Our teachers like the system as well and are using it in Social Studies, Math, Science, and Novel Units.
Glue sticks might work better than white glue.
Kimberly
I don't know if I know what kind of school you teach in but could you ask the students to provide the materials? Elementary kids always have a school supply list--can middle schoolers?
I teach in a pullout program for gifted kids and we have kids bring stuff we don't want to buy--pencils, Clorox wipes, glue sticks, folders, etc. We are even going to ask for flash drives for next year.
Glad the notebooks are working for you.
I don't know if this will help but...we teach the students "A dot is a lot and a glob is a slob." I only have to say that once or twice before the students start pointing it out to each other. I also start them out with glue sticks, then move to glue. By then, most of them have realized that they LOVE glue sticks and HATE regular glue. Many of them will then beg their parents to buy them glue sticks.
Another thing I've found to be helpful is letting the students use as many pages as they need, just creating a 145A, 145B, etc.
We purchase the notebooks for our students when they are on sale (anything resembling a Mead 5-Star: full-size 8.5x11, plastic cover, 100 pages), usually for about $2/piece. We sell them to students at cost. We buy enough for every student to have two notebooks - sell them one in the fall and one for the spring semester. There are always students who want the cutest notebook and they're on their own. Administration is really good about picking up the cost for students who cannot afford the notebooks - usually no more than 10-30 kids (in a group of about 200).
As for binders, I live in a university town and I've found that several department buy binders for specific programs. When the program goes away or they change their logo, the binders are thrown away. I have an in at one of the depts in town and they always call me before they throw away their binders. I'll be honest though - unless a parent comes in and explains why a binder is better for their child, I usually insist on the spiral notebook. The first year I let them pick and almost without exception the binder notebooks were complete and total wrecks before the semester was up.
These cutting/pasting/gluing notebooks, especially the science one, are killing my son's grade in a couple of classes. And honestly, I don't see the point--what's the academic purpose behind all the cutting/pasting/gluing? Sounds like a glorified form of "doing a poster" or something.
But I'm not impartial on this, am I?
Commenting by HaloScan
