Back to School Must Do: Teaching School Supply Expectations

Jul 19

If I could choose one thing as the most valuable tool in my teacher toolkit for back to school it would be teaching explicit expectations from the second my students enter the classroom on day one. One of my back to school “must do’s” is teaching my students the expectations of using our school supplies. Everything from how to use a pencil to how to cut and glue, I explicitly teach about all supplies to my kindergarten and first grade students.

My top tip for teaching about school supply expectations is to not put out any supplies on your student’s desks before the first day of school. You heard me correctly. NO SCHOOL SUPPLIES ON THE DESKS! This may sound crazy because as teachers we all LOVE to put out those fresh school supplies on desks to have ready to greet our students on the first day. But what I’ve found (especially in kindergarten!) is that if I put out all of the beautiful school supplies before teaching students my expectations for using them the beauty of the supplies doesn’t last long. Crayons get thrown across the table, pencils break, and my neatly organized supply caddies are no longer organized.

The best strategy for introducing school supplies to students is to introduce them as you plan to use them. For example, on the first day of school my students won’t need a pencil or crayons until well into the morning. I put a note in my planbook for when my students will first need a pencil and that’s when I plan to introduce that school supply to them. I model under the document camera the proper way to hold a pencil, how to take care of the pencil and eraser, and most importantly how to put the pencil back neatly in the supply caddy when I’m done using it. Once I’ve gone over the expectations I will have a couple of students come up to model using the supply appropriately. Not until then do I pass out papers to students and then bring them their first school supply to practice with.

I go through this same routine with each school supply I introduce. When it’s time to use crayons for the first time I model, model, model. I show students how to care for crayons, how to color neatly “round, and round” not “scribble side to side.” I have model students show how to use our crayons THEN I pass out the first crayons to students. A helpful resource I created recently is my Editable School Supplies Rules and Expectations for Back to School. In this resource you will find editable expectation posters for the most common school supplies used in classrooms along with practice pages for students to practice using each school supply, expectation stories, and positive vouchers to recognize students when they are using supplies appropriately.