Have many times have you heard, “I need a pencil?” Odds are, if you are a teacher, you have heard it way more times than you can count. How many times have you heard the dreaded pencil sharpener in the middle of a lesson? No matter how many times you tell them to make sure they sharpen their pencils in the morning! That was always my favorite. I cringed every time either of those things happened. That was until I developed a pencil challenge or pencil wars. Then almost all of my pencil problems magically vanished! It was amazing!

Pencil Pouches

I bought pencil pouches for all of my students. Black pencil pouches work best for using them over multiple years since they tend to show less wear over time. Another option is to ask parents to send in a pencil pouch for their child. I wrote students’ names or classroom numbers on each pouch to keep track of them.

Inside the pouches, students were given 5 SHARPENED pencils, a large eraser, an expo marker, a highlighter, and a pen. Anytime we were doing an activity with white boards, students just had to get out their pencil pouch and grab their expo marker and eraser. Or if we were highlighting our reading story, they already had their highlighters in their pencil pouches. It worked great at saving time.

Pencil Challenge

Now this is where the magic happened and where the pencil challenge comes in. On Fridays, students’ pencil pouches were checked by myself or another student, and if they had all their items still in their pencil pouch, they received a small prize like a piece of candy, a small eraser, classroom money, etc. Students worked hard to receive these small prizes and kept up with their pencils and other items.

The pencils in their pencil pouch DID NOT have to be sharp. That was the whole point. They were using those pencils all week. When their pouches were checked, all their pencils were resharpened at once. Many times, I would give the pencil sharpening job to a student I trusted (to not break the sharpener), or at the beginning of the year, I would just trade out the pencils with sharp ones and sharpen the rest after school when I had a chance.

Students did not have to worry about sharpening their pencils anymore, because they would all get sharpened on Friday. If a student’s pencil tip broke, they simply had to reach in their pencil pouch and take out another one! No more sharpening pencils in the middle of lessons or hearing, “I need a pencil.” The pencil challenge worked miracles in my classroom! And we were not going through a box of pencils a week! Students were keeping up with their 5 pencils to earn their prize.

Do you have any other classroom methods or procedures for pencils? We would love to hear about them in the comments!

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