Keeping sharpened pencils is one of our greatest challenges in the classroom! The manual pencil sharpeners eat up the pencils and don't sharpen well - plus they are very noisy and take forever! It would be great to have a stockpile of pencils that we can sharpen and use at a moment's notice!
We are a very diverse group of students in a blue-collar, working class, low-income area.
We are a fourth grade class at a public school in a small district. Over 75% of our students participate in the free/reduced lunch program and we have many students that do not have much more than the basic necessities, if they have that. Our students and families care about education and most of our parents want their children to do well. The students work hard and appreciate when they are given "extras" that they don't normally get. My students are black, white, Hispanic, Asian, and everything in between! There are more girls than boys (much to the boys' distress) and they get along very well with each other. I have many students that are in the gifted program and most of the kids are big readers! If I let them read all day long, they would be in hog heaven!
My Project
Keeping pencils on hand and sharpened is a constant challenge in our classroom. It seems like such a simple school supply wouldn't be so difficult to keep a supply of, but it is! Our manual pencil sharpener is old, loud and eats pencils up. It is virtually impossible to sharpen a pencil in it without eating up half the pencil in the process. A new electric pencil sharpener would be heaven-sent! Pencils and erasers are used up quickly and we go through them fast!
We would so appreciate a fresh supply of pencils and erasers and a pencil sharpener that can help us keep a stock of pencils ready to go!
Waiting for students to sharpen pencils, especially in a manual sharpener that doesn't really work, is time-consuming. We would save so much time with these new supplies and get so much more accomplished in class.
More than half of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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