from Office Depot
Boss Seat
I have a classroom attached to the elementary library where I have the desks arranged in clusters of four. One desk has the cluster's number attached to it -- that's the boss seat. The student assigned to the boss seat gets the pencil baskets out of the cupboard and makes sure everyone at his/her cluster has a pencil. In addition to pencils the baskets contain erasers, dry erase markers, and bookmarks. If needed, I add rulers or glue sticks to the baskets before the class arrives. At the end of the class the boss returns the basket to the cupboard. The boss student also passes out the papers I place on his/her desk, collects them at the end of the class and puts them in the class's bin. Each marking period I move the cluster number to another desk in the cluster so someone else can be the boss. I use the classroom only for grades 2-4 (this is a preK to 4 elementary school) and find that making my "most-likely-to-seek-attention" students bosses the first semester, I signicantly cut down on behavior problems.
Materials Management.pdf