Broken pencils driving me crazy!

[mopar]

I may just have to try that one. They were so much better this week after we talked about and modeled what a cleaned area looked like (again).

[Cobalt_Waves]

I taught grade one and two last year and the pencil thing drove me insane. Without knowing any better when I first started out, I was letting kids use the electric pencil sharpener. During coloring activities, it was going straight time!! NEVER AGAIN. I would only let them use manual sharpeners if I were you...even if that means buying them all one.

[Linguist92021]

Oh, the sharpener. So at the school where I was we give the students pencils. They come in with nothing, we provide papers, pencils, everything and at the end we get them back.
The teacher allows the students to get up (with permission) to sharpen them as needed. After 2 days I put the sharpener away.
I noticed that they were constantly sharpening them, and that was just a way to get up walk around, make goofy faces at the class, etc.
I took out 2 manual (quiet ) sharpener, sharpened everything before class, had about 5 pencils left over, so if they needed a sharp one, they could just change it out and I would sharpen them at my convenience.
All of sudden there wasn't as much need for sharp pencils

And the funny thing was that the kids thought I was pretty smart and way ahead of them because there was one more distraction I cut out, that they have been successfully using with their teacher.

[jteachette]

I use the 2 bucket system where I sharpen the pencils, but was getting pencils back where it was obvious that the tip had been broken off on purpose. I saved the pencils for the next morning, and showed them to the class, and talked about how this was wasting our pencils, destroying school property, wasting trees(one little person thought of that one), etc.
There haven't been any broken pencils since then.
I also buy the primary pencils without erasers on them, and give them an old fashioned pink one.
My last class liked to take the erasers off of the ends of their pencils, and tore the pencil cap erasers up.

Now I don't have eraser or pencil problems!

[NickiMacaroni]

One of the teachers I work with figured out a system that might work for you... just put a twist on something you've already done. He does keep a mug full of sharpened pencils on his desk, for kids to use if theirs break or if they can't find one. (The kids are supposed to sharpen pencils when they come in in the morning, or after recess in the afternoon, but if it breaks during a lesson, they can take one of his.) HOWEVER, in order to take one of his pencils, they need to leave behind one of their shoes! This works very well. They return their pencil and get their shoe back, and don't need a lot of monitoring. The system seems to make sense to them.
If you don't want your kids hopping around with just one shoe, try giving them something else, like a laminated card with their name on it velcroed to their desk. When they need to take a pencil, they have to leave their card on your desk. If there are any cards left on your desk at the end of the day, you just tell those kids they need to bring their pencils back!
I hope that helps!

[kpa1b2]

I've tried the shoe. As I was in a portable, it didn't work as well. So, a I charged the students a quarter for a pencil. I'd give them the quarter back if they returned the pencil. Most of them kept the pencil and I had money to go buy more. My kids were 3rd graders.

For my K's, I sharpen their pencils, I try not to sharpen to a sharp point, more of a dull point. The fat laddie pencils won't break as easily that way. I have a set of pencils that are ready to go so when I see a pencil that is getting too dull, I trade pencils with the child. I sometimes check pencil boxes to see how many pencils each child has.