Ericas Ed-Ventures

Primary Education Ideas

Things Borrowed and Things Returned Binder

In my 10 Things I Learned From Teaching post, I said that creating a “Sign-Out Binder” deters colleagues from interrupting your lesson to borrow items and helps you keep track of your things.  It is a Catch 22: These colleagues are your friend and you want to help them, but on the other hand these are your things that you bought with your hard earned money!  Why should you be punished for spending money on your classroom?  So one year, when there were two new teachers on the grade (not new to teaching, though) and the other two were still borrowing from me as usual, I came up with the “Sign-Out Binder.”  I explained to them that it was too hard for me to go asking around four plus classrooms to find my materials when I needed them.  This binder allowed me to keep track of my items and only a teacher could sign them out.  If a teacher wanted to borrow something, she could not sent a student over to borrow the item.  This has worked well for me, I hope it helps you, too.  I know all my blogland friends are those type of teachers where everyone says “ask her, she has everything.”

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Comments

  1. WOW! This is a great way to keep track of "things" that are borrowed! Usually everyone in my building comes to the kindergarten classroom to get stuff! Now I can keep track in one easy notebook!
    Thanks for posting!

  2. Love it! The teachers in my building make fun of me because I have this bright green piece of card stock that I use to write down everything everyone "borrows" from me. Thanks for sharing your notebook idea!

  3. I love this! It seems that this happens to me all the time, but I just have a little magnetic pad hanging inside my cabinet with the names of the borrower and the borrowed item(s). This is going to save me a lot of trouble. Thank you so much!