Students constantly forgetting materials, am I overreacting?
Students frequently showing up without basic items like pencils and textbooks creates daily frustration that standard interventions fail to fix. Keeping class materials stored inside the classroom reduces lost papers, but the issue persists year-round despite trying multiple strategies.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Keeping student folders and classwork inside the classroomDid this help you?
- 2Providing a communal bin of pencils for students to useDid this help you?
- 3Requiring students to share materials with peers who forgot theirsDid this help you?
- 4Having classmates ensure special needs students have their materialsDid this help you?
- 5Giving students a free pencilDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Students constantly forgetting materials, am I overreacting?”source ↗
“Get used to it. They never have a fucking pencil. I keep their folders with classwork etc in my classroom, so that I don't have to have daily frustration with missing materials.”source ↗
“dealt with this all year last year from a handful of kids. it never got any better no matter what we tried.”source ↗
“I have folders that stay in the classroom and they STILL manage to lose papers, but not as much as last year when I didn’t have in-class folders.”source ↗
“the amount of kids coming to class without pencils is ridiculous. 8th grade science for reference.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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- 3I laughed at a student's joke and now I've lost authority