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.
- 1Keeping student folders and classwork inside the classroom
- 2Providing a communal bin of pencils for students to use
- 3Requiring students to share materials with peers who forgot theirs
- 4Having classmates ensure special needs students have their materials
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, 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 ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 12How to stop classroom interruptions from photo and video documentation
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- 7How to learn 100+ student names in secondary school
- 6How to stop students from scrolling phones during class
- 79Why are students behaving so badly and parents refusing accountability?
- 2Why do students just copy worksheet text instead of answering?