{Collaboration and sharing is a great way to learn and grow as a teacher! Tricks and Tips for Teachers is a weekly linky party held every Thursday as a place for you to join in and share a post about a teaching tip or trick on your blog. Just grab the button above and link it back to this post. Then come back to this post and link up your blog post by using the linky tool at the bottom of this post. I can't wait to read your great tricks and tips and learn and grow together!}
Happy Thursday friends! Or as I like to call it, Happy Friday Eve!
Let's jump right into this week's teaching trick/tip, shall we?!
In my classroom we use personal whiteboards every day! They are a wonderful {and copy/paper free} tool for learning in the classroom! Students love using them to show their work and I love using them to assess their learning! I love everything about personal student whiteboards except for one little big thing:
Dry Erase Board Erasers
*insert cringe here*
These erasers and I are just not friends. Trust me, I've tried!! Here are some of my issues with them:
1. They are large and in charge--they don't fit easily into a pencil box and as a result get lost in the black hole that my students call their desk.
2. They don't last year after year. They become pin cushions for my students pencil tips and fingers. Plus the felt part gets dirty quickly and then becomes a smearer instead of an eraser.
3. At $2-3 a piece replacing them for a whole classroom quickly becomes expensive.
The problem is that a dry erase board without a dry erase board eraser is well...pointless. Personal student white boards are not a one time use board. Students need to be able to use and reuse them which ultimately requires some sort of eraser OR a class supply of Tide pens on hand for all of the sleeves that are used instead. So, I had to figure out another way for students to erase!
I was at teacher heaven one day, aka The Dollar Tree, when I found my answer:
*insert angelic music here*
Black socks? How did I not think of this before? They are the perfect dry erase board eraser!
1. They are small and are easy to store!
My students just keep their dry erase marker right in their sock and keep both in their pencil box for easy access! They keep their pencil box on top of their white board in their desk so that they can pull it out and be ready in 3 seconds flat! No wasted time here!!
2. They last year after year--I'm on year 3 with these socks!
3. They are affordable!
I was able to get 6 socks for only $1! Be still my bargain heart! OR you can always raid your family's lost sock drawer at home for free socks too!
The best part for my OCD heart is that they don't show their dirtiness like a white sock would or white felt on an eraser does! And when I do want or need them cleaned I can just collect them, take them home, and throw them in my washer machine! *winning*
This has worked SO well for our classroom! I will never go back to the dry erase board erasers for my students again!
And if I can have a quick squirrel moment here---one thing I will say is that when it comes to classroom management of the socks and erasers, I hold my students to high expectations for using them and keeping them in the right places. If students are not using them correctly (goofing around with them or swinging socks in the air) or are not keeping them in their pencil box (for example, if I find a sock lying on the floor after we are done using them) they lose the privilege of using this great learning tool for the day and have to use scrap paper and pencils while the rest of the class uses white boards. My students LOVE getting to use their white boards, so it usually only takes one time of having to use a scrap paper and pencil during white board time to keep them motivated to make good choices with them!
What tricks and tips do you have up your sleeve? I can't wait to read all about them!
No comments:
Post a Comment